We have time to do the right work. And trees, some trees grow really fast, but trees can grow for a really long time and a lot of trees focus by establishing their roots first. We grow a lot of trees like pawpaws and persimmons and oaks that send a tap root, one long root down deeply to anchor themselves to bring up minerals and nutrition from low down in the soil horizons. And then, they shoot off above ground once that root is established. And so it’s like the timing and the scale of work when we focus on getting the conditions right and getting the roots down, then we can move really quickly and be really agile and really resilient because when winds blow and storms come we’re not gonna get knocked over. And I think that image feels deeply grounding to me and gives me a sense of where I focus my energy.

 

Theme music

 

Hi everyone! Welcome to episode three of Just a Peaceful Climate, where we are highlighting groups and organizations that integrate efforts for peace, justice, and planet care. In this episode, I’ll be talking with Jonathan McRay. I’ve been fortunate to get to know Jonathan in the past year, primarily through an independent study that Jonathan led last semester. If you’re a fan of trees, or want to become more of a fan, this is the perfect episode for you! 

 

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N: Hi Jonathan, welcome!

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J: Thanks for having me!

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N: Yeah, thanks for joining!

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J: Good to be virtually here!

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N: Yeah, yeah, I wish we could do this in person, but this is the second best we got. Um. so, to start us off, I was just wondering, could you introduce yourself a bit more for us so we know a little bit about you?

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J: Yeah! My name’s Jonathan McRay. And I love growing beautiful and useful trees that provide food and medicine for people and land. And I also feel really passionate about working with groups, communities, organizations on how to transform conflict into something that’s healing and regenerative instead of destructive. And also how do we learn what we wanna know in order to live the way we wanna live, like I’m really passionate about full bodied, embodied education - how we learn and pass on cultural knowledge to each other so that we’re not just starting a bunch of programs, but we actually have a deep sense of culture and community. So those are the things I’m really passionate about working on. And I feel like I’m learning how to do a lot of that stuff and grow out of a kind of toxic perfectionism that I think is a part of a very colonizing white supremacist culture and learn how to be more joyful and more flexible and humble in my body and also the work that I do, but um... Yeah I live here in the Shenandoah Valley in a little place called Keezletown. I grew up in east Tennessee in the mountains so I have a lot of love for these rural southern places of the United states.

 

N: Great thank you! Um. So part of the reason I asked to interview you is because I know you’re involved with Blacks Run Forest Farm. So I’m wondering, can you just tell us, what is Blacks Run Forest Farm and how did it come to be?

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J: Yeah, we’re still figuring that out. We’re actually in the middle of a name change, so we might have a new name to announce in the near future, mostly just because of a shift in our emphasis of location away from just at Blacks Run, which is a stream that flows for 11 miles through Harrisonburg, Virginia and now including a little stream called Cub Run in Keezletown, so a name that kinda brings them both together. But for now, Blacks Run Forest Farm is a riparian nursery - and riparian means along waterways, growing along the water - riparian nursery and folk school rooted in love and living soil. And those roots that are kinda deep down and a sense of love for this place and for the living soil that grows everything, those kinda express themselves as agroforestry, which means farming like the forest does. Watershed health, like taking care of the well-being of our place, and restorative justice, which we see as a way of living and being in relationship and a way of knowing how to turn harm and conflict into healing instead of more punishment and more pain. And that kidna guides everything that we do. 

