A Seed for Reimagining the World
This piece was written by contributing writer, Hanna Lilly. Read about Hanna here.
I know a five-year-old named Foxy, wise beyond imagination, who reminded me recently of a very important truth. We were on one of our walks, meandering through the neighborhood, pretending (which perhaps is just a silly grown-up word for not believing big enough) that we were dragons flying to Alaska, or Evil Zip-Zaps, supervillains seeking the demise of the world.
We rounded a corner, and with the awe held dearly by our littlest ones, Foxy pointed out a vibrant bloom; I believe it was a poppy. “Can I pick it?”, she asked me. There was a moment where my grown up brain (a brain conditioned in not believing big enough) was inclined to reply yes or no, purely on my whim. But instead, I realized it was not my question to answer.
“I don’t know”, I replied, “ask the flower”.
And so she did.
And the flower said yes.
We walked away, the three of us hand in hand, and the moment overwhelmed me near to tears. It made sense in the brilliant, big-enough-to-believe mind of a five-year-old to ask the Earth’s permission before taking. And of course the Earth said yes. If you met Foxy, you would have too.
There is a feeling of wonderment for the world that our littlest ones hold dear. It’s been a while since I was five, but Foxy’s solemn respect for the wishes of the Earth pulled me back to my days spent making Frolly Soup (a concoction of whatever petals and leaves and soil my small hands could harvest), days spent crafting homes in the crook of tree-roots for the small and mystical creatures of this planet. On that day on that walk, I was reminded of how it felt to engage with the Earth as playmate, as co-creator—understanding the soil beneath my feet to be alive beyond any measure of science. I was reminded to be in awe of all things, to allow my mind to be big enough to believe, again.
I am no longer five, but I have persisted in my awe and curiosity for the world. These days, I have taken to noticing the repeated and intentional designs of our Earth, those offering us blueprints for how we can build community, support our neighborhoods, raise our families, mutually flourish. I look to the expansive mycelial webs exchanging nutrients with ancient trees, to the gift of pollen reciprocated with the gift of flight. At the root of it all (in both a biological and metaphysical sense) I have arrived again and again to a fundamental pattern, perhaps the most ancient of all patterns on Earth. It is the pattern of life begetting life, of lineage and evolution, of hope for future seasons to come.
This is the pattern of The Seed.
There’s a lot to explore here, and I don’t claim to have it all sorted out (not even close!), but nevertheless I invite you along. What follows in this writing is an exploration into this Earth pattern through two historical instances of doing that—in my mind—clearly reflect foundational elements of The Seed: sharing knowledge and proliferating abundantly. In my findings, I noticed too that when we humans interact with patterns the Earth has provided for our following, a legacy is left behind that continues to inspire new growth long into the future. I have begun referring to this practice as Earth-Alignment, knowing that there are countless other ways to communicate this pattern, all being equally correct and important. I hold huge gratitude to all who have lived in this alignment before me, and all who will come after.
To be a flower is to one day become a seed again. Thank you, Foxy, for the reminder.
The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children Program (1969-1980)
A Seed.
“First you have free breakfasts, then you have free medical care, then you have free bus rides, and soon you have FREEDOM.”
- Fred Hampton
The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children Program
On a January morning, 1969, 11 school children gathered around a table in a North Oakland Episcopal Church for a free breakfast. By week's end, 11 grew to 135. Within a year, upwards of 20,000 children across the United States were being fed a home cooked meal each morning before school under the organization of the Black Panther Party.
The Panther Free Breakfast Program pioneered community food resilience on an abundant and replicable scale for over a decade. Replicability and proliferation were indeed tenants of the program blueprint. Many individuals and organizations took inspiration from the Panthers’ programming and ushered in a multitude of free breakfast programs of their own across the nation, adapting what started in Oakland to thrive in Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Atlanta, and beyond. At its peak, thirty-six cities hosted chapters dedicated to feeding the children, organized and run by Panther members and community supporters.
