Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Friday gratefuls: At 8:30 pm tonight, MT, the visit of the Jangs leaves Incheon. 11:30 am tomorrow, KT. Alan. Bread Lounge. Shadow. Artemis. Morning Darkness. Lughnasa. Christmas in July, Melbourne. Mary settling in. Mark in Al Kharj. Family, far far away. Loved. The Sprouts, Seeds making good on their implicit promise.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son and Seoah here tomorrow night.

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

Tarot: The Seer, #2 in the major arcana. What do the cards have to say?

One brief shining: Forgot the excitement of watching Plants emerge from Seeds, checking each day to see the progress they’re making, often a Seed Husk hangs on a bit, discarded after protecting the vitality of the green Emergent, like a body left behind after death.

Artemis: I suppose you could call it a hobby. Growing things. But, it doesn’t feel that way to me. Each day is a small Christmas with yellow Tomato Blossoms fattening out into green bulbous beginnings of Fruit. With Sprouts reaching further above the Soil, their new chartreuse already shading toward a darker hue. Their Leaves, at first only two, then a stalk, then more Leaves. Artemis pregnant with so many children.

I love these early days of Plant growth, coming out of hard shelled Seed with vigor, piercing the dark, reaching toward the nutrition of Great Sol, light eaters hungry for their first meal.

The miracle of photosynthesis. Eat Great Sol’s rays, produce carbohydrates, give off O2. Grow more. Grow more. Until a red Tomato lies in hand. Or, a Leaf of Chard, of Spinach, a blood red Beet.

If there’s a category above miracle, and there must be, it would include this oh so ordinary magic that most ignore. Celebration of life its very self. We can train our eye to see it. Our hands to pick it. Our nose to smell it. Our tongue to taste it.

The Midwest, the Central Valley. Vast lands devoted to farming. Yet most of the farming now done by mechanization, fertilization, irrigation. No celebration of the miracle until it produces the other green, profit. Measuring the worth of photosynthesis against its value to the bottom line may be the ur-evil afoot in the World. That metric drains Aquifers, strips away Top Soil, erodes whole Landscapes.

Maybe I am. Maybe. A broken record on this point. Only because my joy in growing things is so great, my closeness to the Plant Kingdom one of delight, not monetized as the tech bros like to say.

Yes. Growing things, eating from the bounty of Mother Earth’s vast collection of foodstuffs, can harmonize with the needs of Soils, of available Water, of sustainable harvesting. It can be the basis of human life, a human way of being that lives long and prospers. But it sure isn’t right now.

Those Beets pushing down roots that will develop into a tasty salad fixing, the Spinach ready to spread its wide Leaves, the peppery Arugula tentative in its early growth testify. They preach in the oldest language of all, the language of life sustained by life, of life sustained by the heat of Great Sol, the much recycled Water, the nutrients in the Soil. Hallelujah. And, amen.