Observing the Movement
| 03 February 2010
It's as if there is a house on fire, on top of a hill and as some people walk by, they look up, see the house on fire and they jump into action -- urgent, passionate action to do something. They might pick a strategy, say a bucket, and run to the nearest well to fill the bucket and up and down the hill they go, with impressive energy and courage. Simultaneously, on another side of the hill a different person becomes aware of the fire and jumps into urgent action, yelling to others that the house is in peril and grabbing a nearby vessel and running to a pond, unaware of the individual on the other side of the hill and the other passionate individuals and small groups on still other sides of the hill expending their energies with different strategies -- running so hard, some on the verge of becoming, or, already, burned out. Unaware of each other, they are all unaware that years before there were concerned individuals who knew fire would come to the house and worked on planning a community-wide response.
It may be that what is needed to save and repair the house is not only passionate individuals, acting with urgency, implementing diverse strategies (food security, watershed restoration, renewable energy projects, resource conservation, civic actions and more), but also a wholistic strategy that connects and relates these projects and actions, helps prioritize and leverage energy, helps prevent burnout and expose opportunities to share resources and be more effective.
The beginning of the calendar year can sometimes be a convenient time to return to the visioning stage of a design process. While the San Francisco Permaculture Guild has a formal mission statement, as required for the articles of incorporation, as follows...
