Protecting the Heirloom Seeds of Consciousness

How to Meet these Dark Times

“In 1992, Frederick Turner translated a collection of poems by Miklós Radnóti, a Hungarian Jewish war poet… who was murdered by the Royal Hungarian Army during the Holocaust. Turner's co-translator was Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, a Hungarian Jewish refugee who carried a volume of Radnóti's poems in her winter-coat pocket in March 1957, when she fled from her parents' home in Budapest and defected to the West following the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. …Asked about the collection, Turner responded, "One day, one of Radnóti's friends saw him on the streets of Budapest, and the poet was mumbling something like, 'Du-duh-du-duh-du-duh,' and his friend said, 'Don't you understand?! Hitler is invading Poland!' And Radnóti supposedly answered, 'Yes, but this is the only thing I have to fight with.’“

                                            From Wikipedia, Frederick Turner, poet

At the last 19 Ways meetings and the last Daré we have been asking ourselves how we meet these extremely dark times, such as most living beings have never known. How do we begin? The first step, I think, is committing to a belief in a future. When we speak of it here on the land in Topanga, we say, ‘A viable future on behalf of all beings.’ Then, I am inspired by the implicit teachings of those rare beings, like Vivien Sansour, who are, under the most difficult circumstances, gathering heirloom seeds and by doing so posit a future. 

“…biodiversity, which has kept us alive for millennia, is being threatened by policies that target farmers and force them to give up their heirloom seeds and adopt new varieties. Heirlooms, which have been carefully selected by our ancestors throughout thousands of years of research and imagination, form one of the last strongholds of resistance to the privatization of our life source: the seed. These seeds carry the DNA of our survival against a violent background that is seen across the hills and valleys through settlement and chemical input expansions.

“Heirloom seeds also tell us stories, connect us to our ancestral roots…. The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library (PHSL) is an attempt to recover these ancient seeds and their stories and put them back into people’s hands.”

Vivien Sansour, Palestine Heirloom Seed Library

Photo by Maggie Tauranac

Poetry was the seed that Miklós Radnóti, carried against the forces of evil.  It did not save his life, but it did add to the possibility of a future, our future now, eighty years later, when, tragically, fascism is rising again and more poetry is needed. But one seed, even that of poetry, is not enough, as it creates a mono-crop, which is the form of the dominant culture while biodiversity, and its equivalents are what are essential. Also diversity of all kinds depends on community and community on complexity, multiplicity, variation and distinctiveness.  

For there to be a future, each of us must carry a particular seed.  Which seeds will you carry and protect against the forces which threaten all life? 

Let me paraphrase what Sansour teaches us: 

Diversity which has kept us alive for millennia is being threatened by policies that force us to give up our values and adapt to commercial conventions, anti-democratic principles and technocracy.  Our intrinsic values which have been carefully selected by our ancestors through thousands of years of research and imagination form the last strongholds against greed, power and domination that force us to give up our sacred ways of life These ways and stories carry the DNA of our survival, connecting us to our ancestral roots, strengthening us against colonization, against the pervading violent background. 

Photo credit unknown

At Daré, the first person to speak said she would protect the seed of kindness.  Such a seed is protected by being lived even as the seeds need to be sown and then gathered and sown and gathered to remain viable.  She asserted she would live in the ways of kindness at every opportunity.  We also understood that it is necessary to live according to the seeds we are protecting even, or especially, when threatened by the forces that undermine these ways.  Another volunteered to protect generosity, another the ways of the mother, another non-violence.  Another committed to the intelligence of the natural world, someone else to spiritual magic, another water, another to a piece of land to which he belongs. Another realizing that she embodies the DNA of a native people who were praised by Columbus to the King of Spain, and then entirely extinguished, vowed to find what she could of their ways and values and incorporate them into her life.  Another devoted herself to the seeds of ceremony, another beauty. Another the Tree of Peace as lived by the Haudenausanee.  And, I, of course, am devoted to preserving this land in Topanga and the wisdom of the 19 Ways. And so on…

These seeds together create a culture.  Culture carried in community is what sustains us.  Such a culture, of such seeds, generous, beautiful, kind, peaceful, devoted to protecting the natural world, etc. is the candle that shines in the dark.  And when the wars are over, and the dark forces have self-destructed in the ways of supernovas, then the seeds can be brought out and sown, the cultures re-established as life forms, and we will remember, once again, how to live.

Thank you Vivien Sansour for your wisdom, devotion and guidance.

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