While the program took fertile seed and proliferated, the core pattern of the initiative remained self-similar across scale. David Hillard, who, along with Elaine Brown, oversaw the development and expansion of the Free Breakfast Program, co-authored a manuscript of the Party’s Service to the People Programs in which he details guidelines for their free breakfast. Hosting facilities were expected to meet minimum requirement, such as possessing “Kitchen equipment including a stove with at least four burners and an oven, and an adequate amount of large restaurant-size pots, pans, and serving utensils”, as well as “ample space to hang or place the children's cloaks, coat hangers, and so forth”. Support staff—oftentimes comprised of parent volunteers and community members—were to be assigned one of the following roles:
• 2 persons on traffic control helping the children across the streets
• 1 person doing the sign-in book operation (i.e., receptionist)
• 1 person taking wraps (coats, hats)
• 4 servers and table attendants
• 2 cooks
David Hillard saved for posterity a sample of their menu, like a seed waiting. These menus were distributed across the country to all organizing chapters. Supplies for the program (both monetary and in-kind) were donated by local Black businesses in exchange for advertising and celebration in the Panther’s newsletter.
Sample Breakfast Menu
Place plus people plus heart woven through with determination, and for 11 years—in the face of great and hostile adversity—the children were fed with fierce love and gritty pride.
The words, “take it and grow” come to mind when I think of the legacy of the Black Panther Free Breakfast program. Building from the power of eggs, grits, and perhaps hot chocolate on Thursdays, this remarkable effort grew prolifically, feeding thousands of children, engaging body and heart in the efforts of liberation. And the pattern for organizing was shared freely and prolifically, a dandelion taking flight in the wind. It’s no surprise that the word 'dissemination' itself comes from the root meaning of the ‘scattering of seeds’.
Despite being caught in human-made cycles of poverty and deprivation, the Black Panthers adapted, reacting not against something bad, but creating something good. They generated abundance, and from this abundance, liberated. And although the Black Panther Party was forced near into extinction by state sanctioned sabotage and violence, this legacy remains deeply rooted, a blueprint that will continue to inspire innumerable generations to come.
What the Panthers accomplished is vast, impressive: a forest of trees. I look into the world today and see countless efforts of food justice and community organizing taking root, continuing to give life to this legacy. It may feel like a big task to do as the Panthers did, but if the root of it all is a seed, and a seed is something you can hold in your hand, then we already have the tools.
Grace Lee Boggs, a life-long change-maker and brilliant soul once said: “transform yourself to transform the world”. Start small (like a seed), grow abundantly (like a sprout), share your brilliance (like a flower), and pass on your legacy (like a seed again). As a wise elder once shared, we are the ancestors of the future.
So perhaps we begin today by imagining a world in which we all are invited to breakfast, wherein we are all fed and healthy and home. Perhaps this is a seed and we all are the soil. Each day I imagine the garden.
Foxfire: A Collection of Appalachian Heritage Stories and Communion with the Earth (1966-present)
A Seed.
“Look what fools we are, I say to myself. It’s not the giants that make things; it’s the little trees. Foolish people all dream about being great instead of producing. We think about being grown when the important thing is growing.”
- Howard T. Senzel
Pages from Foxfire
Around the same time that the Black Panthers were organizing efforts for community liberation on the West Coast, deep in the forests of the Appalachian Mountains something old was growing, beginning anew.
In 1966, an English teacher at a small rural high school in Northeastern Georgia struggled to engage his students with lectures and text, so instead, proposed that the class publish a magazine. The students were curious, and the idea took root. They named the quarterly magazine “Foxfire” after a phosphorescent lichen found in the Appalachian forests, and—recognizing the cultural wisdom of Appalachian elders—set out on a journey of collecting and documenting the stories of a generation who grew up in deep communion with the Earth. Living simply so as to simply live.