And so our focus is to farm like the forest does and to remediate, or heal, the toxins that pollute our souls and our society and our soil, whether that’s chemical leaching in our streams or white supremacy in our institutions, in our history, in our ways of being in relationship. And we see all that as related and that the trees in many ways are teaching us how to be more fully integrated and rooted and be more like ourselves and not these oppressive or oppressed categories that have been hoisted onto us and we’re taught to identify with. So what that looks like for us is growing beautiful and useful trees in our nursery that we sell, or trade, or give away and plant out tons of food and medicine. And then also through our plant descriptions on our nursery website telling stories about who partnered with these plants so that that cultural knowledge is respected. And then through the folk school, that kind of education that I was talking about, and then a whole lot of organizing through that too, connecting with other groups that are focused on food sovereignty and really being the owners and decision makers about how food is grown, how land is cared for. And also ecological restoration. That’s kind of what the, what for us the vision of a forest farm. It's like the way of integrating the life of culture (which is the farm) with the life of the land or life of nature (which is the forest) and that the forest farm is the way that those come into deep relationship and their health is mutually interdependent.

 

N: Hm. So how did this Farm come into existence?

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J: Um. The simplest answer would be it was a little over 2 years ago. I had moved away from the area for a while and I just moved back. So Cornelius Franz who’s my partner in this, co-founder, co-caretaker in this, we had both been really deeply involved in a place called Vine and Fig in Harrisonburg. It’s a place I had helped start about 8 years ago. It's an urban farm education center and also a supportive home for friends who have been unhoused or incarcerated or have found ways to self-medicate pain through drugs that are considered illegal instead of legal, and so have been criminalized for that. And so I had done a lot of work there and that was a place we had access to land and a lot of plants that I and others had planted there. And had a vision of starting in the same neighborhood a kinda public edible park. There’s not a park in the neighborhood and there’s a stream, Blacks Run, that’s been degraded and how can we restore the health of the stream while also growing food and medicine while also providing a place for people to gather and take care of? And so we really started as a way to lease city land to start this edible park and the nursery was Cornelius’s vision for how we supply all the plants for that and then maybe we could have a piece of livelihood for that. 

The long story short is that it was really complicated to lease city land, so the nursery became a big emphasis of what we were doing, it kinda took center stage, which is great because it’s a way to really abundant and growing things but also it feels like a regenerative way to have some kind of monetary livelihood for us. And some of those conversations really originally started with a good friend Michaela Schmidt Harsh, who is a JMU professor, biology professor. She and I were working on community agroforestry stuff and originally identified this land in the neighborhood as a great place to do a public park. So 2 years later, just a couple months ago the city finally said, ‘no we’re not gonna lease it to you.’ So after a lot of like, definitely seems like it's not gonna happen, and then some hopefulness, then they decided not to. So now we kinda wonder, should we just squat on it and plant stuff cuz people need food and medicine, the food system’s not looking very good, at any time, but especially right now. 

So that’s kinda the short history and it’s just kinda grown. I feel like it's been, using a phrase form Adrienne Marie Brown, it’s a very emergent strategy - we have a grounding sense of what we wanna do but new things arise and we just kinda shape in relationship to that change.

 

N: Hm. That sounds like a very exciting and unpredictable experience

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J: Yes, it’s been pretty fascinating.

 

N: So I just realized for me, I went to Undergrad at EMU and I had heard the words ‘Blacks Run Forest Farm,’ and when I heard that I was thinking, “Oh it’s like a farm in the middle of a forest...in a bunch of trees…” Last semester I was able to spend some time out there with you. And so I’m wondering if you can kinda give us a picture of what this actually looks like for people who are listeing and haven’t had the opportunity to visit.

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J: Yeah. Well your immediate sense is actually pretty accurate for the very technical definition of a forest farm that there’s, you know, you've got the academic specialized language so that United States Department of Agriculture has 5, I think it’s 5, classified practices of agroforestry and forest farming is one of them. And under their designation it just means growing crops under an existing canopy of forest. Like mushroom logs, or forest medicinals. And that’s fine, but the only reason for that technical definition is for very specific kinds of funding through the gov’t and… Farming throughout most of human history involved trees and so that’s kinda what we’re playing with is both… it's a way of farming in relationship and in imitation to the gifts of trees. 

