Sow Good Seeds

Sow Good Seeds is a column devoted to environmental issues, gardening, cooking, and anything else connected to the natural world that has so graciously hosted us on this earth. It is the author’s hope that it will encourage you to see the world around you in a different way, to make incremental changes in your daily living, and to treat our planetary home such that we honor the generations of life that will follow.

Any views or opinions expressed in “Sow Good Seeds” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.

I like to look out the window — I think I get that from my dad. While I was growing up, my parents had an agreement that my mother would drive the car anywhere we went as a family; I’m told it was so that my father could look out the window without imperiling the rest of us. He looks out at rock formations and cloud patterns in our desert home of Arizona. The front windows of their house face the glorious Santa Catalina Mountains; it’s a view I soak in every time I visit. 

Now, I look out at field rows, forests, and my neighborhood street. I look out at rain falling, light shifting, and children biking. I watch bare branches turn into banners of lush green and back again. 

Without looking, it would slip by me that the squirrel that lives in the tree outside my bedroom window has grey markings across its shoulders. It would slip by me that a neighbor’s family visits her every Sunday. It would slip by me that the sapling at the corner where I turn left on my daily commute is growing new leaves, new rings, new roots. 

The fields of mindfulness and meditation place great emphasis on noticing – noticing emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations. Taking time regularly to notice those things builds awareness of details, patterns, and change over time — My shoulders tense up when I get a phone call from my manager; my pulse quickens now when I drive that perilous stretch of highway; my mind clears and my chest relaxes when play my guitar.

Margaret Mead, an American cultural anthropologist, is quoted as saying, “Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain, which in time can change how we see and interact with the world.” 

Let’s make a practice of looking out from our windows – literal and figurative – and paying attention: paying attention to our bodies, to our neighborhoods, to our cities. Listening to our thoughts, to our adversaries, to the wind in the trees. Watching the seasons change, the children grow, and the sun travel across the sky. And then, let’s pay attention to how these acts of watching and listening change us.

Deborah Haak-Frost is grateful for every ray of sunshine that reaches her skin. She is the Caretaker for Community Engagement at GilChrist Retreat Center in Three Rivers.