Back in 2009, Mike and I worked with a non-profit called Goodness Grows. It was a temporary situation that came during our 9 month season of discernment concerning whether we should move abroad to serve. During the three months that we served as temporary directors, we had the chance to visit and observe many different projects and communities to gather the best practices being put into place in the PA/Ohio region including the Rodale institute and the New Meadow Run Bruderhof community greenhouses which grows the food to feed over two hundred members. It was a great opportunity and we served from March to June and so about this time of the year it brings back memories of stalking around brown frozen and soggy gardens and steamy greenhouses looking at soil blocks, hoop houses, manure management, compost bins, and brown humps of soil that we were told would be children's gardens, or pizza gardens or whatever the plan was.
The PLAN; I confess in light of my ongoing struggle to be honest and identify fears (this feels like admitting to being afraid of bunny rabbits) PLANs intimidate me. I feel like a PLAN locks me into a structure or a measure that someone can come along and say, "Aha! Here you said you would ____ but you didn't!" Yet without plans my dreams remain ill formed and muddled. I am not a multi-tasker so without a plan I can get absorbed in an unimportant task and lose sight of the big picture. The urgent reigns supreme without a plan! (My dad made us listen to 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in the car when we went on vacation, I kid you not) I know about urgent and important and all that jazz, I just get scared and overwhelmed and emotional and forge on "doing the best I can" which isn't really the best I can because I don't have a plan!
But this year we are trying many new things including a PLAN