NOTE TO READERS

i'm changing blog sites. eventually i will just get my own domain and stop moving around so much, but for now i've found one that suits my needs. so if you're familiar or new, please check out

www.granolapath.tumblr.com

much love,
britta


7.31.2009

loquat babies






along with a few other ideas, projects, seeds that are taking root and springing forth, the ever growing, ever exciting loquat saplings are finally growing up!!

we've taken care to nourish and protect them as they've been set in soil and now emerged into a beautiful, leafy green existence.

we're hoping to plant them around the city where we can ensure their growth and health and even community participation so that years from now we'll be able to reap their fruits and promote free foraging for everyone!

more updates later...

transformation is a mouthful

a push, a breeze, a more than subtle impetus is what i need.

all my dreams, though some maybe quite quixotic, all my desires, my plans and my responsibilities, these inspirations and projects and plans and prospective inner growth always seem to gain so much strength and fervor, just like the silly rainstorms in san diego. they build build build with deep intensity, promise to deliver rain, the air temperature changes and the skies blue fades and we expect so much to come from it and...

it fizzles. a few spitting mists of atmosphere-dirty moisture that tease and torment us fall every-which-way from the sky and then its back to being 65 and sunny again.

i see this pattern in myself and it drives me crazy. because i'm tired of the sunny and 65 forecast for my journey, for my personal transformation and hunger to affect people and the world and to live the full and abundant life god intends me to live.

i want to write a book. i'm not sure what it will look like but i really want to go through that process and to hand to someone the final, creative, hopefully inspiring and somewhat accurate product and be damn proud of myself.

i want to work for a company or organization that transforms people- spiritually, emotionally, socially, environmentally.
i want to use my hands and my mind and my body and my ability to connect with people and my love for this earth and this life to really make progress in restoring the way we humans exist.
i want to plant gardens and teach people to grow good food. i want to encourage people to wear sunscreen and not waste water.
i want to read books with kids and play in cardboard boxes outside with them and give them hope and inspiration to play, to learn, to love, to seek after everything that they even unconsciously yearn for.
i want to write music and play my guitar for my own pleasure, to express my emotions and work through my thoughts, to praise god and celebrate love, sunshine, and the human experience. i want to practice more advanced finger-picking and chord structures, to push myself to master songs that i normally just sing to in the privacy of my car and not be afraid to bust them out for friends and family.
i want to be a good sister, daughter, friend, girlfriend, granddaughter, aunt, cousin, neighbor and keep up with people, affirm them, encourage, them, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, send cookies and give more of myself.
i want to keep being the strong, athletic, driven girl that somehow i have created myself to be. i want to exercise harder, go further, stick to my disciplines, enjoy the sweat, the energy, the endorphins, the cleanse, the joy of respecting the beautiful body that god made in me.
i want to be financially stable so that i can afford to do the things in life that make it rich and god glorifying. i want my kids to have that freedom as well.
i want to own and run a cafe someday soon that explores food, people, culture, god, business, and music. i want it to be the ideal neighborhood hang out. i want it to be edgy and inviting, different but totally comfortable. profitable and educational.

i could go on.

and i think this is a great endeavor. it runs through my brain constantly and when there are moments that i forget or lose sight or step outside of my discipline and focus to get there i lose so much stamina and i get so upset.

so if you read this and you know me, come along side me. help me make the best out of even unsatisfying storms. lets breath and work and play and eat and strive to be the best we can be as humans, as god's, as each others

doing nothing when planning on doing everything

sometimes i wonder if i will fail.

i often do.
i'm pretty self critical and i struggle when i think that i fail
at my own goals or being an amazing friend or being incredibly productive and
fruitful and having a sense that i have an am establishing myself in this world and beyond this world, this life. sometimes i wonder if i fail in my walk following jesus, if i fail at being a good human being, however that looks like. i can't quite seem to pick one thing and nail it, master it, feel like i gave it my all...

i definitely fail at conforming to the standards of high fashion, making obscene amounts of money, and having shallow relationships.

