to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy… and to laugh along the way
I had barely been introduced when she looked at me and asked, almost matter-of-factly: “Sundalo ka pala? Ilan na ang napatay mo?” (So you’re a soldier? So, how many men have you killed?”) For a second, I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to take it seriously and defend myself.
If the combined federations under the UEFA, CONCACAF and AFC push through with their threat to boycott, global football could fall apart. A World Cup without European giants – like newly-crowned World Cup champ Spain, football heavyweights France, England, Germany, etc – would lose all competitive legitimacy. Add to that the football federations in the Americas and Asia, and FIFA will find itself a mother organization without its subordinate groups.
If each of us learns to become a faithful steward of the small corner of creation entrusted to us, then perhaps the future we dream of – a healthier planet, stronger communities, and lives lived in greater harmony with nature – is not an impossible dream after all.
Toward the tail-end of my military career, the question I would ask myself was: “How do we build peace among our own divided people?” Now, as a small farmer, I have a new kind of war to address. And I ask: “How do we build peace with the earth?”
As I walked back across Gran Verde Farm that afternoon, I found myself looking down more often than ever before. Not because I was tired, but because I had developed a new respect for what lay beneath my feet. I realized that the greatest lesson of the day wasn’t about compost, bees, worms, or insects. It was about relationships. Nature survives because everything contributes to something greater than itself.
The workshop took us one step further. It challenged us to think differently. Like many people, I had always imagined permaculture to be simply another approach to farming – an organic way of growing vegetables or raising fruit trees. By the second day, I realized how incomplete that understanding had been.
Color My World 