Day: March 15, 2011

As a longtime Thomas Merton lover, I’ve often thought about the monk’s dilemma. To stay centered and grounded, he retreats from the world. But then, I wondered, what is the point of being centered and grounded if you are not in the world?

For me, the elemental challenge of spirituality – of being peaceful and calm in a battered and frenzied world – is that you are seeking something that much of the world is not interested in and doesn’t or can’t practice. So you are called upon almost every day to define yourself and what you want. It’s odd, lonely and disorienting. For a big chunk of my life I felt I always lived outside the circle. Now I spent a lot of time trying to stay out.

I am working on it. I get up early. I meditate every morning, light a candle, sit with the dogs or Maria, and then around 9 a.m., the world rolls into my life, and often, right over me. And most of the world is on a very different channel.

If you are in the world, and not a monk, you will run into people all day who believe they have to listen to Storm Center and “the news,” and who do not share a need to be grounded or centered.  And who are very concerned with power, and who are not at peace.  The gurus would call it bad energy. I have other names.

There are bankers and bureaucrats and Customer Service and  people in places like New York who move through the world like a buzzsaw, and the world is just a lot of lumber.

I see the importance of these people. They remind me every day of the work I have to do. Of the patience I have to acquire. Of the fear I need to put in its place. And they give me the opportunity to give birth to myself again and again. It is not that I am in any way better than them. I’m over that.  It’s that they challenge me to be better. To reclaim myself, again and again. It is hard work. It is good work.

I have no desire to withdraw from the world. That seems sort of pointless to me. I just want to live in it. I am beginning to understand that I will never get there. I am beginning to understand that that is the point.

When Maria first came to the farm, I was surprised by her deepening relationship with the donkeys. They took to her in a way I had never seen them do before with any human, not even to me. She and Lulu and Fanny seemed to talk to one another, and I was lucky to capture this in my still photography. You could almost reach out and touch the space between them.

Now I am taking videos, and I can continue the great  creative opportunity to try and capture this dialogue in a new way and to bring people inside and help them see what I have been seeing. In the image above, I believe I have captured a feeling that I have not yet ever captured in video. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but it will be my primary goal.

So yesterday I went out and took a short video of Maria and the donkeys, connecting in the very beautiful way that they connect with one another. And here’s the idea. The still photographs set the scene. The words put the scene in context. The video brings you into the story. Can’t imagine why any storyteller would not love that. I hope you do as well.

The beauty of the morning sun and the sight of my love walking in its glorious light challenges me to welcome the day, make the best of it, and grow and learn and change. With such gifts, anything else would be a betrayal of life itself.

A beautiful way to begin a day. Lenore kisses Fanny on the nose, a new morning ritual. Lulu stands guard, eyeing some wild turkeys up at the top of the hill. The animals are coming out of the woods at last.

I looked out the window and saw the light and ran out to the pasture. Maria was out with the donkeys, saying good morning to the, greeting the morning sun. For the first time in months, we are seeing the ground.