The Gate to Everywhere

The New Gate of The Rising Moon in our West Field

Crates of this year's produce: squash, pear, onions, garlic, potatoes are stacked only four feet below my feet. My little cabin is filled with the perfume of fresh apples and pears that rest in the root cellar below.  The wash of the Earth's perfume drifts up through the floor boards.

Outside the window, the green round still spins out her song. The garden continues to give and give until the soil sleeps in the November frost.

Out, beyond the wired walls of the garden is the field, mowed and brown. In the middle on the stubble stands a new gate that I built as a prayer. The swinging hinges and the iron latch hold nothing in or out, because there is no fence on its shoulders.

The gate is an echo, a formed door of what we choose every moment we breathe on this earth. It is the entry to being aware and alive in this body and this moment. In the early morning mist I stand at the gate, open it and step on through. Awake and Grateful, mostly.

The suffering of life's transience passes behind me for moments. Ahead is the same brown field I saw before. But I am not the same. I am breathing in the fragrance of bounty, the sacred Earth's honeyed breath, with the sky so lovingly draped around my body.

The gate is only a choice, made moment by moment, to be here without having to do or go or be anything but one person walking in the field.

Even as I write this to you, this idea of our gate into awareness sounds ephemeral and intangible to my mind. But these are only my passing judgments, like a wind or birds flying by.

Throughout the entire farm season I have worried that we would not produce enough food for our farm members, the market or our family. But the Earth gave and gave as I worked and worked. Now the gate swings into another season. I see that the fears of poverty were only passing streamers of a spider's silk.

I simply arrived, every day, and stepped through the gate, into my callings. Then I hoed and harvested, seeded and watered, doing only the work that I could do, the work that was mine alone.

What gate, what way of awareness calls to you today? Are you worried or fretful? There are apples in the cellar. Breathe in. Smell the promise of all the good and wonder that you are. Remember what is yours to do and then release what is not. Then step through and do your particular work, being alive in the field.

Thanks for sharing this first full farm season with me. Please contact me if you wish to be a part of the Moon Bear Farm Co-op next year.

See you in the garden,
Rick

Copyright Richard Sievers, September 2012, All Rights Reserved.