Um, so we are planting a lot of trees because the canopy has been cut down in many ways, so we’re planting more trees. This is all in a, so far, has been in an urban neighborhood between Main St. of Harrisonburg and another street called Madison St. in a lot of backyards all stitched together into something that feels like a fairly contiguous villages of a lot of vegetable gardens interspersed with different shrubs and berry bushes and medicinal plants and fruit trees. And then along the stream is stuff that is mostly native to this area but that happens to grow food and medicine and fodder for animals and firewood and building material and craft material for weaving baskets and for building fences and that kind of stuff. But all these gifts that plants have. So it kinda looks like a young forest and like you like different uh… different heights of canopy, you know, different vertical layers and various sizes mixed with walking paths and little ponds and people walking through all the time doing different things and a lot of noises of an urban setting but filtered a little bit through the trees and bird song because of the stuff we have planted there. 

So it’s got a pretty unique feel for this area. There’s not many other places like it around here. There’s a lot of similar places throughout the US and of course throughout the rest of the world where this wouldn’t seem that weird to have something like that. But um...it’s got a feel like a village garden I think. 

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N: Yeah. I was definitely surprised when I first went to...yeah it definitely wasn’t what I expected based on the name, but it's a really cool but unexpected little area within almost downtown Harrisonburg.

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J: Yeah, and here in Keezletown where I live on our little 2-and-a-half acres along the stream Cub Run, it’d be a little similar. We’re kinda in a rural neighborhood. We have neighbors really close to us. The land that we are on doesn’t have a lot of existing trees so we’re planting a lot. And so it’s the same kind of thing of putting a - planting the forest canopy instead of being directly underneath it. And so we’ll just be tending those trees as they grow up - cutting some back, letting them resprout. And so there will always be a forest in relationship with us, which will be really exciting.

 

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N: so you kinda spoke to some of this earlier, but I'd like to hear some more from you. I found this quote on your website, it says: “We tend the silver waters of Blacks Run, the Shenandoah, and downstream by farming in the image of the forest and remediating the toxins that pollute our souls, society, and soil, from chemical leaching to white supremacy. In fact, we see all this as an expression of restorative justice.” So could you tell me more about why you see that as an expression of Restorative justice?

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--Sound Bite--

You've heard this term mentioned once before in this episode. Johonna Turner describes Restorative Justice as "a philosophy that emphasizes healing and accountability to repair harm and wrongdoing, build community, and strengthen relationships." Howard Zehr further explains that restorative justice focuses on needs of those impacted over what harm-doers deserve, or what they need to pay. It requires that the needs of those who were harmed are addressed, that those who harmed put right the harms, and that all those impacted are involved in coming up with how to address the harms. Often RJ gets simplified into a process that is an alternative to the criminal legal system. And it certainly can be that, but as you'll learn in Jonathan's response, it can be far more than a legalistic process. There's much more that can be said about restorative justice, but we will leave it at that for now. Okay, back to the interview!

--Sound Bite--

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J: I think restorative justice is kinda actually like the forest farm name. Like it gets reduced to a technique that can receive certain types of funding or be understood in a certain way, and there's value to some clarity of like distinguishing things from one another, but there's also, I think with restorative justice, a major loss when we don’t see it as a way of knowing and a way of being in relationship and as a movement for change. Cuz then we just try to - I think it just becomes more punishing, just because another expression of a criminal legal system that’s focused on exploiting people. And so if we see it as a way of being in relationship, those qualities look like respect and taking responsibility to be able to respond in relationship to other things so that everything can be itself, can be safe, can be held accountable, and can be free. 

