Day: March 27, 2011

When I had two steers and a beef cow, I learned that animals do have lives, and they do care about one another. I see cows showing affection to one another all the time, from licks on the nose to licking flies off each other.

I’ve finished Vol. 2 of The Bedlam Farm Diary, and it will go up tomorrow on the blog, Facebook and YouTube. I think my next diary will be on the dogs – a bit on each dog. This one is in the Rouse Farm, Big Valley Farm and I think it caught some of the many challenges and hard work of life on a family farm.

This week I am continuing video instruction. I am also working on promoting my first kid’s book, “Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm” which is coming out in just a few weeks. I am meeting with an art group in Glens Falls to talk about moving my story-telling workshop idea there. Thinking of focusing it on aspiring writers, maybe five or six. We will work together to produce stories and try and publish them. Maria is working on her first show in the Pig Barn here on June 4-5. Details on her website. She sold her “Reading” quilt in about two seconds.

I’m also resuming work on my book on Frieda: “Frieda and Me: Second Chances.” Sara Friedman of Social Momentum is coming later in the week to work with me on Facebook and Twitter and other social media. And I am getting an Imovie l

I am getting a lot of messages asking for more video and a lot asking me not to change the blog at all. I like the video format, but also want to be restrained about it. I’m not giving up still photography and good video is not simple to do. But I want it to be a permanent new element on the site. So I’ll do two or three a week, looks like.

Nostalgia is a trap, I think, but seeing these old bottles makes me yearn for a time when such everyday things were so beautiful.

Found an old blacksmith shop in Coila, N.Y. where Brian sells old bottles. Had fun in there.

Sundays are fitting days to consider a spiritual path. I came to upstate New York more than 10 years ago, bringing the journals of Thomas Merton with me where I wrote “Running To The Mountain,” the first book recording what turned out to be an odyssey. Many people come to my blog and my books wanted to talk about cute cats and dogs, and they are often disappointed as that is a part of my life, but only one part.

I think my search for a spiritual life is the biggest part. It led to my relationship with Maria, my experience with animals, my blog, my photos, and now, my videos. This year, my long and hard work is taking some form.

I ended therapy a year or so ago. My spiritual counselor, Mary Muncil has guided me from there. I began serious meditation and began to understand my mind better. I worked hard to separate myself from the fear system that is American health care and that has been fruitful. I take no medications of any kind, I do not test myself for any reason unless I do not feel well. And I feel well, better than ever. I have found a wonderful alternative health care system that involves learning about nutrition, studying meditation, exercising and massage. It has worked for me.

I will certainly go to a doctor for help if necessary, but I find more and more, that it is often not.

I have expanded my story telling. Words, photos, videos. Telling my story is vital to my health and well-being.

I have opened myself to life and have found it. I am open to “alternative” forms of religion and health.

I have largely abandoned corporate notions of news, which distort the nature of the world and my life and are upsetting. I have left the political system behind, as it is neither healthy, productive or civic for me.  I am aware of the major events of the world – Japan, Libya, government shutdowns, as I check in once or twice a week. That’s enough for me.

I have returned to a passionate love of reading and music. I have left behind the people in my life who are angry, addicted to drama, who tell struggle and victim stories, and who believe life’s choices are arguments.

I am more aware than before of the discordant world that enters my consciousness and disturbs it. This is a choice. I am aware of the “Storm Center” culture that transforms so much of ordinary life into fear and drama and then profits from it. People who really care about me, I find, do not make much money from it.

Now, I am getting closer to finding a spiritual community, something I have long wanted. It might be where I started, in a Jewish community, something I left behind decades ago. I will not do this alone, only if my wife wants to share the process with  me.

I see that a spiritual life, a spiritual community is something I have passionately desired all of my life. It is getting close. I’ll share the process, as always.

I am working on a spiritual path. Seeking the quiet of my soul. Seeking spiritual counseling.  Rethinking what health is for me. Off of all medications. Eating healthy things that feel good. Going to massage. Walking up a steep hill every day. Healing myself through my love, my wife, my animals, donkeys dogs. Meditating. Went to a Temple yesterday and felt at home, after a 50 year absence from my faith. Still seeking, but I am getting closer. I believe a spiritual community is essential to health and well-being. God, I am told, is best seen as a verb and not a noun.