Bioflavonoids assist in the absorption and biochemical availability of vitamin C (a.k.a. ascorbic acid), which is critical for optimal immune system function, capillary health, and to fend off many diseases, such as cancer.

The direct connection between vitamin C and bioflavonoids is not yet fully understood, and neither are the millions of relationships between the bioflavonoids themselves – which may be constantly changing with the ripening of the fruit.

Every lemon is a universe in itself, and no pill-form of Vitamin C (even if it contains some bioflavonoids and has 1,000% of the daily recommended dose) can simulate what is happening in nature.

So next time you feel like a Vitamin C boost, buy, or even better, pick a lemon, squeeze it, drink it, take a small bite of the rind, and enjoy the experience of “tart” – and know that you just ingested a myriad of relationships, all working in concert to provide you with optimal health.

To find out more about citrus, read co-host Mark Mulcahy’s latest blog and listen to our recent show on An Organic Conversation!!

How did this happen?  I remember as if it were only the week before; jumping in the pond at a friend’s place to wash off the dust of a beautifully warm late summer day.

And now, at seven in the morning, out in West Marin, the patches of grass that lie in the shade are frozen over.

This will happen to my life too.  Suddenly, before I know it, I will be in my late fall, right before winter, just before darkness covers the season of transformation – a season in which some things will die and new life will be re-born out of their death, out of my death.

So this is it, then, this is the time to reflect on this life and this year. 

It’s fall.  And as I light my first candle of this season, take a hot bath, and all of a sudden find my bed cozier than ever, I look at this year - at my successes and failures, my travels, my new and old friends, and I realize that there is only one question to ask: 

Did I love enough?

Knowing that the answer will likely never be “yes”, I am glad that there are six weeks left before the end of 2009.

I know I can love more, I know many of us can.  May our breath in the cold air these mornings remind us that we are all on borrowed time, and that the one question at the end of the day will be the same. . . for all of us.

It’s so easy in this world of melting glaciers, loss of habitat, environmental decline and human aggression to be motivated by our desire for love – by our desire for a healthy planet, a loving relationship, a world full of respect and dignity in which everyone and everything thrives.

Yet, when we are motivated by our desire for love, that world exists only in our imagination, somewhere in the future. It will always exist there, in the future, not yet to be had. It will always be out of reach in our lifelong pursuit to create it. I am almost certain that world will actually never come.

When we stop and realize the beauty of this life and the truth that surrounds us, the amazing full moon last night, the kindness of most people, the fear in others and our strength to be gentle with it, the magic of serendipity every day in our lives – when we are motivated by love, the work to protect this planet and all life on it still remains, but we carry the world that we desire already with us, wherever we go.

That space is my universe. In that space, I know I don’t need to remember to breathe in, my body remembers for me. And I don’t have to control its length, my body knows how long it should be.

In that space, I actually don’t feel that I am breathing, but that I am breathed.

In that space, for a moment, I can stop chasing whatever we chase in life: happiness, money, the train, the kids, the dog, or our own tail. No more chasing – for a moment.

In the space between out-breath and in-breath I reside, and, consciously or not, I am surrendered to something much larger than me.

Instead of chasing the world, I can follow. And by following, I have arrived, manifested in my essence, which is always there, and always has been, to find a language older than words*, to find the letter to myself that was written a long time ago.

And the most amazing thing is that this space, this opportunity, resides in my chest every twelve seconds.

Thank you, to whoever is breathing me.

(“A Language older than Words” – inspired by Derrick Jensen, http://derrickjensen.org)

We all know that it is impossible to argue with your mom about being full, as her love is expressed through food. It has always been expressed this way, from the moment we were born, and even before. How wonderful.

As I am working out daily to shed my new love handles, I am doing so with a new-found appreciation and understanding of that side of my mother.

Just like the great mother, mothers in all shapes and sizes, mothers of all kinds – really, all mothers – provide, and feed, and nourish. That’s what they do, that’s the definition of a mother.