And restorative justice has these guiding questions and as I’ve thought about them over the years, they seem very much like the deep cultural questions that we need to ask about our relationship with all life, not just with other human life. And then if we don’t make it about all kinds of life, I don’t think restorative justice can heal people in the way that it wants to. Cuz we don’t exist as an isolated human society, that we are always deeply dependent on soil and water and air and plants and other creatures, many that we can't even see. And so if restorative justice is gonna be restorative, it’s gonna have to talk about those questions in relationship to the economy and the decision making structures that we have that are based on how we use the available energy of the life of the earth. And so some of those questions for me are “what happened, what’s happening right now that’s got us in the situation that we’re in?” So a deep sense of knowing our location and our history is at the beginning of restorative justice. And then, “who’s been hurt? Who’s been hurt by this process? What are their needs? What are the needs of the people who have caused the harm?” So knowing what our needs are, which includes needing shelter and food and water and all that kind of stuff. And then how do we be held accountable to meeting those needs in ways that don’t cause more harm but actually lead to the possibility of more flourishing. And what's the process by which we do that so everybody that can be included - and by everybody I also mean the more than human creatures - can be involved in the process for meeting those needs in accountable ways. 

And so really quickly the like, “what’s happened, who’s been hurt, what are their needs, who’s supposed to meet those needs, and what process holds this all accountable,” which are essential to restorative justice, they very easily sound like land and culture questions to me. And it’s really just about the different scale that we ask them at. We have to ask them at the immediate scale of, like, a harm when somebody has hurt somebody else, but then we have to put that in the context, like why did they do that? What’s the history? Both of them personally, but their personal relationship has been formed by social histories that shaped people in different ways. And keep backing out to a deeper cultural economic questions, and then the one that seems really vital at the end is, like, “what structures and relationships do we desire so that we can keep this harm from happening as much as possible in the future?” And I think that’s the piece where a lot of restorative justice gets held up, that there’s not an integrated enough vision for recognizing that we’re ecological creatures as much as social creatures. And so we see what we’re trying to do with farming like the forest and remediating the toxins as one expression of trying to have a deeply integrated sense of restorative justice.

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N: Hm. So with the who’s been hurt question, which is very central to what I understand as restorative justice, from your perspective, can land be an answer to that question, who’s been hurt?

J: Yeah. absolutely. Land has been deeply hurt throughout history but in particular ways by hundreds of years of an industrial capitalist economic system and worldwide colonizing. And those, there are pieces of that that are very ancient, none of that was just some new invention a couple hundred years ago, there were new ways of expressing that and solidifying that. But, um, but yeah, land can be deeply hurt through the eroding of soil and through clear-cutting of trees to the pollution of waterways. 

But I also think land is hurt by the way that some humans hurt other humans that actually causes those things. I mean the United States saw significant rates of soil erosion during the time of slavery plantation agriculture which is the basis of our modern industial agriculture system. So the way that humans hurt other humans causes those pains to the land. I really have a sense of the land hurting as the people who tend to a place hurt also. When there's a loss of a language that’s spoken in a particular place that keeps the knowledge of how to care for it, when nobody’s speaking that language then the practices go away, I think the land hurts. So I think it’s all deeply woven together. 

 

N: Hm. Another phrase that i saw on your website that I think i’ve heard you use more than once is “We’re not in a hurry, we’re planting trees.” And I think that’s a really cool phrase and I'm wondering if you could say more about what you mean by that, and how it connects with your mission and vision for blacks run forest farm.

 

