It's a good thing

My Facebook status: '...wondering how and when "this yogurt contains one million live probiotic cultures" started to sound like a something I'd want.'
Comment: 'Just trust it. It's a good thing.'
...
I watched a show recently where a family move to a home in the country and set about getting to know the plants and animals around them. The husband is a wildlife photographer who sets up otter hides and goes on midnight filming escapades with his son. The wife, a former children's tv presenter, plants vegetables and arranges to adopt some 'retired' chickens from a battery farm who would otherwise be slaughtered for being underproductive. The chickens arrive in a box and are carefully lifted out and placed in the long, green grass. These dozen chickens are, frankly, ugly with their wilted combs, mostly bald with a few dull feathers, and barely have the strength to hold themselves up. These creatures have never seen grass or direct sunlight before. Think of it: they have never ever seen grass or sunlight. The humans move back but the chickens don't move, utterly paralyzed with disbelief, their senses completely overwhelmed as their little heads jerk about from side to side.
Later in the episode, we return to the chickens a few weeks later, who are unrecognizable. Their combs stand upright, they are fatter and fully feathered, and the chickens race around the field like they've just eaten a bowl of sugar. What's more, they start laying again. They are clearly deliriously happy in chicken paradise. The power of faith in grass, sunlight, liberty and care.
...
I spent last Friday at the old A Rocha centre - I hadn't been there since they moved to the new site last October. I missed that place like an old friend and it was good to be back. I helped winnow beans using a Haitian winnowing basket that the farm manager had picked up on a trip there and an American electric fan that he picked up at Canadian Tire. The harvest of dried beans weighed over 150 pounds. I got to take home a yogurt pot of the Ireland Creek Annie beans (an endangered, heirloom variety) and after soaking some overnight I cooked them in a chili. I have started trying to make more of a ritual of my meals, sitting at the table with the plate on a placemat rather than on the couch watching tv. I make an effort to notice and taste my food. As I was eating my chili I was trying to remember where at the property the beans had grown. As I remembered where they grew, I also recalled that I had planted them. They had been soaked for a few days to give them a sprouting chance and I had placed those beads of compressed energy into the soil, covered them over,  tamped down the soil and wished them well. And here I was eating them. I had a moment with my beans. Cue Elton John.

Sometimes I have trouble trusting the goodness in my life. I forget that I live in a field of green grass with the warm sun shining down on me, that I'm free and cared for.

And sometimes I remember.

 pic from here