A Faith That Lasts: From Pattern to Detail

So far, this series about lessons from permaculture in building a life – and spirituality – that is resiliant and sustainable has been all about observation. And today’s post continues on that theme. It’s about observing patterns, and keeping them in mind as we make changes to the system that is our life of faith or community of faith.

Patterns are everyone in nature and society: the spirals on so many shells and flowers, the radial patterns of spiderwebs, the patterns of the seasons, and our circadian rhythms, and on and on and on. In nature, patterns emerge because they are generally the best solution to a problem. For example, branching patterns appear in neural networks, root systems, and watersheds because it’s the most efficient way of distributing nutrients, energy, water, and so on through a large area. And spirals are so common because they represent the most natural pattern of for the unfolding of growth. Patterns apply to permaculture design in two main ways: First, understanding patterns in design can help us not have to reinvent the wheel. If nature already has developed a solution that has proven to work in a variety of contexts, we would be smart to harness that solution for ourselves. And second, understanding patterns helps us to work with nature, not against it.

In permaculture design, looking for patterns means zooming out to the big picture, to quite literally get the lay of the land, understand wind and weather patterns, how water flows and how sun and shade play as the day progresses. We have to understand the patterns of what we’re dealing with before we can plan the details. A great example of this (which I took from Tim Sonder*) is to think of the outline of an essay. Understanding the pattern of what an essay looks like — introduction, thesis statement, arguments, and conclusion — is essential to writing an essay that works. In the same way, by understanding the patterns of both the environment in which we’re designing and the thing itself, we can design something that works in a sustainable way. Another example of observing patterns to assist design is the (surprisingly rare) practice of observing the natural flow of people across an area before building paths; if the paths don’t fit how people naturally ‘want’ to go, people will simply ignore them, leading to the common problem of an unused path sitting just a few feet away from a dead patch of grass caused by too much foot traffic!

We can — and would do well to — take the same approach to our spiritual lives. We can ask ourselves about our season of life, about our daily rhythms, and repeating behaviours and situations, and begin to plan with these in mind, trying to harness these patterns to produce the most productive and sustainable system we can in our circumstances. One example from my own life of this happened in the aftermath of an unwelcome change in my sleep patterns that saw me waking up between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning every day. After a year of fighting this, which left me overtired, grumpy, and often running behind schedule, I decided to give into this pattern and get up when I woke up and use that extra ninety minutes or so for writing and sacred practices. It was honestly the best decision I’ve ever made. That time early in the morning without distraction has become my favourite, most meaningful, and most productive time of the day. Observing repeating patterns of behaviour in our life is also helpful. If we see we get tripped up by a certain thing over and over again, or if we find a specific way of initiating new habits has worked well for us multiple times, then we can work with this knowledge constructively. The same process works in communities too. For example, historically most churches have operated with an overlapping set of seasons (liturgical, agricultural, cultural), which have a huge impact on the energy, life, and finances of the community. Understanding how these work can improve planning and help us, say, avoid starting new programs in May, when these seasons align to create an ebb in engagement.

This has been a short post, but I think an important one. As we observe our life of faith, patterns are like blinking lights alerting us to look more closely. Whether these are patterns of context, problems, or solutions, they provide us with critical knowledge to help us move forward, both more productively and more sustainably.

* Please see the Bibliography for this series for more details