Dreams of Planting

One morning a few weeks ago, I awakened from the most vivid dream.

We sat in a small group, everyone fully present, excited. Alive with ideas. Someone in the group mentioned a place called Findhorn. 

“What is that?” another person asked. The conversation continued as the first person painted a picture of what became a utopian commune, started by three adults and three children, living in a caravan park in coastal Scotland.

Their experiment started simply because they were out of work, and needed food. 

In the dream, upon the mention of the place, my own head was filled with the excitement I had when I first heard of Findhorn. I was a teenager, dissatisfied with the status quo. An idealist, some said, though later I realized I was actually a realist. The world the people around me upheld as rational and right simply made no sense.

It's still doesn't. 

I had always been a spiritually fervent child, close to prayer and practice, though by the time I heard of Findhorn, my childhood religion was one of the other things that no longer felt true. So I sought out things that did.

My touchstones became animism and a deep awareness that the world was alive. That somehow, from the smallest atom, to the largest whale swimming the ocean, to the furthest star, everything formed some astounding web of connection. And it was this sense of connectivity that made me seek out everything I could.

I'm not sure where it was my seeker friend and I first heard of the commune in the wilds of Scotland, formed years before our birth. Was it from the slim, hand bound pale green volume that sits on my shelf? Was it an adult we met in a metaphysical bookshop who told us stories of the place? I don't recall. All I know is that stories of the magic of Findhorn filled my mind.

In the dream that morning, I excitedly spoke of the cabbages. Massive, larger than your head cabbages, grown from rocky, sandy soil. 

Those unemployed caravan dwellers planted a garden. They spoke to the spirits of the land. They cultivated relationship with the unseen realms. The community worked together. The community worked with the earth. They spoke to the “angels” of the plants. They meditated. They listened. They waited.

They called upon the Great God Pan. The God of the wild things. The God of rising sap and rutting animals.

And despite the inhospitable sand, the wind racked earth became strangely fertile.

Things grew. Like those cabbages. 

In the dream, I needed to convey the importance of the cabbages. The people in the circle needed to see them. Taste them. Touch them. They needed to imagine that forty pound cabbages grown from sand were possible.

The cabbages were important because under impossible circumstances, the people figured out a way to grow food. The people figured out a way to connect. The people figured out a way to sustain themselves and each other, and to honor the land itself, and the spirits of the land.

And we can do that too. 

No matter how difficult things seem right now––no matter how inhospitable or impossible––don't give up planting seeds.

Every effort can count if we let it.

What seeds are you planting today?

What is your community harvesting?

What risk will you take?

What risks can we take together?

(cabbage photo by ulleo)

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