Is it entitlement, the fruits of my labor, and/or something more?

If you planted it, don’t you deserve it? Aren’t you entitled to the vegetables your garden?



I plant a seed, so I deserve the fruits of that seed? Right?

Watch this video below- the story of the Little Red Hen

http://youtu.be/5QSsqls-R3o



According to the video with the little Red Hen, the answer is yes. There is a process that must happen before you get that bread, fruit or vegetable from a seed. Some of that seed's growth is due to your efforts and some of it feels like mystery or the science of horticulture and agriculture.

 You know that voice that says I deserve this because of that.

I guess we all have a sense of entitlement. However, I hope that I can work in harmony with the seed and the ecology in a way that will allow this seed to become a plant and bare fruit. And then there is the necessary weeding.

The Little Red Hen eats the bread herself when everyone declined her offer to help plant the seed.
Do I deserve the fruit if I've planted the seed?  Am I entitled to the fruit if I have nurtured the plant, given it heat, protected it from predators, housed it, bought the seeds from the seed savers exchange?

What do I deserve? That question implies so much judgement. If I think there are only two possible answers yes or no, then there is judgement and shame. Guilt applies to wrong doing.

And I can be guilty.

I can be responsible and I think nature is more complex than simplistic either this or that and causal thinking.


As for the shame, well. . .shame indicates there is something wrong with you. Guilt indicates that you did something wrong. One you can change, the other you cannot. Guilt, I can do something about. Shame on the other hand asks some existential questions about my being.  . .  At best shame is a path to a dark night of the soul, at worst. . .well let's just say I'd rather be response able and alive. I refuse to considder ther alternative.  



What path did I take? What relationships nurture the growth of the seed? How much is there that is too tiny to see that is occurring that sparks the life in the seed?


I am living with this question, because I have a lot of feelings about this. I don't have an answer. For all that science can tell us about the soil, the seed, the ecology, that seed still grows -in it's own time. I'm still amazed by that. What the answer is matters. Yet, how the answers come about matter too.


So maybe what you deserve is a question that can be reframed in terms of how. What is the process involved in getting from seed to plant to fruit? The little Red Hen plants the seed, waters the seed, and the wheat grows.  The other animals decline to help. Do those animals deserve to have any bread when the wheat has been harvested and made into bread? How can these animals expect that they can eat up the bread after all of the Little Red Hen's work? This is a question of heart-a question of contemplation.

My fellow community gardeners garden with the intention to give food away to people. Those people have not been asked to be a part of the process.  The food is given as a gift.  However, food does not just drop out of the sky- to paraphrase Erie Sauder, founder of Sauder Village. There is work that must be done to get that food to the plate. And most people have no idea how the food on their plate gets there or how much work is involved to get it to their mouths.


There is a dignity derived from this process of getting food from garden to plate. There is a sense of helplessness that comes from the lack of ability to provide for one's self. This sense of helplessness and dignity are represented in all the diy movements and back to the earth movements and hobby farming as well as urban farming.  These movements also indicate a sense of guilt associated with declining to be response able about the food we eat. People in these movements discover what it really takes to put food in their mouths and begin to have a better appreciation of the food in the grocery store.  Even more, people, begin to ask questions about how the seed was planted. People begin to realize that the process really matters. The process determines the quality in the food. 

Perhaps, the story of the Little Red Hen presents a challenge to us to be more responsible about what we know about how food gets to our plate.  I'd like to think that the other animals who decline to help in planting a seed as guilty and response able. It's not to late to figure it out.