J: yeah that phrase came up really, in a very emergent, spontaneous way during a breakfast conversation with a friend and he was asking how things were going with the forest farm. And I was talking about like how much we love what we were doing and we weren’t like fully expressing everything we wanted to do. And um we still aren’t and that’s fine, but I was just noting like that’s okay, we’ll get there. We’re not in a hurry to get to the finished product, we’re not in a hurry we’re planting trees and we both kinda stopped and looked and were like woahhhh that’s a pretty good phrase! Let’s keep that. And so that to me is just like a, it’s a reminder that tree time is really different than modern capitalist human time. And that there’s a slower patience and a grounding that is possible and that doesn’t mean that we lose any agility or speed and response to emergencies, but i think there’s a lot of, i’ve experienced within myself a lot of confusion between emergencies and urgency. And urgency becomes this state of being that determines how we respond in a social set of relationships and institutions that are very much based on categories of people that benefit, like extract from some for the benefit of the fiew based on these categories like white or straight, or men and women or whatever, that those who have the most social or institutional power in a setting of urgency are the ones that get to keep that power, cuz it’s like let’s just use all the avenues that are already in place to get things done because climate change! Or because this disaster! Or whatever. And so all those people, like me, people who look like me, get to keep all the power that they have because they’re like we don’t have time to talk about reorganizing things we gotta move and get this done becuase it’s urgent. And, as if changing all those sturctures and relationships aren’t deply integral work for keeping all those problems from happenign. And so, we’re not in a hurry we’re planting trees is a way to recognize that we have time. Adrienne marie brown says there’s alwasy enough time to do the right work. We have time to do the right work. And trees, some trees grwo really fast, but trees can grow for a really long time and a lot of trees focus by establishing their roots first. We grow a lot of trees like pawpaws and persimmons and oaks, that sent a tap root, one long root down deeply to anchor themselves to bring up minerals and nutrition from low down in the soil horizons. And then, they shoot off above ground once that root is established. And so it’s like the timing and the scale of work when we focus on getting the conditions right and getting the roots down, then we can move really quickly and be really agile and really resilient becuase when winds blow and storms come we’re not gonna get knocked over. And I think that image feels deeply grounding to me and gives me a sense of where I focus my energy. 

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N: Hm. Does that phrase have any different meaning or um new meaning for you right now in the midst of coronavirus?

J: hm. I think the meaning is just kind of reinforced. That there are emergencies there are disasters that call for immediate relief. And i think, and along with that, the right work to do right now in response to the pandemic was always the right work to do before the pandemic. No new work came because of this. People have faced pandemics before, people have faced disasters before. And the reason why a place like the united States is responding so terribly to this is becuaase of all the things that were wrong with this nationstate in the first place. And many other similar scales of trying to make decisions across so many different places and people. So my sense is, we’re not in a hurry we’re planting trees, is you can plant a lot of trees quickly and they’re gonna take a while to grow. And that’s what we need to be imagining also, is what comes after this? That we’re not interested in just setting up projects and programs and initiatives that lose their momentum as soon as the heaviest part of the crisis is lifted. But longer term cultural rhythms of sustenance and sharing power sothat people are in better positions to provide for their needs instead of being so dependent either through food or jobs or harm and conflict that gets exported out of the community through the criminal legal system. How do we use this time to set up the longer term canopies of our social relationships to take care of ourselves?

 

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N: Um, so, kind of going more broadly now, how do you see blacks run forest farm’s work as connecting or integrating peacebuilding, justice, and care for the planet?

J: I think...certainly in all the ways we’ve been talking about feels like, you know that’s how we’re trying to integrate it. But part of the deeper stuff we wanna do growing into that is...not just like havign the plants available to provide food and medicine, but who owns the places where we’re planting them, so that food and medicine is available to more people. So starting to think more about land ownership and structures of more cooperative or collective ownership like land trusts

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--sound bite--

I emailed Jonathan later to get his definition of Land Trusts. Here's what he said: I see land trusts as certainly about 'ownership' of 'property,' given that it's impossible to break out of that model in our legal and economic system. However, land trusts can be a creative option to twist this reality by expanding ownership to a group with agreed-upon terms of use and taking land off the speculative market so it can't be sold again, which can help prevent rising land and housing prices. If the land can't be sold, it can be treated less like a commodity and more like the commons, held collectively for the long-term. Like everything, trusts can be misused, but they're one of the only ways to create long-lasting collective land ownership.

