Surrounded, Again
a revisited essay
Thank you for joining us!
Before we begin our essay, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from Monday’s discussion question:
wrote:This was incredibly relatable. I've been feeling the exact same way this summer. I've let the garden go (I am grateful for the native plants that take care of themselves for the most part so there's at least a little beauty to be seen). As you stated our "increasingly-untidy house reflects my own messy feelings" ... Well said! As August progresses, and I get closer to the insanely busy season at work in October and November, I have been ever-so-slowly tackling things one at a time, trying to be patient and give myself grace as I try to ground myself in Spiritual practices again. I've found helpful to do practical things like close the YouTube tab so I'm not tempted to keep scrolling videos. Choosing stillness over noise (aka distraction) - even if just for a few moments. Most of all learning to let go of the all-or-nothing mentality I tend to have. None of this has to be perfect, there is grace in every moment. Our God is a God who orders the chaos...even the chaos we make on our own. I know I'll eventually get there with His help.
I love where you landed with this, Megan! A message I’m sure many of us need to internalize, myself included!
Megan writes a newsletter here on Substack called Holy HSP. It’s a fantastic resource for highly-sensitive folks, and I highly recommend checking it out!
Surrounded, Again
I am very pleased to bring you all yet another revisited post from this time last year. I simply had to, because it’s eerie just how similar the present moment is to what’s reflected in this past post! We’ve just recently started watching the TV show mentioned in the post, again. We’ve just started harvesting the year’s blackberries, again. And once again, I find myself pondering provision, a perennial meditation of mine.
I hope this repeated message serves as a reminder that we are always surrounded by goodness. One year after another, our basket is always fuller than we think.
Please enjoy!
So, there’s this TV show my husband and I enjoy watching. It’s called Alone. It premiered shortly after we started dating, so there’s a hint of nostalgia for us every time a new season drops.
The conceit of the show is pretty simple. Ten survival experts are dropped off in remote locations, miles from each other. They are given basic but limited survival gear and proper clothing for the environment (often British Columbia, Canada), but no food or water. They are also equipped with cameras so they can document their experience for the show and a satellite phone to contact the show’s team if they want to leave (or for emergencies).
The task? Survive as long as possible, on your own. The last person to tap out wins half a million dollars.
It’s a strangely hypnotic, addictive thing to watch. These people are some of the best of the best, chosen to compete in some extremely harsh environments. And it’s incredible to see the way they manage it…or don’t.
What struck me this latest season, more than any of the other seasons, is food. The entire conversation around nourishment, and sustenance. These competitors are given no rations, so they must hunt, fish, and gather what they eat. And it’s often barely enough. There are never enough berries, roots, and greens to nourish adult humans long-term. Fish won’t bite. Animals evade snares. What’s left? Bugs and slugs, often.
In fact, many of the show’s competitors over the years have tapped out simply because no matter how beautifully they built their shelter, no matter how great they are at keeping their fire lit, no matter how well they managed the weather and the wildlife…they just couldn’t get enough food to sustain them.
Obviously, these people could tap a button on their satellite phone and wait for the show to come and whisk them back to civilization. But it’s still a humbling thing to see them struggle for the one basic thing we all need.
Why does this matter?
Because over the weekend I took a box and picked glowing Mirabelle plums from my neighbor’s tree at their urging, twelve pounds of golden beauty. And I took a metal bowl while the dog and I meandered around the property and harvested blackberries, the fattest ones I’ve ever seen here, sun-warm and smelling like perfume. I snipped the seedheads from our parsley plants and I spotted baby squashes and cucumbers ripening under leaves, later in the season than usual but so very welcome.
I was humbled by what I have available to me, the natural resources that I can so often take for granted.
I’m surrounded by so much abundance. And odds are, you are too.
It can be tempting to feel like we’re all just surviving, sometimes. Trying to eke out a living with scraps. But it isn’t necessarily so. Abundance often grows on trees. Providence springs up from the ground.
All we need is the vision to recognize it, the ability to gather it, and a bowl big enough to fill to the brim.
Benediction
May the God Who Gives show each of us the harvest we may not see right away, surprising us with goodness, and surrounding us with grace.
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Love these words of wisdom, as always! Thank you for the Holy HSP shout-out :-)
I think that show Alone , sounds great! Hows this for an idea? You are totally made homeless and have to survive on the streets with 12 other competitors. You can only live as the homeless do. You and dirtied up really badly, made to smell bad and given really crappy clothes and shoes with holes in them.... and you cant tell anyone you are in a show. Every day that you stay on the streets the show people donate 2000$ to homeless empowerment groups. You are secretly filmed but no one talks to you or contacts you. If you want you can press the button and get 1000$ per day you spent on the street, and whisked off to a nice hotel.
The last person who cracks gets a million dollars.
I think it would be funny if the last person wound up doing about 4 years and had cone insane... and when contacted that they had won. they had no idea what the Show people were talking about and runs off.
I would win this game.
Ive already done a 3 month test run.
See my Biographical stories - Gutter boss and Worzel Wez. These stories have good survival knowledge in there.
Whats harder to survive in ... the bush or the rough streets of Gotham?
The bush of course.. Ive only survived 17 days by myself in the bush.
And I would dream of my hobo street days while out there in the dark.
At one point I got so scared when a bear came sniffing round me at night, I felt something like fuses
blow in my brain, and I suddenly wasn't scared. Probably wasn't a good thing.