BE A VISIONARY

How You, Too, May Be A Gardener of the Spirit

In all we do — take small steps, build our own confidence and power ... renew first ourselves, then come to the community around us:

  1. Connect children to the natural world by visiting and enjoying oceans and beaches, rivers, meadows, forests and mountains— see and feel and smell and touch our Earth, our land!

  2. Catalyze healing gardens in schools and neighborhoods. Enable teachers and school children to see the cycles of plant lives, and how we are all connected.

    Create and care for such "gardens" wherever we are — "Gardens" as places of peace and beauty, of refreshment, safety and healing. "Gardens" of any and all kinds, that we nurture and tend and share the joy of with others. Plant gardens of vegetables, fruits and herbs, to feed others — the homeless, the hungry — as well as yourself.

  3. Integrate and heal. Connect with such creative processes as art, dancing, drama, building! Experience the healing energy of activity with animals and plants, with the Earth. Create low-maintenance public spaces (parks, for instance) with benches, waterways or pools, arbors, murals, mosaics, gathering and cooking areas where people can heal each other and be healed in the process of creating.

    Help other people to do this; give hope for a better life. Free our energies for life, love, creativity.

  4. Stay with what matters most to people — their own selves and their children.

  5. Engage. Help people connect with one another. Give voice to communities. Build community through intergenerational programs of the arts — visual, poetry, song, story-telling, music, theater, dance, gardening, the healing arts. Be accessible and inclusive. Produce incentives for participation; have celebrations; celebrate art and joyful life on the ground of health and peace.

  6. Engage the people in corporations, other institutions and work places. Learn their languages; learn to work with their imageries and myths, and plan, implement, and reflect together on community-based service projects that incorporate art and gardens — that connect the participants with creative processes and with the Earth.

  7. Build a tradition, an on-going continuity of such projects. Partner every year with volunteer organizations.

  8. Build the best available practices and technologies.

  9. Create networks of support — encourage people in corporations and other institutions to participate in sponsoring, sustaining, maintaining garden and art projects, ‘gardens of the spirit’.

  10. Establish “Artists (and Gardeners) without Borders.”

  11. Mobilize artists. They are not afraid to express the truth. Their job is to awaken people, to tell and show what is happening, to transform (ugly) raw materials through creative (and healing) processes.

  12. Witness. Tell the stories, to inspire and encourage people, to bring joy and hope. Catalyze processes by which the stories may be most widely heard.

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