--Sound Bite--

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collective ownership like land trusts in partnership with housing coops to support affodable housing where these things that are these necessities of life, land, shelter turned into commodities that enrich the few at the expense of the many instead are taken off the market and not treated as commodities but as community assets that build wealth just through their presence not through some abstract financial system that can then be used for gentrifying. So we’re really interested in how is land preserved, the health of land preserved over time through a land trust, but how is the health of people and thier ability to make decisions and sustain themselves preserved over time in the same way. And also thinking about livelihoods like economies - in the greek economy just means to take care of the household and ecology is the study of the household. And so the earth is our house this particular land is our house, what are our caretaking processes. So what are economies that provide for the needs of people? Some of that in our present time is money, but there are a lot of other needs we have that the only reason we need money for so many pieces of our lives is that people don’t have access to direct sources of sustenance. So how can we provide more of that by redistributing land access, by changing a lot of those things, but what are ways trees can show us multifunctional economies os that people can meet their needs? And i think there are endless possibilities with that that that’s kinda what we think about for central appalachia and the shenandoah valley - how do we take care of this place by providing livelihoods for people? And we’re not gonna come up with that on our own, we wanna be in partnership with people. That’s part of what we see as a necessary thing. That often gets lumped into local sustainable community development or something and that jargon doesn’t feel as meaningful to me, but htat is the kind of think that we’re talking about. Yeah, changing structures and changing ways of meeting needs so that everybody is taken care of including the land.

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N: Is there an example or an instance or project that you could share about how living out values of justice and peacebuilding and land care, what living out those values has looked like for Blacks Run Forest farm?

J: Hm, yeah. One very small immediate one is just how Cornelius and i try to orient our work together the way we speak about our plants in very loving honoring ways and the way we try to start each work day with a prayer for love and kindness starting with ourselves, to someone close to us, to the plants we’re working with, and to the watershed to the place, encouraging that sense of multiple scales of practices of love and kindness. the way that we try to work through conflict with each other and with others is related to that. And we are in many ways in our nursery being grown by our plants as much as they’re growing us and so one of the things we have learned from our plants is that the generosity implicit in photosynthesis - this process of trees eating sunlight and turning it into sugar and carbon for themselves, but then they give away a quarter to half of all the energy they make through that process out of their roots to feed the networks of fungi and so many other small microbial creatures that then give gifts to them in return. And there’s a way in which that feels like a kind of reparation a kind of repair. And anohter way that we’re trying to practice what we’re doing is recognizing as two white men who have inherited a lot of what we call “wounding advantages of white supremacy” that they’re purported, they’re supposedly benefits and they are in the system that we have, but overall they’re still harmful for everybody, they’re oppressive for everybody including those of us who are marked as white. And so how do we move that wealth, redistribute the wealth, whether that’s plants or money from those plants or access to the land in ways that imitate the photosynthetic generosity of trees. And so we are committed to giving away 10% of what we make every year to groups/organizations/movements that are led by those who have been most harmfully targeted most violently targeted by white supremacy by colonoization. And that kind of act of photosynthetic reparation, that feels like woven into our practice is we grow a lot of plants, we sell them, the plants are gonna keep growing themselves and we can sell more and we’re just constantly growing more plants to give away and sell, which means every time people give us money 10% of that is gonna get moved to a group at the end of each year made in decision with other people, not just the 2 white guys but made with some other friends who help us discern where that goes where the need is most felt or could go the furthest. And one possibility is if we start to establish more land trust options, more collective, and i’m thinking about like revolving loan funds for people to get those sorts of things established that maybe are 10% every year would go into that as a kind of seed money to help fund other regenerative and healing projects in our area - keep the money locally, and keep it circulating so people can get things established over time they pay it back we have the new money plus the new 10% that comes in to move somewhere else, which is also sort of imitating the underground networks of sharing that are in the forests.

 

N: hm. Yeah i really love that, it’s not even a metaphor because it’s lived out, the example of photosynthesis as a way of kindof organizing life, and especially in terms of money. And another question just came to mind. I’m curious what it would look like to you if humans lived more like trees. What we be doign differently?

