Big Summer Potluck 3 Part One: Water Bugging

This morning I did something rather unusual.  I started my day by not water bugging.

No matter what day of the week, my mornings unfold in more or less the same way.  Make tea, coffee for Richard if he’s not travelling.  Feed Trixie, and whatever neighbourhood cats show up at the front door.  Turn on the radio.  And finally, impatiently, eagerly, sit down at my computer and re-establish my place in the digital world.  What Facebook updates have I missed?  Did anyone repin something from my Pinterest boards? What photos were posted on Instagram? Twitter…ah Twitter, how I love and hate you.  With my two accounts, there are endless conversations to be part of, articles to read and retweet, messages to launch, like so many tiny missiles, into the vast endless Twittersphere universe.  

And then there are work emails.  While I’ve been sleeping, Asia and Europe have been busy as bees, filling my inbox with questions, FYIs, requests and projects.  I’m fully engaged with all neurons firing, even though it’s only 6:30 am.

But here’s the thing. With all that activity, I haven’t had a single live human moment. I’ve been so busy trying just to keep up that I haven’t really tuned in.

So as I’ve been thinking about BSP3 and imagining what I might share about that transformative experience, I keep going back to water bugging.   

Have you heard of water bugging?  It’s the speedy skim, the surface conversation, the lightening quick flitting from one thing to another, all, of seeming very important and making you feel terribly busy.  But water bugging never gets beneath the surface, down into the depths of things: to that scary place underneath the rock in the deepest part of the lake; to the magical beauty that inexplicably survives 30 feet below the water. 

The Big Summer Potluck is all about what lies beneath.  It’s the antithesis of water bugging, made evident in every minute with abundance of real human moments abounding all around us.  It’s about bringing together the natural community that forms around food and amplifying it, shining a megawatt light on all that really should matter.

Unexpected beauty

As so as they have magically done for three years now, Maggy, Erika and Pam bring together people that force us to get our hair wet, to dive deeper into the lake that is our hearts and really connect with not just each other, but ourselves.  I’ll share more about the collective awesomeness of Brooke Burton-Lüttmann, Joy Wilson, Marisa McClellan and Molly O’Neill in a future post, and how, in their very distinctive ways, each of them pulled us into the lake with joyous splashes.

But right now it’s 9:30 am.  I’m in my garden, the cacophony of honey bees burrowing in the anemones impossibly loud and delicious.  The digital world is a click away, but I’m swatting that particular water bug down for the moment.  I have a husband to call who’s far away, and human moments to create.

With heartfelt thanks to Maggy for her water bugging intro to BSP3 and the amazing sponsors who made BSP3 possible, memorable and tasty!

Musselman's Apple Butter

KitchenAid

Kerrygold

Anolon

Green Mountain Coffee

Attune Foods

Tasty Kitchen

Driscoll's