In The Great Healing – Five Compassions That Can Save Our World, activist, author, screenwriter, and feature filmmaker Stephen Erickson identifies our Arch-Villain, the main cause of the global warming climate crisis which now threatens to bring about the end of our Anthropocene Epoch — of us and virtually every multicellular life form. He also reveals our singular solution.
Along the way there are exquisite creatures, human and non-human. The challenges they face reveal the immensity of the threat facing each one of us — and its urgency.
Meet Marlon Foster.
Marlon Foster
Marlon Foster lies on his back in the grass, staring up at the clouds. He is unable to rise. This hurts as much as any loss he has ever suffered. More. This…
“There was a moment for me, I was eighteen, nineteen, just a kid really. My best friend had just been shot to death.”
Marlon regards the passing clouds. “We’d do everything together. Pierre and I sang together in the church choir. On the football team he was the quarterback, I was the wide receiver. In track running the 4 by 400, I’d run the first leg and he was always the one I’d hand the baton to. I was this entrepreneurial kid. I was the kid with the lemonade stand. I had an uncle who worked at a make-up distributor so in junior high they called me the ‘Avon lady’ because I was selling make-up to the girls. But he was the really smart, really savvy one.
“I see so many kids now who are quick on their feet, smart, sharp witted and it’s all about taking those natural gifts and directing them in the right way. My best friend was that to the nth degree. No telling how successful in business he could have been.
“The middle school we went to, Bellevue, had a mix of kids, middle class and poor. Kids would check one another. One of my first days I sat down at a table and the kids started checking each other over who stayed in a one story versus a two-story house. So, I got up and kinda slipped away before they asked me. So, we figured a way. We had this Izod shirt. Every day we would take the emblem off that shirt and sew it on another shirt for another one of us to wear. It was Pierre’s idea to also sew the Izod collar tag in the back. People would call you on your Izod shirt — you know kids’ll grab your collar and see if you got this fake thing going on by looking in the back. Just taking that much time and attention, trying to be ingenious just to fit in with these preppy kids.
“For our prom, kids have these limousines going on. Pierre’s mom worked at a funeral home, so we got their limousine to use that night. I remember, my best friend and I doing senior prom with our dates in the limo from the funeral home…
“Laying in the grass, on my back, looking up at the clouds. My best friend was gone… I was having thoughts like ‘I don’t even want to be here any longer myself,’ I was so distraught. And I turned my head to the side and there was a little blade of grass, right by my eye, just blowing in the wind. And there was something in that moment, this little thin blade of grass… It has life in it. I just began to value life on a whole different level.”
And Marlon rose. He stood up with a resolve, “I want my life to honor his.”
Today Marlon Foster walks amidst six and seven-foot tall sunflowers, their glowing yellow crowns of petals vivid in morning sun. Flourishing out of raised long beds, green onions, Swiss chard, Traviata eggplant, bell peppers, habaneros, jalapeños, and red tie chilis surround us. Deeply evocative scents — of the plants, of their blossoms and of the fertile soil — rise together on the humid air in this beautiful place. Summer is just arriving, which means that also in-season are three kinds of tomatoes - sun golds, black cherries, and heirloom Cherokee purples.
Marlon is now 46, a handsome man, well groomed, dressed sharply today in pressed long sleeve shirt and tie. He regards the raised beds and smiles proudly. These vegetables growing from the dark rich soil, are even more robust than last year’s and he anticipates record yields. Ahead of us, several greenhouses are staggered, set amidst more long rectangular raised plant beds on this acre of the farm. We walk down the next row, shifting alongside garlic, cucumbers, Clemson spineless okra, emerald tomatillos, beets and carrots. I do see one hundred shades of green. Herbs make their appearance - sage, thyme, basil, dill, cilantro.
This is Green Leaf Learning Farm, an urban farm in South Memphis, Tennessee.
We are standing amidst some of the most nutritious food on this planet. Nothing on this farm will worsen diabetes, not one plant growing here will harm your heart or your circulation or put you at greater risk of cancer, neuropathy or dementia. Just the opposite. All of the food growing within the waist-high green border fences of Green Leaf Learning Farm will nurture and sustain everyone who eats it, improving their health, vitality, and mental clarity. These vegetables and fruits enrich lives.
Just outside the fence, it changes.
We also happen to be standing in an American food desert: 38126, the poorest urban zip code in the entire United States. The unemployment rate is high, the median household income well below poverty level. There is not one single supermarket or grocery store within the entire community.
Marlon was born and raised in this neighborhood. When he graduated from the local college he had career opportunities elsewhere but he chose to stay. A compassionate activism became a vision and he built all of this. “I look at our farm and our community center, its value set, my compassion that developed despite all this death of humans around me — I can trace it all back to that blade of grass.”
Forty people now work with Marlon. Green Leaf Learning Farm’s produce is in high demand. They sell out most of what they take to the farmer’s markets. His KQ-90 boxes nourish neighborhood families and contain other incentives to healthy lifestyle choices, and the interest in home-cooked meals, plant strong meals and healthy eating is slowly returning to this community, this food desert. Counselors at Knowledge Quest, the community center he started, are saving lives and instilling hope.
