Received an enquiry today from the Permaculture Association (thanks Nicola):
Dear member,
I would like to thank you once again for becoming a Lifetime member of the Permaculture Association!
As you have made a commitment to permaculture and our network, I would like to gather together your thoughts and inspiration for making such a commitment. I am hoping that by sharing your story, we can communicate to others like you how important it is to stay a part of the permaculture network each year.
If you are able to send me a reply in response to one of the following, or whatever you feel is appropriate, I would be very grateful!
• Permaculture is important to me because…
• Being a part of the permaculture network has helped me to…
• I would want more people to know about permaculture because…
Thank you very much!
MY REPLY:
Permaculture makes sense to me because it brings together in one concept all the things I have discovered in my life which offer a pathway to peaceful sustainable living where we are encouraged to take responsibility for our own inputs and outputs in a caring sharing way. Not only that it teaches us that we can consciously design our way whilst piece by piece we lay aside destructive technologies and attitudes. It’s a direction, not a destination so it becomes your life because you are never done.
Being a part of the permaculture network has helped me learn from other like-minded people gifted often in ways I’m not and also allows me to share with others the gifts I have- be they in attitude, understanding, or material things.
I want more people to know about permaculture because this work can only really succeed when we work together at creating sustainable systems which ultimately require us to work much less. There is a joy and satisfaction in creating systems which harvest human needs better and better as time goes by whilst respecting and enhancing all life on earth. So many of the problems facing people in the world today become opportunitiies for better behaviour and better rewards when seen through a permaculture understanding of our universe and how we can learn to work in harmony with nature and each other. We still have a long way to go, so the more there are of us actively engaged the easier the task becomes.