#Seed030: Fresh Cuts from Year One
#Seed030: Fresh Cuts from Year One
Reflecting on our journey and cultivating future visions
Dear readers,
A year ago, I was inspired to start this Substack, mostly to help me put down thoughts on paper (perhaps some of them a little half-baked) while engaging a community of readers to test out ideas and receive critical feedback. For that, I thank you for joining me on this journey.
I’d like to take a moment to share some updates on my work and how I envision using this platform in the future. A while back, I was listening to Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification podcast (which you should absolutely listen to if you enjoy reading The Sufi Gardener). Nate talked about the importance of the Fifth Estate (not to be confused with the CBC show of the same name) in challenging mainstream media. Now, I admit that these platforms are often filled with junk and badly formulated conspiracy theories. However, there is a growing corpus of quality citizen-led writing/journalism that is offering a perspective beyond the left/right polarized sensationalist media. The Sufi Gardener is my effort in joining this new public forum, and I am honoured and humbled that you’ve followed me on this journey this last year.
Year one in review
When I launched The Sufi Gardener, my goal was to write a weekly post. It was ambitious and other projects came in the way. However, I manage to follow almost a biweekly cadence, to which I am incredibly grateful. My readership grew over the year, and for those who haven’t read my earlier piece, I’d like to share with you my first essay, a three-part series on designing healthy, resilient, and regenerative communities. For many years now, the words of Wendell Berry have continued to serve as an immense inspiration. The Sufi Gardener was inspired by these words from Berry’s The Unsettling of America.
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it, we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”- Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
I invite my readers to check out the series, which is now accessible to both paid and free subscribers!
Year two: the farm & community ecosystem
For those who have been following my work over the last decade, you’ll know that I have been working closely with Shaykh Hamdi Ben Aissa to help establish the Rhoda Foundation. The Rhoda Foundation is a community development project centred around the teachings of Islam. It aims to establish a community ecosystem weaving the Sacred with projects that cultivate physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. Over the last year, I focused on establishing the Zahra Ecological Farm as an integral part of this community ecosystem (see figure 1).
As you can see, I’m trying to put some of the ideas I’ve been talking about on The Sufi Gardener in practice. Walking the talk is going to require a lot of time and dedication, but I hope to provide my readers with insights and perspectives to inspire and inform future models. As I’ve mentioned before, community ecosystems will be the only way our civilization survives a global collapse.
Supporting my work
The Sufi Gardener offers readers an opportunity to understand the major challenges of our time by weaving wisdom traditions with right livelihood and community development. Grounded in the rich tradition of Islam while engagin other sacred traditions and worldviews, the Sufi Gardener provides a unique perspective on the impending global collapse and humanity's survival.
If you’ve read this far, you are most likely an active reader who has found my work beneficial. If you are a free subscriber, I’d love for you to consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work.
Moving forward, I will be publishing weekly notes that will be shared with paid subscribers that will include field notes and resources that you can use in your own community development work. I will continue to write longer essays that will be shared with everyone usually on a monthly basis.
With thanks,
Stephane