For Marlon, it’s a natural progression. It’s just the way to do things.
Wendell Berry distinguishes livelihood as a vocation, as one’s calling. “For all persons there are specific kinds of work to which they are summoned by God or by their natural gifts or talents. The kind of work may be cabinet-making or music-making, cooking or forestry, medicine or mechanics, science or law or philosophy or farming… People who are doing the work they are called to do are happy doing it. For them there is no distinction between work and pleasure. A ‘job,’ by contrast, is understood as any work whatever that one can earn money by doing.”1
There is a profound, soul-fulfilling essential to livelihood. It is in part subconscious: discovering the calling that feeds and nourishes your soul, the reason why you are on this path, the inner certainty that this is the endeavor, the work, the life-labor that you are here, in this life, to engage in and do.
In Renewing Husbandry, an essay published in 2018, Wendell Berry observes that husbandry resides at the core of livelihood. The word ‘husbandry’ is the name of a connection… To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve.” While husbandry is a connection to a household, “Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals — obviously because of the importance of these things to the household… Husbandry is the name of all the practices that sustain life by connecting us conservingly to our places and our world; it is the art of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains us.”2
Marlon took me to the house where he grew up. His grandparents lived with them making theirs a three generational family, “so you had their wisdom and presence while parents worked.” Near the intersection of Phillips Place and Whitford Place, Marlon pointed to the houses of his neighbors. “These two streets, I can still take you to most of these houses now, not only to visit and sit down but to have something to eat and drink. You could even lay down on the couch. It’s that kind of close-knit community.”
Marlon’s old house appears narrow facing the street, but it goes back a-ways. It has five bedrooms and two bathrooms. “My grandfather, Robert Maddrie, had a high school diploma which was a big thing at the time, and he worked and retired. My grandmother, Doris Maddrie, she left Mississippi because you could only get to eighth grade in Mississippi in her day. They wouldn’t let a black child go higher. She worked at the packing house in Memphis, which was King Cotton. We ate Sunday dinner together every week. Grandfather would always put on a jacket for that dinner. Grandma Doris was the matriarch.
“At church they’d call our home ‘hotel happiness’ because of the spirit of hospitality. I’d come home and there would be one of the musicians from the church. ‘Oh, you living with us now?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Ok.’ And it was just a thing. People would be having a hard time and need someplace to stay, and my grandmother would have them over. My Aunt and her boyfriend who owned a business came and lived with us when their business did bad – and one of their workers did too.
“People would stay with us a month, three months, six months, and the hospitality was such that that person would get their own room. They’d come with nothin’ but their clothes and a television, and now they’d have a bed and a room. I’d come home and my bedroom would be occupied by somebody. We’d have to double up, make adjustments in other parts of the house.
“As a kid you’d come home and that would be a norm. It was all communal and love and respect. In-laws in my family, in African-American families, are held in highest regard. They are called sons and daughters. Always valued. Loyalty, service, and family hospitality. We had food so we’d share food, we’d feed neighbors who were going through a tough time out of our refrigerator.
“When we had enough stuff, we’d always share. And it was anything. My Grandmother Doris had this thing about ‘You better not give away anything that you did not like or was not nice.’ You didn’t give away a sock with a hole in it or a raggedy shirt with bleach stains. You had to give away nice stuff. She used to say about charity that you always give away good stuff, the stuff that if you saw it, you’d want to have.”
Marlon operates the community centers, the farm, and the classrooms in the same manner. “I like having premium experiences in food and technology, and engaging people in one of the most under-resourced communities with that. I like bringing those two extremes together. We are not just a farm, but a USDA certified Organic farm. We grow the healthiest possible food. When you visit our classrooms, you’ll see kids learning in an iMac environment; when you visit our theater and our performance stage, you’ll see it’s the same stage like the premium one over in the Memphis arts district. We will draw top chefs to our bistro and cooking school. The reality is that the people here are exceptional, they are worth the investment.
“What I do a direct confront to is the idea, ‘What’s good enough for those folks.’ You know what my grandmother would say about that. I love the thrill of building something new and creating something from nothing and challenging traditional structures like ‘What’s good enough for those in poverty?’ We don’t do poverty programs. The best way to eradicate poverty is to not treat it like poverty. The compassionate aspect of this is, why would I identify a person with the most challenging aspect of their life?
“In South Memphis you see these children. If you see an African-American child whose family is struggling in a lot of areas, through that lens it can elicit a certain response — but what if I can get you to see your kid in that kid? That’s a whole different response when that’s my child in that child.”
An essential component of The Great Healing is compassion for your community.
The Great Healing will not be possible without honoring and pursuing livelihoods, and fostering a balanced, just, vibrant, and compassionate economy of our shires.