Why would I love the way the Earth nourishes me, and not the way my mother does, by keep serving me food?

It seems that I have a choice to say no to the Earth Mother, but not to my mom, who gets upset when I decline the fourth serving – but I wonder if that’s really true.

Mother Earth gets just as upset when I say no to her, when I suppress her natural ability and desire to nourish, when I put my rules on her, when I ignore her expression, and when I don’t appreciate the incredible gift of having a mother in my life.

So I will still need to find a way next time I go not to gain weight, but at the same time fully embrace my mom’s expression of her love to me – even when it comes in endless servings.

Or maybe, I will just say next time after my trip, that in one week in Germany, I gained eight pounds – eight pounds of love.

I was confused, and said, “So, then it’s three for a dollar, right?”

But she insisted and said, slightly annoyed with me as if I had made fun of her or was not getting her point, “No, it’s two for a dollar. And then you get another one as a gift!”

I gave in and said, “Okay, I’ll take two for a dollar.”

I sipped my lemonade and it was hands-down the best lemonade I have ever had – and Lucy knew it. The amount of freckles she had on her face represented the amount of summer that she had put into her lemonade. It was delicious, rich in ripe meyer lemons, a tad of cane sugar, and maybe a hint of maple syrup, and lot’s of love – pungent, not too sweet, not too sour, just perfect.

The lemonade was so good that for a moment I forgot her initial offer.

As I was saying thank you and turning around to walk away, she held up another cup and said with a big smile, “Mister – and this one here, is for you – from me.”

I got it. I was reminded of the power and beauty of keeping a deal a deal in this world of “Three for Two’s” and “Buy-One-Get-One-Free” – and then truly receiving a gift in addition.

Lucy was six and already knew the difference. Good for her.

I remembered a similar year last year with blackberries, there were almost none, blackberries that this year hang abundantly in thick dark clusters bursting with flavor and sweetness.

Every farmer knows that after a few years of great harvests, there will be a poor one, followed usually by another few years of good harvests.

So I wondered, “Why does nature go through these cycles?”

As I am preparing to visit my family in Germany for a few days, I am starting to understand. As I am packing my bags, say good bye to friends, my dog, my co-workers, and while I feel excitement about the trip and look forward to see my parents who are getting older every year (unlike me), there is a sense of sadness about leaving in my chest. I don’t mind flying, I will have a great time in Germany, and yet, already on my way to the airport, I know I will miss everything my life here holds. So actually, rather than sadness, it’s kind of a bittersweet joy of truly belonging, and knowing at the same time that I, and every other being, lives on borrowed time.

I am grateful that I am leaving so that I remember how precious my life here is, how much I love my friends, my work, and how lucky I got when my dog adapted me a few years ago.

After years of abundant cherries, this was a short season. The cherries were great, but the season washed over California in only a few short weeks, and now, at best, we have the very last crop from Washington at the markets, before in a week or so, by the end of August, we will have to wait another full year before we can taste the fleshy darkness of a perfect cherry, another full year before we can spit that stone again.

Nature has its ways of showing us what ever we need to learn and recognize in life – the feeling of truly belonging, the joy of an abundant harvest, the acceptance of things not coming in as planned – or leaving much too soon – and first and foremost, not to take anything for granted.

So I wondered about our role, as humans, in this process. In this case, the onions would have never been caramelized to begin with, and of course they would have never met with the pureed zucchini to create a delicious organic vegetable soup – just like the cheese that carefully tended to and turned and knocked on and turned again would never become an award winning cheese. Or the wine that gets better ever year, or the balsamic vinegar that has been cared for for 15 or 20 or 40 years. Or the marriage, that, when it grows in the right direction, gets richer and more intimate year after year, and decade after decade.

While at the end nothing lasts, what would long have spoiled in nature can be kept alive, and what is great individually can become fantastic and turned into a new, beautiful, delicious, healthy, and vibrant form because of the attention and energy we give to it.