in my darkest hours, i allow myself to believe these subtle limericks, to beat myself up again and again for not pushing hard enough, for not being there, for not doing as much as i expect of myself or compared to my peers and mentors. i allow my impatience to influence my train of thought, and allow self deprecating emotions and thoughts to muddy my clear view and my open perspective. i find myself in these strange moments, alone and unchecked in my tangle of thoughts and actions...i allow my selfish and undisciplined nature to seize the opportunity to lavish itself in ease, luxury, unconscious decisions...

in Romans, Paul speaks about this struggle against his sinful nature, about knowing what is good, what is god's law, and yet not doing those things and hating himself for it... i guess my situation is similar, though i'm still trying to work out my opinions about the nature of man and whether all things that we do according to this are sin or what sin is really...but there's something catchy to how he says it in chapter 7: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do".

self discipline is just that. confrontation. conscious intentional actions to see through the goals i set before myself and the traits i wish to pursue in my self.
there's harder days. i get down on myself. i loose a bit of strength and patience and self respect. i have to build it back up again, finding encouragement in prayer, meditation, focus...

...........................................................................

our little garden




ironically, i've installed my garden towards the end of summer season because its taken me longer than expected to gather all the supplies and really plan out and learn how i wanted to set up a backyard garden for myself and some of my gypsy friends...

so finally, our small plot is ready...the hard, san diego clay has been tilled, nourished with compost and soaked to make a decent potting soil...tiers have been built to ensure good water flow and to give the garden a little shape and pizazz...seeds have been planted with care and with friends and hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll have the beginnings of some late summer fruits and veggies to watch and to help grow, and to enjoy, celebrating the beauty of growing our own food and sharing it in the context it was meant to be shared in...


arugula, spinach, bush beans, snow peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, basil, cilantro and a few lovely flowers to give the area color and dimension

here we go, lets hope that the heat and the roommates won't kill all the seeds that have been sown...

7.27.2009

through weather

"Through weather. through weather's declensions.
Through spring's steep degrees, through five shapes of snow,
through the thunderhead's sexual green

over green geometrical acreage,
through every stromy declension
of the heart I have cried your name...

*
And what is wind
but a dialect of longing?-: the high
pressure rushing to fill the low, the sky

trying to shake its heats against the earth's
asymptotic cool, its somersaulting cools
against the earth's radiance. all weather

springs from currents of failed desire. No wonder
the wind, when it says anything at all,
howls."

-kimberly johnson, a metaphorical god

getting to the deeper things of god


paul, in 1 corinthians 2, writes of god's "secret wisdom-that has been hidden and destine for our glory before time began".

i've read this verse countless times; yet i've not before now taken the time to explore what he's actually writing about. he assures readers that, had the rulers of the time understood this sort of wisdom, they would not have even thought to crucify Christ.

"no eye has seen nor ear has heard, no mind conceived what god has prepared for those who love him"

paul stretches my intrigue even further in the next line when he says, "but god has revealed it to us by his spirit, which searches for all things, even the deep things of god".

as much as we need and crave the community and the structure and the foundations that the church provides us with, as much as we have been taught that we need to follow a format and reach out in order to know god,
god is in us, with us, and is us
and we have the perfect, natural ability to access god, the energy and the wisdom and the love that is god, by our receptivity to the gift of his spirit.

"we have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from god, that we may freely understand what god has given us" (12)

isn't all of our earthly, human "wisdom" silly sometimes compared to the reality of the sacred wisdom of god? (which i believe is founded and embodied in love and obedience to him. aren't we so crafty with all of our schemes to experience god in our own way or to exercise leverage and power over one another in the name of religion and wisdom and truth?

4th of july



a little late i know...

but there was something magical that happened as we celebrated our American independence this year...my friends and I all gathered on our rooftop palace with a delicious spread of savory treats, the most amazing view of downtown san diego cast against a breathtaking backdrop of sherbet skies, the moon rising effortlessly in the growing blueness, and the sense of goodness and home and abundant life pervading all my senses...

not to mention the five synchronized firework displays that entertained us as the sky darkened and cheers were heard from all around...

just a few glimpses of the magic...