 

J: We’d stay in place a lot longer. Um. There’s always movement of people throughout history but it’s certainly exponentially grown which is part of how viruses like coronavirus are spreading so quickly now. and i think we would learn a little bit to stay a little bit more rooted in place and build memory and build fertility like soil does. And i mean when soil moves it’s called erosion and it’s not a good thing when it happens at massive rates and i think that’s the same thing that’s happening with people. I think we would also, aside from that, one thing i may have said this to you before, but i think of like trees as practicing multifunctionality instead of multitasking which is osmething that a lot of modern humans are taught to do with very divergent schedules and way to many tasks that are unrelated to each other and so we try to do a bunch of unrelated things at one time and then get really stressed out. And uh trees do a whole lot of - plants do a whole lot of things at one time, like producing air for us to breathe and taking in the air that we breathe out the carbon dioxide and turning that into fertility and they provide the food and medicine all the things that we’ve talked about, but they’re not mulittasking. They’re doing t hat just by being rooted as themselves ,by being this particular tree that has all these gifts because it’s being itself. And um...i think that would be really different if we, some of us, i think others are still practicing this, but some of us whould relearn to be ourselves and let gifts be expressed through being multifunctional instead of being multitasking.

 

N: hm. There’s a lot that we can learn from trees.

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J: Indeed

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N: So is there, are there particular areas of growth that you hope to see from blacks run forest farm, or i guess if we’re looking forward now, whatever it ends up being called here…

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J: Yeah… …. New name. Yeah one thing is related to the land trust, like that’s a big emphasis for us and these possible collectives. So uh my spouse Christen and I live on this place in Keezletown that we own we bought the house and 2.5 acres but we wanna put this in a land trust connected to other places in our rural area. The places that we’ve been tending in town in partnership with vine and fig, we’re also wanting to see that move into land trusts as well, wehre those that are tending the land, includign friends of ours who are originally from mexico and guatemala can ahve a deeper sense of ownership in taking care of those places instead of some of these white led nonprofits that are in town. And, so that feels like a significant area of growth for us. And then also nurturing a lot of connections that we have, both locally and nationally, wiht other kindred spirits who are doing things with black farmers with indigenous land sovereignty movements and be in closer relationship and accountable relationship with them. And I think that really is also another reference to adrienne marie brown when she says “moving at the speed of trust,” which i think is a pretty similar speed as trees. Like you gotta let the roots grow and then you can move faster later. So i think it’s a patience of deeper trust growing so we can move forward with a lot of the things we’re really excited about doing. But i think growing edges for us are turning a lot of the insights and practices we have for caring for trees into a deeper structural change of who has access to land to grow the trees. And i think all that is coming so its just having patience for that. I also would like to be doing more folk school education stuff with what we’re doing now not sure what that will look like with a lot of things needing to be online for a while. But, like what you and some other friends and i did in the Fall with this independent study focused on land and white supremacy and colonization i’d like to be doing more stuff like that - Through the forest farm or through some other kind of hub. And i think there’s a deep need for learning that’s responsive to the people involved in it and not just some curriculum that’s handed down so that we can learn what we wanna know to be who we wanna be and that that’s something i feel really excited and passionate about and would like to see us doing more of.

 

N: Well I don’t have any other written questions. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

 

J: I don’t think so. I feel pretty content with what i said for the moment.

 

N: Cool, well thank you so much again for being willing to take about an hour here this morning and chat wiht me for a bit, i really appreciate it!

 

J: Yeah, you're welcome, thanks for inviting me to do it!

 

N: Yeah! Of course.

