Kala Cuerington, Outreach and Engagement Coordinator for Urban Growers Collective in Chicago, https://urbangrowerscollective.org/, headed by the amazing Erica Allen, Laurell Sims, Candace Clark, Lauralyn Clawson, Darion Crawford, and Kala Cuerington.
"Kala has caught a passion for these farm flowers," says Erica Allen. "She creates beautiful bouquets for the farm stand in between welcoming and situating our wonderful volunteers on saturdays." Farm stand open Saturdays between 11-3pm!" Erika Allen@urbangrowerscollective
Lorrie Clevenger, Farmer/Co-owner at Rise & Root Farm!
Nyabweza Itaagi, South Chicago, IL, 21 August 2020 says, "I started a farm with my soul sis Mecca Bey, under the leadership and guidance of the incredible Erika Allen! Learning how to grow food is a dream come true. Connecting with the earth alongside other Black and Brown urban farmers has nourished my spirit (and my stomach) in more ways than I could have ever imagined."
As much about growing, healing and transforming we peoples ourselves spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically, as they are about we peoples growing and cultivating healthy, nutritious, fresh, human food, in harmony with nature?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice?
As much about cultivating our own human consciousness and weeding out our own human unconsciousness, delusion and greed, as about we human beings cultivating healthy, nutritious, sustainably grown vegetables, fruits, whole grains and other plant foods?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms healing us?
As much about taking us to the eternal, formless, “God within," the peace, stillness, transcendence, knowing and wisdom itself, within us, as about us growing healthy, nourishing vegetables, fruits and whole grains in harmony with nature for the sustenance of our physical bodies?
Are we not ourselves nature?
Do not our urban gardens and farms bring this awareness of ourselves as nature to our own awareness?
Are not our African American urban gardens and farms food and nourishment for our spirit, our soul, our “true selves,” the most profound parts of ourselves, as well as for our bodies?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms healing us?
Do our urban gardens and farms calm and still our minds, our thoughts, our feelings and emotions, as well as cultivate happiness, transcendence, awareness and consciousness in us, in even the most difficult circumstances?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms growing us?
Do our urban gardens and farms take us to the present, the eternal energy of being within us, to experience our true nature, spirit itself and in so doing, heal and grow us, we ourselves?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms “a meditation,” taking us deeper and deeper into our true selves to the knowledge of ourselves as spirit or pure awareness itself, transcending the suffering of this material world and these physical bodies, if only briefly, allowing us to refresh and gladden ourselves in the here and now, the present moment, continue on with life, and face and overcome its difficulties?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms healing us?
As much about growing ourselves, we human beings spiritually as about us growing healthy, nourishing human food in harmony with nature for ourselves, our family and community?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice?
As much about growing and cultivating human awareness, pure consciousness itself as about we human beings cultivating human food for our physical bodies?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice, as much about growing us as about us growing healthy food, sustainably grown?
Who are we?
Are we not more than these bodies?
Have not we African descendants in the Americas and beyond, always had a strong spiritual practice, wisdom and transcendence that enabled us to thrive in even the most difficult circumstances in Africa and in the Americas, including the transatlantic slave trade, racism, and all forms of delusion, greed and hatred this humanity has to offer?
Have not our people overcome everything?
Did not our Mamas and Papas, Aunties and Uncles, Grandmas and Grandpas, Greats and cousins, and all extended family have a powerful spirituality, practices, and presence, including gardening and farming in traditional ways, that enabled them to not only survive but to thrive and transcend?
Is it possible that our African American urban and rural family vegetable and fruit gardens and farms in the past in the Southern part of these United States and beyond, enabled us not only to survive and thrive economically and to nourish and care for our own physical health, but to cultivate and grow our own human consciousness, wisdom, spirituality, our own selves in order to transcend the enormous difficulties we faced as a people and as individuals emerging from enslavement as well as all the ills and difficulties all humanity face?
The JJ Hawes Family: My great great grandparents and their 14 children. My mother's family. Picture taken in the late 1800’s on thier farm in small town Lincolnton, GA.
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice?
That have enabled us to transcend life's most difficult challenges with the knowledge and experience of our own divinity, infinity, the God within, our true nature as spirit, awareness or pure consciousness itself?
Are we not God itself, spirit, infinite, pure consciousness, awareness, the creator, without beginning and end, and do not our urban gardens take us to this God within, our true selves, infinity, pure consciousness and awareness itself?
Who or what is growing whom?
Are we growing food or is growing food growing us?
Or both?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice?
Is it possible that our people’s first urban gardens like My Aunt Bell and Uncle Lonnie Hawes' garden in Cleveland, and those in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Lincoln, Boston, Oklahoma CIty, Tallahassee and beyond, were not only about we newly freed people's nourishing our physical health and guarding our incomes by providing our families affordable fresh and healthy fruits and vegetables, but that they were also about nourishing our connection to our own souls, the God within, in order to thrive and overcome, not just survive? That part of “weeselves” that allowed us to continue on livin’ an’ growin’ an’ evolvin’ as a people materially and spiritually in the face of some of the worst human delusion, greed, and hatred known to humanity?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms as much about we people of direct African descent to these Americas nourishing, cultivating and growing our own spirituality, wisdom, connecting with the God within, knowledge, and transcendence itself, our own divinity and holiness itself, the key, foremost and critical ingredients in our thriving and success as a people as they are about us nurturing and caring for own physical health?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice to grow our souls just as much as they are about us growing healthy food for our bodies in ways that will preserve our Mother Earth upon which we depend to live?
Are our African American urban gardens and farms a spiritual practice?
Copyright Notice
This work is distributed under the Creative Commons License.
In brief, you may make and distribute copies of the work herein so long as you give the original author credit, and if you alter, transform or build upon this work, you distribute this work only under a license identical to this one.
The author of this work is Maria C. Whittaker, founder of Spiritual Agroecology: Human Spiritual Growth through Agroecology and Beyond, http://fssg.blogspot.com/, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit founded by Maria C. Whittaker under the laws of Ohio, USA.
The official name of this nonprofit is the Ohio Chapter of Family Farm Defenders. Family Farm Defenders is a national 501(c)(3) in the USA, founded by the amazing John Kinsman, a family farmer who led the work to raise awareness of the nature of the Family Farm as a critical and important way of life, and a healthy and sustainable way to produce human food and more.
Family Farm Defenders is located in Madison, Wisconsin and advocates for the Family Farm, another spiritual way of life!
https://familyfarmers.org/
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Yes, Maria, these urban gardens and farms are spiritual, political, and ecological. Thank you for your essay!
ReplyDeleteThank you!!!!!!!!
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