#6 Letting Go and Letting Come

How a Food System Can Learn to See Itself.

 

If we want to live in a healthy relationship with the places we call home, with each other and the rest of life, we have to learn how to sense a better way forward together.

To sense what’s possible, we have to get out into the world together.
We have to journey out and learn what is actually happening.

But to truly change…
We have to have a quality of presence to know what we may need to let go of…

If we are able to do so, what better future might then be able to come through?

In South Africa, the Southern Africa Food Lab brought together people from across the food system to explore creative responses to hunger and malnutrition.

Farmers, researchers, civil leaders, funders, and other representatives of the food system entered learning journeys, dialogue, and co-creative spaces to better understand how to fully transform.

This episode begins with Norah Mlondobozi, a former teacher and smallholder farmer from Mopani, who once said:

“You cannot teach a hungry child.”

Through the Southern Africa Food Lab, we explore the practice of Presencing, described by Theory U, which asks the question:

What might we need to go out and sense clearly, so we can know what to let go of, and what to let come?

This is also one of the community practices we’re learning to host within Returning Home.

Visit awakeninglands.com to learn more.

 

Featured Sources:

Southern Africa Food Lab
https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/

Creating Transformative Spaces for Dialogue and Action: Reflecting on the Experience of the Southern Africa Food Lab
https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss3/art2/

Researchers Convening Dialogue to Address Grand Challenges: Affordances, Tensions, and the Shift to Deep Dialogue
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14761270241279132

Mopani Learning Journey Reflections
https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Mopani-Learning-Journey-Reflections.pdf

Theory U
https://www.presencing.org/