7.22.2009

you are what you eat...or so you thought...

there's a lot of insidious, creepy business going on in the agriculture industry. a couple of really well done documentaries have just been released offering insight and information about a corporate monster company that is trying to, and gaining speed and power, control a big majority of the worlds crops and seeds.

check out the website for the company, called Monsanto, and do a bit of research in terms of what they offer, their very appealing and educated sounding publicity, and take a look at their long term and broad goals for turning most of our crops into genetically modified substances.

then please take the time to watch or research these documentaries and share the information with your families and friends. these are huge issues that require either a complete meltdown of the system or a surge of revolution and activism regarding our food and our rights as humans.

http://www.twilightearth.com/environment-archive-2/the-world-according-to-monsanto-full-documentary/

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

7.09.2009

humility and fruits

i'm trying to really understand and track the source of how humans have evolved to be such proud, power hungry, profit seeking people. i'm learning so much about history, culture, language, economy, ecology, and god through all the books i've been reading and as expected there happens to be one common denominator of all the world's diagnosed 'problems'.

there's a curious lack of humility in the human race, and i don't mean for these words or musings to come across as harsh or condescending. my heart is simply weighed down at the thought that so many of our modern conflicts and crises are the result of a serious lack or perversion of such a simple, pure concept.

when people regret to foster humble spirits, when we let our selfish tendencies and obsessions become the driving force behind what we involve ourselves in, how we treat one another, what we strive towards, all of the good potential that these efforts hold is lost, corrupted and confused.

examples:
agriculture and industrialization
the desire for prestige and profit caused citizens to pursue objects, careers, social engagements that would raise their social status
white flour and sugar
capitalism and holly wood

as we (or if we) would assume a more humble posture towards god and one another, serving our neighbors, picking up trash not because it's ours but because it's trash, paying for people's dinners, allowing ourselves the freedom and joy to not take more than we need... we would begin to see a world of transformation, a human race that embodies love and fellowship and life abundant, as god would intend us to live...

composting: an easy answer for a big problem


composting could be the solution to global warming, world poverty and famine, war, american health insurance policies, divorce, the economic situation, and even the ridiculous dissonance and conflict among religious sects.

let me explain.

we are human beings who live and exist primarily in a physical world, though the actual boundaries or realities of our experience just on earth transcends far beyond the physical realm, we'll start there. our species, along with every other living organism and system here functions based on relationships. our physical health depends on the food we ingest and the beautiful way that our bodies use the nutrients found within our foods;in what context we grow and enjoy and relate to our food. as a result the way we exist with one another will unmistakeably be restored.

"if the soil that we grow our food in is sick, so will be the grasses that grow in that soil and the cattle or chickens that eat the grasses and vegetables and the people who drink the milk from them or eat their meat" (Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food).

if we get sick, as 2/3 of American are due to the 'food' we eat and the dysfunctional relationship we have with our food, we are less likely to be healthy in other aspects of life; our relationships with other humans, animals, god, our ability to create, to feel whole and alive and to enjoy life the way we have been designed to live. if we don't have good soil (now including the metaphorical sense of the word)to plant our seeds in that will reap nourishing food, the rest of the system rapidly deteriorates.

"the dinner we have eaten tonight was a part of the sun but a few months ago"- albert howard, the philosophical father of the organic farming movement


wouldn't it be great if all throughout america we could be proud of the foods we eat, professing that our health comes from a right relationship between soil, plant, animal, and man, that the nutrients we ingest are direct components of natural carbon and mineral sources like the sun, the soil, the vitamins of this physical world.

what if we all started to practice the simple, organic, logical, satisfying practice of composting? what if all the little humans scurrying about the earth began to cultivate our own nutrient rich soil and use that soil to plant, to grow, to feed, to heal ourselves and one another? think of everything that could happen.

people would feel better. the waste-not-want-not mentality might just begin to soak in. we might all be able to provide for ourselves and change the way we eat, which would change our natural bodily chemistry, affecting our emotions and our relationships with other people. we might not have to go to the doctor and worry about our health insurance because we would provide for ourselves the natural foods that equip our bodies to thrive. we might not need to spend money on cars and gasoline if we don't have to drive so far to the grocery store because 1/2 of our food is grown right above the place we lay our heads down at night, in a delicious, beautiful, fragrant rooftop garden. we might have more people over for dinner because the taste of the food would be tantalizing and we would want to talk about each others gardens, we might want to spend time getting lost in conversation over wine and hear about the struggles and joys in our lives.

