Now there's certain things, that I learned from Zeb*

“...Take care of all of your memories said Nick,
for you cannot relive them,
and remember when you're out there, trying to heal the sick,
that you must always first forgive them...” *

I well remember Zeb from the early days of the Living Seed back in the early 70s. I recall one afternoon in particular he was enthusiastically holding forth about volunteering up at the then-just-being-built Toronto Waldorf School in Thornhill where he was helping build the parking lot. At the time, all this was new on my radar. Back then I hardly knew what Waldorf education was.

Zeb later told me how it was hard for his youthful idealism at the time to accept taking this beautiful land and contributing to making it into something so mundane and representative of automobile culture as a parking lot. It grated with him, but he thought that must be the compromise with realism we must sometimes accept in order to get something so idealistic as Waldorf education established. Here was a situation with a lot of people working together for an ideal, and he wanted to be part of it. He said it was Alex who often led the way in helping him find this and other opportunities to participate and explore new things.

Now in recent years, Zeb has been updating me on his political life. Of course I realize politics is something quite apart from the kind of spiritual ideas and concepts we might have explored years ago when we met at the Seed. In fact politics is often shunned by the spiritually-inclined. But in the spirit of taking an interest in all things, who's to say it's unworthy of our attention? In fact, I believe there's a strong case to be made that it's becoming a more urgent challenge of our times. Zeb's take on it is that if we don't follow political developments and learn what's behind the scenes of contemporary politics we could all become sorry victims of our collective indifference and inaction.

Zeb “turned me on” to David Orchard, who has got to be the ultimate contemporary Canadian political citizen, pursuing his agenda for “change from within”, first within the Progressive Conservative party and more recently within the Liberal party. David is an organic farmer from Saskatchewan, who ran in the last leadership campaign for the Progressive Conservatives, in the end supporting Peter MacKay in a deal with a written agreement in which Peter agreed not to merge the party with the Alliance/Reform Party, which of course Peter then did, excluding David from the new Conservative Party that was formed out of the merger.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago when David joined the Liberal party and worked on building support for the man he saw as the best of the leadership candidates, Stephane Dion. It's widely recognized among commentators that David's support was a key factor in Dion's victory at the convention. But all was not sweetness and light in Liberal circles either. In a by-election last year in David Orchard's home riding, Stephane Dion first encouraged David to seek the nomination, and then some weeks later, after David had done a lot of work in that direction, Dion appointed a candidate in that riding and bypassed the local nomination process.

My reading of the tea leaves on this one is that Dion was bowing to pressure from the Liberal establishment who, one could well imagine, would not want the likes of David Orchard, sitting in the House making speeches about his concerns over NAFTA and such. Of course, the Liberals lost that seat in the by-election. And while I'm a little sorry to have to drag you all through these particular political gutters, I think there's a lesson to be learned. I would argue that the example of David Orchard as a fascinating case of one of our contemporaries honestly trying to serve his country is even more interesting than the causes he espouses. I think he's worthy of notice and I thank Zeb for the “heads up”.

* Title reference to the song “Open the Door Homer” from the Basement Tapes – which remains my all-time favourite Dylan album. The quote is also from that song.