A Farewell to Trees

Noon service today was a farewell ceremony for the trees at Hayes Valley Farm.  Soon they will be gone, replaced by "market" (and some affordable) housing.  Lucky trees.  Their afterlife is already known and guaranteed -- mulch, distributed free to other urban gardens.

A group of farmers and Buddhists stood for the last time on the former freeway offramp that became our neighborhood farm.  The farmers thanked Zen Center for 1.2 tons of our kitchen compost donated over the short few years of the farm's existence.  The Buddhists thanked the farmers for planting a farm right smack in the middle of Wall Street West.  We read together The Earth is a Being who Deserves to be Loved (Daisy Aldan), then chanted for the well-being of the trees, invoking their presence and compassion as nourishment for our own.

In his dedication, Abbot Myōgen Steve Stücky noted:

Out of an empty field of broken freeways

through infinite compassion all phenomena appear.

Someone spied a hummingbird above the farm rubble, and I prayed that maybe one owner in the new housing would put up a feeder to continue the nourishment of all beings.