someday...we might all understand and pursue organic communal creativity. we might all once again live off the land, be it local community gardens or good local organic farms. i'm not advocating for the abandonment of modern innovative technologies, but just advocating their refinement and examination.

it all starts in our soil. composting, eating as we're designed to and living wholly is not complicated, its quite easy, and the benefits are exponential.
check it out. try it for yourself. see how you feel. share about your experience here or with friends. pass the message on...

http://www.treehugger.com (great site for green building, energy, gardening, renewables)
http://www.solanacenter.org/Backyard%20Composting%20Brochure%20April%202004.pdf( great guide to backyard composting)

its all in relationships

our health depends on relationships. proper. right. wholesome relationships.

god
the earth
man
animals
food

we're all inevitably connected, perfectly designed but sometimes less perfectly functioning.

we desire to be in relationships. to have intimacy with our loved ones, our friends, to know and to understand god and to have some relationship with the creator that gives us meaning and a drive to continue living. there is a good and right way of living, a way that elicits freedom and abundance and love.

health is the product of being in these sorts of relationships. we desire to be healthy and the key to our strength and survival lies in the most simple, delicate, natural system that has over the years been constantly run down and muddied. how we eat. what we eat. when and where and with whom we eat. all of these facest affect every part and portion of our physical, psychological, spiritual and communal health.

7.07.2009

on becoming...the american dream(er)

i am now officially a licensed and registered california driver and resident. my car, oliver, has now been officially stripped of her colorado roots and engendered with california plates.
its a somewhat mournful experience on my part, especially when the man at the DMV asked me if i was a broncos fan or a chargers fan, my answer wavering due to the fate of a passing score. but i'm equally delighted because of all the possibilities i see on my west-coast-horizons.

reclaiming community






gardening.
eating food that comes from your own soil. using soil that comes from your old food and plants and dirt. getting dirty and being with people, who come from dirt and will return to dirt. really, there's nothing like eating a salad comprised of all sorts of tantalizing, delicious, exciting and enigmatic flavors that you yourself planted, helped to grow and harvested just at the right moment at the peak of the season...we can sustain ourselves. its simple, empowering, creative, and completely fulfilling.

cruising.
the feeling of riding your bike everywhere around town; whether or not its work, a concert, the gym, the local farmers market or just for a pleasant afternoon adventure. its cheap, its sentimental, its youthful and smart and completely necessary. why take a car when you can take a backpack and boost your calf muscles? why trap yourself in traffic, limit yourself to highways and speed limits wen you can feel the wind literally pull the saliva from your lips and whip across your face with such invigorating, awakening sensations?

community.
its about sharing meals together, slowly, with a glass or two of wine, talking about our trials, our joys, our best jokes and most estranged stories. its about seeing the people who check you out in the grocery store and asking them their story, knowing where they go home to after work, caring about their time and existence. its about meeting together with people of similar interests and passions to collaborate on ideas and movements to better the city, the neighborhood, the state and bring us all together as people who love one another and care for one another as delicately, beautifully, powerfully created beings. its about taking time to ask your neighbor to join you for dinner or to make sure that you are keeping in touch with the people who are hurting, who are poor or hungry, those who may be doing well and sharing in their abundances.

join the movement that somehow got displaced by our innovative technologies and our distancing ourselves from that which is so fundamental to our health and existence. reclaim your community in the whole sense of the word. seek wholeness and health and simplicity while thriving in this amazing and evolving society. live off the land. eat food. thrive in community with fellow humans and other creatures. work hard. play harder. take root:)

7.01.2009

hello july


i woke up this morning and all of the cloudy grey skies that have dominated the month of june conveniently dissipated, allowing me to enjoy a brisk, beautiful, sunshiny day to welcome the new month...

july holds a lot for me...its a month of remembrance and celebration of the life of my sweet marvene...its a time for picking fruit and living abundantly in the heat of summer...its the cusp of new horizons, jobs, churches, people, ideas

the loquats are sprouting, much more than i could have even expected. they're little baby saplings, roots growing fervently across the dark, rich soil...

i fall asleep tonight with a full belly of good, nourishing food, good nourishing thoughts, a lot of questions and what ifs and where to's, a lot of gratitude, and finally a song that somehow seeped into my head this morning with this new day that has brought me back to singing, humming, baking, writing...being well

:)