Thomas Jefferson envisioned a democracy of small land owners, of farming families. Whether you are a landowner or not, a homeowner or not, we are each members of a community, the shire we live in. We are each stakeholders with an interest in the stewardship of our neighborhoods.
John Thackara has journeyed into emerging bioregions the world over. In his book How to Thrive in the Next Economy he writes, “The respectful interdependence of people and living systems is coming back to life… A bioregion makes sense at many levels: practical, cultural, and ecological. By putting the health of the land and the people who live on it, at the center of the story, a bioregion frames the next economy, not the dying one we have now. Because its core value is stewardship, not perpetual growth, a bioregion turns the global system on its head. Rather than drive the land endlessly to yield more food or fiber per acre, production is determined by the health and carrying capacity of the land through time — a factor which is constantly monitored. Decisions are made by people who work the land and know it best… Growth is measured in terms of land, soil, and water getting healthier, and communities more resilient.”3
As stakeholders, each one of us has an important role protecting and shepherding this evolution. This is compassionate activism for the community.
Marlon and I are walking through Green Leaf Learning Farm’s orchard. We are walking in-between pomegranate trees, persimmons, figs, muscadines, pawpaw trees, “the only native fruit tree in Tennessee,” pear and apple trees, and blueberry and blackberry bushes. For years, the woman who owns these deep lots that we are traversing has been asking for Marlon’s help to keep her grass trimmed. Marlon agreed if she would grant him permission to plant an orchard. While the fruit trees are a year or two away from producing, they will soon be harvesting blueberries and blackberries.
“If you’re going to build a community, the most essential asset is the human capital, the people, and amongst the people is the children. So, youth development was the practical starting point for me. Human development is the starting point for community development.”
In elementary school all Alexandria, Marlon’s daughter, wanted to do was read. She would never stop reading. And she’s quiet and introverted so she got into trouble with her teachers, she was on the verge of not passing 4th grade and went through this whole bullying thing. They were all set to medicate her and put her in Special Ed. I said to my wife, ‘She needs a social adjustment, a Montessori program. The way she’s operating, that’s Montessori.’ So, through the help of a juiced friend, I got her in Montessori. It was the right place for her, and she was there for the rest of elementary school. Now we have her back in the public school with a thousand some kids and she’s performing honor roll.
“I thought to myself, ‘What about all the other children in the neighborhood just like my baby — smart, that have good potential, and they have the limitations of their learning style not being honored?’”
As a father, when Marlon helps out one of his children, he is incapable of not extending that feeling to the other children in his community. It’s as if it’s in his DNA. Marlon and the counselors at Knowledge Quest cultivate self-worth and instill hope that has been diminished or lost. They help people discover their path. They build and empower community.
Our actions, like Marlon’s, can collectively have an immense impact. We can save mountains. Every dollar, every spending choice and decision you make, your attitude, your voice, your complacency — or lack thereof — it all matters.
Heal yourself. Thrive. Find your balance, your strength, your truth. Enlist your voice, and your resolve.
For three years Marlon was a professional volunteer. He then applied for and got a United Way grant and started Knowledge Quest. Over a five year span he built out Knowledge Quest from a single room in public housing to the community center where it is now, married Sheila, had three children, and bought and renovated his two-story house, which is beautiful to look at now, but was on the demolition list when he purchased it. He also entered seminary, graduated with an Ecumenical Master of Divinity Degree, founded a church and began thinking about an urban farm.
Memphis is like Marlon. The community of South Memphis will turn a new leaf. More and more people are realizing opportunity there. You can buy land for next to nothing. In the coming years, as more and more people are drawn into the neighborhood and rediscover it thanks in part perhaps to Marlon’s farm, bistro and community center, they may discover the opportunity there. Young people living in Midtown or Cooper-Young, where rents are high and the dream of buying property deferred, perhaps they’ll look south. This was once a prosperous neighborhood where black families lived side by side with white families as early as 1900 and for the following 60 years. Marlon is developing educational programs for the schools. He understands the essential value to a community of having good education available. As more and more residents of this community are empowered and leading healthier lives, hope blooms like the sunflowers on Marlon’s farm.
It’s about livelihood. And community.
Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream. And his dream did not end in Memphis. Marlon Foster has one, too.
And they’re not the only ones.
Excerpted from The Great Healing – Five Compassions That Can Save Our World by Stephen Erickson. Copyright © 2019 by Stephen Erickson. Published by TGH Press, September 20, 2019. Visit thegreathealing.org
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Stephen Erickson is an author and a dedicated environmental and animal activist for 30 years. He is also a screenwriter, feature filmmaker, and former Home Entertainment executive. He lives in Los Angeles and has 3 children. The Great Healing – Five Compassions That Can Save Our World is his first book.
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1 Wendell Berry, The Art of Loading Brush, Berkeley, California: Counterpoint, 2017 pgs. 78-79
2 Wendell Berry, Renewing Husbandry, Orion Magazine, June, 2018, https://orionmagazine.org/article/renewing-husbandry/
3 John Thackara, How to Thrive in the Next Economy, New York, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015 pg. 31