Over the course of nearly a decade, hundreds of hours of oral history were gathered and preserved by Eliot Wigginton and his students, translated into word and published, first through the newspaper and later into a series of books. You can still find them today, they’re worth a read.
Among twelve volumes, hundreds of interviews, rich illustrations and photographs, here are some of my favorite gatherings:
“Summer and Fall Wild Plant Food”
Includes recipes for sour wild plum pickles, rose hip soup, and cattail flapjacks (to name a few).
“Planting by the Signs”
Shares anecdotes and practices for growing, harvesting, and preserving by the patterns of the zodiac and the cycles of the moon. For example, planting is best done in the fruitful signs of Scorpio, Pisces, Taurus, or Cancer. Plowing, tilling, and cultivating should be done in Aries. Timber should be cut in the old of the moon. It will dry better and not become worm-eaten.
“Home Remedies”
Chronicles folk wisdom for natural healing. Doctors were few and far between in rural Appalachia, so instead residents took to home remedies, including snakeroot tea for fevers and pine resin for chapped hands.
“Anna Howard”
Ninety-three at the time of the interview in 1973, Anna Howard was born in Franklin, North Carolina and remained not ten miles from her birthplace her whole life. She shared with the Foxfire students stories from her lifetime, reflections of a deeply place-based existence. In closing, Anna passed on this wisdom: “Kindness and love is th’main thing. Now that’s my advice. It’s good to know you’ve got a friend. It’s love. I see people that their looks and their ways just a’gives t’you, and you love’em. And th’next time you see’em, you love’em better”.
The students in Eliot Wigginton’s English class created a space for things to be alive again. They listened with intention to the old ways, to the memories and stories of the Anna Howards of the world. They communicated a way of survival grounded deeply in the cycles of the Earth. But beyond survival, Life too shared the same source. In the introduction of the second Foxfire, Eliot Wigginton in his own words shared the following: “See, mostly this book is about school and about community, and about people, and about the great adventure life can be when lived intensely”.
Foxfire is a simple story, a story of people and place and thing. It is a simple story, but it is a living story, inviting you into its creation. This is how I imagine lineage: a pattern of continuing on, of passing something down through generation to be shaped and made alive in the here and now. Like a seed that will grow and change only to be made seed again, what we plant in our lifetimes has an impact far into the future.
While it is not lost on me that we are navigating a precarious moment in history wherein the future of our planetary wellbeing is in question, the Earth nevertheless persists, inviting us along. When I look to the sunflowers, to the seeds and the soil, to the wisdom of the Foxfire elders shared generously with the young, I hear not: “do better or else”. There is a lesson far gentler, far more hopeful: “do because you are invited to, do because you’re doing can be a gift, too”.
The Black Panthers figured out patterns to feed thousands of little ones, five days a week, for over a decade, proliferating amidst systems of violent design working vehemently against the very flourishing of Black lives. The Foxfire students figured out patterns for preserving wisdom—hill wisdom—for gathering stories of Earth-aligned ways of living that have grown increasingly scarce and much needed in the eras of globalized industrial capitalism. Both grew organically, making like wild seed, filling the meadow with flowers. We nurture the gifts they left us.
Perhaps you are like me and wake up each day overwhelmed and excited by all the work we are to do in this lifetime. Sometimes it can be hard to know how to begin. I find comfort in knowing there is nothing new to accomplish, only the remembering that we have all the tools already.
You may be surprised at what can grow out of the cracks of concrete, from the fallible design of systems that do not honor the Earth. It begins with a seed, which may one day be a flower, and my prayer for us all is to follow Foxy’s lead and ask before we take, to reciprocate the gifts of the Earth with our deepest respect.
In the collective words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Molly Costello, the Ohlone People, Soulfire Farm, countless others: the Earth loves us back. What a beautiful origin story. Forever we imagine, forever we grow. Wage Love, plant the seeds for a just and resilient world, be you, so we can be brilliant, together.
Foxy’s Poppies