So when I had that soup last Friday, it was clear that I tasted more than good, organic vegetables that had been blended together well. I was tasting the touch of the cook.

How amazing that we have the capacity to add a secret ingredient to any process we choose. The one thing that make things so good, like soup, and sometimes even makes them last a whole lifetime, like balsamic vinegar, or a really good friendship.

I started off with an internal debate about “self” in the context of the world. Where do I, Helge, start and where do I end? What is truly mine in this world of complete interconnectedness?

What’s my role, my contribution, what’s my personal life, and how really am I in the world? What is defining me, and what’s my community?

The internal conversation turned into a love song as the week progressed, and I realized that it is not about the self or the other, but that self only exists in the relationship to other. We manifest in the presence of the other – without the other there is no self. We are defined by our dignity and by our relationship to our food, our family, and our community.

Community in the sense of Aldo Leopold’s words: “to encompass all life forms: plants, animals, rocks, rivers and human beings.”

As I looked at my community, I understood that it is all about the quality, the story of the things that make our community that defines us.

First, consider the uniqueness of your life: In 30 million years of human evolution, you have never been here before – as far as we possibly know, no one has ever lived who has your thoughts, your body, your feelings, and your talents – what ever they may be. You are a “one time only” miracle in creation. You have never been here before, and you will never be here again. It’s about a 75 year or so snapshot in the space of time, during which you are comprised out of the endless possibilities of creation.

Imagine this: There are eight notes in an octave, and eight octaves on the keyboard of a piano, plus some half-tones – 88 keys in total. In addition, there are beats, and different styles, but basically, you can bring the majority of music in the Western World back to those eight notes as the framework of all classical and all pop tunes that were ever written and that will ever be written. There are some other scales in music in the Eastern tradition and in other parts of the world, but everything your ears are used to, from Beethoven to the Beatles, every melody, every lullaby, and every bird song is created within the frame of these eight notes.

Imagine the entire world of music comprised out of it – an endless universe of sound inspired by only eight notes, and eight octaves.

So now imagine what created you. The infinite number of possibilities, 30 million years of evolution, your great, great grandfather and how he met his wife to birth to your great grandfather, everything they ate, their sickness, their fortune, their destiny, where they traveled, the risks they took, what they said, and what they thought.

And that’s just your bloodline – imagine all the people they interacted with, the farmers that grew every bite of food that every single person in your bloodline ate throughout thousands of years – imagine all the farmers, all the bees, all the rain. Imagine all the animals that were involved, the thousands of miles of carts drawn by horses, the endless acres of land plowed, the millions of seeds planted.

All that, created you. You are an unprecedented composition, and only you will ever exist in this form.

And when it is your time to pass on, you will re-compose into another life form. Scientists found that the calcium in the spine of a grizzly bear is 80% of oceanic origin. The salmon has become the bear.

Einstein’s formula E=mc square says that energy and matter are the same – and we cannot create anything out of nothingness, nor can we destroy anything into nothingness.

So you have never been here before in this constellation, and yet, there is an old story in you, in all of us, in all the parts that made you. And when it is your time to pass on and to become another life form, your story will be added to the soil. So make sure it’s a good one, a healthy story, a happy one, full of love.

And make sure that in your lifetime you add good stories to your body, because every carrot has a story, and when you eat it, in minutes, you can measure that carrot in your blood stream. The carrot and its story will become you.

So make sure you know the story of your food. And make sure it’s a good story.

And when you have created a community of beauty, health, and dignity, then go and celebrate the opportunity of your uniqueness in this lifetime.

You are the one we’ve been waiting for.
We all are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Wayfarer

Your whole mind and body have been tied

To the foot of the Devine Elephant

With a thousand golden chains.

Now, begin to rain intelligence and compassion

Upon all your tender, wounded cells

And realize the profound absurdity

Of thinking

That you can ever go Anywhere

Or do Anything

Without God’s will.