A Meditation on Instigating

One dictionary definition of ‘instigate’ is ‘to bring about or initiate’ or ‘to incite someone to do something’.  As we’ve been going through our first year on the land and first summer season of growing food, that word has been ringing in my head.  I think we often would like to think of starting something or beginning a new project as an orderly, methodical, controlled execution of actions that lead to planned goals.  But the work of partnering with land and animals and community in order to encourage increased levels of sustenance and productivity is not controlled or orderly.  It feels like instigating.  Like throwing a match on kerosene.  Life wants to happen so badly actually.  When we engage in actions that set conditions for life to thrive and plants to grow and animals to procreate, we are participating in forces that have their own desire, drive, and trajectory.  I don’t really get to control them.  I am lucky to be allowed to be along for the ride, to learn a little more about the forces and the creatures caught up in them, and to experience the end results – the way the spinach in that particular row of the garden tastes and how a varietal of mustard interacts with clay soil and what the new Embden x Brown Chinese gosling looks like.  Its less calculated method and more bull riding.  It has me thinking about so many aspects of what it would mean if we thought of ourselves as life-instigators in all parts of our lives. A little more outlaw and a little less city councilwoman about soil health and plant growing and feeding people…