Il Dolce Far Niente

Photo Credit: The lovely Ashley Paquin of White Bird Wellness

Welcome as we continue our journey together in reclaiming the essence of the front porch in our lives.

This week we will consider connection, connection with ourselves, with each other one-on-one, with the greater world (from the place of quiet) and with the Divine. The front porch is a place we can go to for solitude and simple engagement, intimacy and romance. It is a place where we can drop the doing of contemporary culture

A place where we make our measure one of beauty, pleasure and spaciousness.

What if we were to come to the front porch to bring ourselves to account, to consider the value of our day in terms of number of smiles, kindnesses offered, epiphanies allowed and to harness its symbolic power to find deeper simplicity and connectedness.

What if we were able to value doing nothing.

There is a Permaculture principle of valuing the marginal. In American Culture doing nothing is considered pathetic and wasteful. What if doing nothing really had value. What if doing-nothing were the very thing we need to find prayer and meditation within. What if doing-nothing were necessary for truly finding connection with ourselves and in that simple act, with each other.

Well, Italy, the birth place of the SLOW food movement, has a name for what we call slacking: Il Dolce Far Niente.

Enter Laura Lo Forti.

Meet Laura Lo Forti, Story Midwife, champion of social justice and a dear dear friend of ours. Laura is a multimedia producer, educator, participatory media practitioner working with schools, non-governmental organizations, and social action groups to create participatory projects that generate media literacy, civic engagement, and community change. She adopts participatory media practices to raise the emotional and honest voices which are often misrepresented in traditional media outlets. Laura grew up in Milan Italy, and when I told her about the concept behind the Front Porch Revolution she mentioned the purely Italian idea of Il Dolce Far Niente, or the sweetness of doing nothing…

Sounds like the essence of the Front Porch Revolution doesn’t it?

Well, let’s have a little chat with Laura and see what we can find out:

Want to know more about Laura and her incredibly powerful work? Visit her site HERE!

Here are the books/articles Laura mentioned in her interview:

What now?

First watch this little snippet for inspiration:

Your Assignment for Week 2, Lesson 1:

What do you think you should be doing instead of nothing?
What is your biggest fear in slowing down and working less?
What is one thing you are afraid you might lose, not have, fail at or miss out on if you do too much nothing?
Who are you heroes?
What would you die for?
List five injustices you walk by every day because you are too busy.
Share more pictures of your front porch transformation in our Facebook Group!

Don’t for get to share your thoughts in our Facebook Group and/or Pinterest Board!

Are you enjoying the Revolution so far?

Please share it with your friends! It is super simple to sign-up. Just give people this link: https://tierrasoul.com/front-porch-revolution-sign-up/