Karen Unger posted this comment yesterday under a kitchen plaque I posted a couple of days ago.
“Each and every time I harvest fruits/vegetables/herbs from the garden I say thank you to the plants. When I have to use pruning shears I tell them ahead of time who is going to be removed, than apologize and rub the freshly cut spot to make it feel better. Yes, I’m aware I am eccentric. lol ~Hugs and Smooches~“
Eccentric is defined as being unconventional and strange and I would like to suggest that can be a wonder filled thing.
In the documentary, For The Next 7 Generations, a film of the coming together of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, there is a scene where a group of grandmothers arrive in South America and one is having problems with her leg. A granddaughter sings to a plant, stroking it’s leaf, before taking the leaf from the plant and making a healing poultice of it.
On an island south of Sumatra, Indonesia a culture is struggling to survive the influences of Western culture. Recognizing they will ultimately fail, they have reached out to share their knowledge and wisdom while it is still available through the shaman elders. Scientists and artists have been going to visit and to learn. A botanist sat and through an interpreter, spoke with a local shaman, learning all about the plants and their uses. The conversation continually returned to, ” Yes, but how do you know that will help?’, ” How do you choose a plant or which leaf?”, “How did you learn what the plant will help?” The shaman would explain again and the biologist would ask again and the interpreter would do his best to keep the frustration at a minimum as both men talked at cross purposes. At one point the shaman, stopped and looked at the interpreter, ” Does this man not hear the plants?”…..
Do you talk to your plants? The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird came out in 1973 and suddenly it was acceptable to admit what you did behind closed doors. Skeptics would question how something without a nervous system or a brain could possibly have an emotional life. It is a reasonable question for a Newtonian world view.
I would suggest that just like the meridians in Chinese medicine were not verifiable scientifically until relatively recently, we don’t know everything there is to know about this place we live in and to assume that we do is arrogant.
To be eccentric is to live outside commonly held beliefs. That is not to say commonly held beliefs are correct or incorrect, only to say that it is the place where the most people feel the safest at this point in time.
The more we explore and the more we learn and the more we are open to the possibility that all knowledge is not known, the more we will welcome the eccentric into the fold.
Knowing you have the answer can close the door to continuing to look at the question.
I would encourage you to keep looking.
