In Search of Balance Page #8

How many little Ansels and

Anselets are out there right now

who can give us great

gifts in the future

if we give them the

great gift of nature now?

Kind of been slowly

peeling back the story

of what is

ailing Hawaiians.

Finally this afternoon we

started to get at a glimmer

of amazing hope for how

to heal by seeing these kids,

but reconnecting

to that land

and really understanding

how to grow things

and how to nourish themselves

and how to nourish the soil,

their soil can make

themselves healthy.

Working with the kids has been

so powerful because showing them

that the earth is

alive at a young age,

really will impact

how they grow up

and are they going to be

going and buying Roundup

or are they going to be

going out to their soil

and realizing it's

alive and really feeling

that heart space connection

to caring for the land.

The kids here they need

economic opportunity

and through this

agricultural practices

where it's affordable to do,

where it's

environmentally sound,

I believe it will give everyone

in this area a great opportunity

to have a great life and

to provide for the family

and to be happy everyday.

Until you started doing this

natural farming and realizing

that the earth is alive it

changes your whole perspective.

It just made me so

much more conscientious

in every part

of my life,

brought so much more respect

to the whole systems,

they are naturally

there providing

such abundance already.

So I went to

the Marche region,

it's like a fantasy

land for agroecologists.

They have been farming

in these little plots

for hundreds of years

ever since the Benedictines

who were like

the original hippies,

who went there and started

to create these little farms

with their monasteries and

the soil there is very healthy

and it's very

beautiful.

92!

92! You

are 92 years old!

Oh! Bravo, bravo!

It's also known for

being the place in Europe

that has the

most sanitarians,

people who are over

a hundred years old.

Oh, oh, fragile, I am so sorry,

I don't want to hurt the beans

Oh, I am sorry!

Hello!

I am so honored.

She's moving faster

than everybody else.

Yes, yes.

How old?

Okay. This is how --

96 now.

-- you live to be 96.

Right here!

She climbs those trees?

Yes! Yes!

No! She climbs

that tree to get fruit?

Yes, for

taking the fruit.

Now it's finished,

the fruit.

Oh, they are all down

so she threw --

She threw down,

she threw down.

No more peach.

Okay, we don't have

to worry about her.

What I want to talk to you right

now is about what we have lost.

When we move away

from those little fields

in the Marche region

what are the health

things that we have lost,

because these are all parts of

argo-ecology, crop diversity,

perennials and native seeds,

traditional technologies,

soil vitality, community, but

what they really are is health.

You have a tumor

in your pancreas?

Yes.

How long ago was that?

You had a pancreatic

tumor nine years ago?

Are they studying you

or are they from

the scientific standpoint,

you are a miracle.

Can you give us a

rundown of this?

Just give me

one second, okay?

Yeah, yeah!

Padre Giovanni

just shared stuff

that was incredibly

personal to him

and that I didn't get

the sense that he talks

about all the time and

it affected me very deeply.

He just got

so much of the crux,

what I am trying to understand

about those connections

between our bodies

and the earth

and he is just living

this every day.

For him it's his awareness,

it's his existence,

and that story about him

getting pancreatic cancer

nine years ago,

I mean, the life expectancy

from what sounds like he had

metastatic pancreatic cancer,

he had in his gut,

and everything is three to six

months and it's really amazing.

He said he did all

the medical treatments

but there was this

other side of what he did,

which possibly was the reason

that he's still with us

nine years later.

People talk about healing

the earth; the earth heals us.

Look around us

and see the beauty,

I mean, every sunrise and

every sunset, every rain shower

and every breeze and every

cloud is so magnificent.

I mean, what more beauty

could there have been.

Even when we are living

in a city on the 30th floor

of a concrete high-rise, we have

to start to think of ourselves

as part of an

agro-ecological cycle.

Only without mentality

are we going to actually

leave something for our

children and our grandchildren.

Thank you!

So increasingly instead

of saying "sustainable,"

I say, "nature rich."

What does a nature

rich city look like?

A nature rich future,

a nature rich yard,

built with native

species that bring back

butterfly migration routes

and bird migration routes.

What does that

future look like?

When you begin

to use terminology

like a 'nature rich city,'

people can see that in their

minds, and I can tell you,

particularly young

people resonate to that.

They want to go there,

they want to create that.

We humans are so arrogant

that we think the hypothesis

that we come up with,

actually have anything to do

with the complexity

of the world around us.

So 'ai' in Hawaiian

means to eat,

means food,

means reproduction,

and then 'na' is

in reference to the land.

So it's the land

that feeds us.

You are the servant

to the land,

so that land doesn't

only mean land,

it also means the ocean.

Right?

Everything in nature,

you are the servant

to nature in order to live.

There's a movement

that is sometimes called

the new agrarians.

These are often young people who

are dedicated to organic farming

near a city or in a city.

They are changing

their neighborhoods;

they are really dedicated

to creating a different

kind of food distribution.

The attitude that we are now

developing is a much more humble

and modest attitude

where we tend to say

we really don't

understand nature

but we will listen to it

in an unbiased way

and will let the wisdom

and the intelligence of nature

tell us how it's working

and how it's operating.

So we are really

starting to think about

how all these parts

interconnect,

not just to keep

the land healthy

and not just to

keep the air healthy

but also to

keep us healthy.

The big challenge

of life in general

is trying to find balance

and once you find it,

trying to maintain balance

it's not a goal that you

achieve and then that's it.

The balance is always

going to shift again

and then you'll have

to regain the balance.

It's something that's

constantly adapting,

constantly moving with

thousands of different variables

and that in fact is balance.

Almost everything is organized

in interconnected systems,

so simplest systems

to the most complex ones.

There is a natural law

that when systems organize

there will be one just

like the law of gravity.

You can say there

is a high intelligence

that used to design

to create the universe

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