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Every time I talk to Jonathan it makes me want to become way more educated on trees. When I’ve spent time with him and Cornelius, the co-founder and co-caretaker of Blacks Run, it’s so fun to see how excited they get about different trees we pass. I read a book for an undergrad philosophy class about needing to “re-enchant” things around us. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly suggest in their book All things Shining that perhaps we humans have forgotten how to experience the world with wonder and enchantment in this modern era. They ask, “What if we haven’t lost the sacred, shining gods, but have simply lost touch with the meanings they offer?” Seeing how Jonathan and Cornelius interact with trees is a great example for me of how they have learned to re-enchant something that many of us have forgotten how to view with wonder and enchantment.

 

Alright, moving in now to some  reflections on the forest farm. The approaches that Jonathan and Blacks Run Forest Farm take seem to have a deep understanding of political economy. This was especially clear to me as Jonathan talked about how he views restorative justice and the interconnections of things like economies, decision-making structures, and life of the earth. Joel Beinin explains that political economy is quote-unquote “necessarily interdisciplinary.” In other words, various disciplines are inseparable. He also says that political economy is interested in power relations, institutions, and social conflict, while also understanding the global influence of capitalism on these things. Jonathan explained to us how he views everything as being interconnected. I think it makes a lot of sense, then, that Restorative justice as a way of knowing and being must include land and planet in its practice in order to more fully meet the goals of healing and repairing.

 

I also really love the idea of “photosynthetic reparation.” Redistributing wealth to those who have been most harmed by colonization and white supremacy is one of many ways that Jonathan and Cornelius have woven justice efforts into the fabric of their farm. I’ve heard of reparations before, but I’ve never heard of it being modeled after how trees freely and generously give away energy for their earthy friends.

 

I really like the idea that we can gain insight into being better humans by learning from trees. They provide us with a model for living in more healthy ways, and for living more fully into peace and justice. In fact, Akiva Silver even views trees as our allies in this work. He says in his book Trees of Power, “Civilization is our creation. We can make it anything. Right now we use a tremendous amount of our resources to kill people and numb our minds. I can imagine at least some of this energy being used for working with trees. Humans are so ambitious and creative. With a shift of awareness, the future has a way to crack and shell shagbark hickories efficiently; persimmons stand guard over doorways;...schoolyards are home to orchards, gardens, and berry patches big enough to feed all the kids that attend.” This is a beautiful image. Partnering with trees seems like a wonderful way to come a little closer to a more just and peaceful climate.

 

To close the episode today, I am going to read the prayer that Jonathan mentioned during his interview. I’ve had the opportunity to say this prayer in community with others a few times under a Pinn Oak tree at Blacks Run Forest Farm. So I’ll leave you with this:

 

We begin our prayer for love and kindness by first offering that gift to ourselves,

since we can't save what we don't love

and the large is always a reflection of the small,

so we start first by speaking to ourselves:

May I love, may I be loved, may I be free from violence and waste

 

We turn that intention to someone close to us

who could be close in a harsh and hurtful way

or perhaps in a caring and tender way

but either way we offer that gift as if this person is sitting here with us:

May you love, may you be loved, may you be free from violence and waste

 

We turn that intention again to the other creatures we're partnering with

to all the plants that provide food and medicine to us and the land

who are all alive and growing toward the light just like we do

so we recognize that kinship with them and honor them

by also addressing them as a you:

May you love, may you be loved, may you be free from violence and waste

 

And finally we expand that intention to our stream

and to the watershed that draws all life back together

through the global circle and cycle of water

and we know this place has been scarred

by lots of trauma, harm, and oppression

but we still see signs and movements

of resilience, healing, and liberation

and we want to join those movements

so we include ourselves in this place

by speaking as a we:

May we love, may we be loved, may we be free from violence and waste

 

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Thank you for joining for the third episode of Just a Peaceful Climate. My name is Nicole and I’m the host and editor of this podcast. All the music you hear in the episode is composed by Luke Mullet. Shout out to Erin Campbell for providing some helpful suggestions for this episode. Huge thanks to Jonathan for joining for the interview this week! And of course, a big thanks to the trees for their generosity. Stick around next week to hear from three representatives of the organization, AYUDH.

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