St. Jacob’s Farmer’s Market, Samurai Swords and Grandma’s Cooking: What do they have in common? Realizing what we’ve lost after they’re gone.

Image: Waterloo fire crews were called out overnight to battle a major blaze at St Jacobs Market just outside the city, Monday, Sept. 2, 2013. (Brent J.W. Mackie)

Source: kitchener.ctvnews.ca: An overnight fire destroys St. Jacobs Farmers Market building

“Grandma’s cooking is the worst”

~ Said No One, EVER.

Source: wittyprofiles.com: Witty Profiles Grandma Quote #6594439 by neonraver7

This weekend saw the end of an icon in Southwestern Ontario. The St. Jacob’s Farmer’s Market met its fiery fate under as-yet-unknown circumstances, and an ocean of emotional outpouring.

There are already hash tags, even several facebook groups, including Hope for St. Jacobs Farmers Market.

Considering the Christian Origins of St. Jacob's name, and the faith of so many who relied on the Market for their livelihood, allow us to offer the following sentiment: INRI, Igne Natura Renovatur Integra (Latin: Fire Renews Nature Incessantly).

Everything happens for a reason. The above Facebook page and it's 12,00+ supporters is proof enough that St. Jacob's beacon of wholesome, local, healthy, love-infused food arts and crafts will renew, as God and Nature intended. The reason? We come together awakening to what we had…in the losing of it.

What this incident highlights for PeapodLife is how much we take for granted the precious, priceless things and people in our lives.

So what make people and things priceless? Precious? In a word, love. If you want to be all new-age about it, call it ‘positive energy.’ If you need a secular explanation, call it ‘positive formations in subspace quantum vibrations.’

Image: Grandma's Cooking
Source: bethaneywallace.com: Earl & Other Greys: No, You Have a Lot of Grandmas

No matter what you call it, no one can deny it. Grandma’s cooking was best. Think about it. Did grandma really use the best ingredients? A ‘secret recipe’ that only she knew? Was there really a material scientific basis for the superiority of her cooking?

Let’s face it: Grandma had nothing on the industrial packaged food or restaurant industries, with their teams of food scientists, neurophysiologists, chemists and product developers engineering every conceivable aspect of the food experience: from sweet & saltiness to crunch factor to ‘mouth feel.’

There is something no factory, no restaurant (no, not even a 5-star chef) can replicate: the love which grandma infused her cooking with…love which was tailor-made for us.

Legend held that every katana (Samurai sword) made by a true master sword maker had its own soul. We know from history that the carbon steel blade was forged by a methodical process of intense heat and pressure for many months by a master sword-smith who apprenticed for many years.

If you recognize the intensity of attention; that is, you have ever ‘felt someone’s penetrating gaze,’ you know that energy flows where attention goes. Children crave attention. So do many animals. And they’ll often take what they can get (misbehaving, since being scolded out of tough love is better than being ignored and receiving no love at all). But there’s the point: attention=adoration. Attention is love.

The master samurai sword maker’s attention and craft work, over months, imbues the sword with that energy. Hold one in your hand, really feel it, and it’s easy to understand why legend held that the sword had a soul. We equate the soul with the source of love. Is it coincidence that the eyes—attention—are the window into the soul?

Image: Korehira Watanabe, one of the remainiang 30 people making living as a swordsmith. 
Source: nordicdenimhouse.com: Nordic Denim House Blog: The Sword Maker by Taavi Kuisma

Grandma’s attention to every detail. Her intention and conviction to prepare something for the family she loves so much…all that went into what she prepared. It’s just in there: the cookies, the cake, the meatloaf, the…whatever!

So it is with PeapodLife. Each and every indoor ecosystem we create is a labour of love. It has to be. We are not sticking plants in vertical racks to make interesting patterns on a giant living pixel board (a ‘slowly dying wall’). We are not drowning them in chemicals or fouling their soil with manure.

No, we are creating a space of love: a platform which allows Mother Nature to not only enter our living spaces—and our lives—in a way never before possible, but to express herself in the highest way possible: pure life energy to bring balance and harmony to otherwise lifeless indoor spaces. 

PeapodLife is our labour of love. Stand in the company of one of our ecosystems—a superorganism—see if you can’t feel the mutual harmony and symbiosis at work; then decide for yourself if it, like the samurai sword, like Grandma’s cooking, is imbued with the stuff of legend.

And so it was with St. Jacob’s Farmer’s Market. It was a space of love. Built by loving hands, filled with loving people, passionate about sharing their love for nature, farming, artisan baking, unique preserves, artful handicrafts, et al. Every morsel of food was imbued with this love energy.

It was also a family. Like so many of our real families, perhaps we took it for granted. Hopefully with its loss, we've all learned not to ever take it for granted again.

As an aside, we at PeapodLife cannot help but wonder if we can apply the same lesson to Mother Nature…before another unfortunate fire comes to remind us.