Rose and Maria
It’s difficult to sometimes find the meaning in our holidays. A visitor from Mars might be justified in thinking Thanksgiving is about Kindle’s and Nooks’s Ipod’s and malls, sales and discounts, online shopping versus brick and mortar consumption. I asked an 11-year-old neighbor what Thanksgiving meant to him, and he said it meant getting up at 4 a.m. on Black Friday to go to Best Buy and get a game player at a good price. Why would he think otherwise? Simple tales of settlers and natives encountering one another on sandy beaches seem strangely irrelevant, fading into the mist of our hyper, money and politics obsessed culture.
In our time, we struggle for relevance and meaning. So I try and do this myself. I pause, meditate, turn off all of the information and try to understand what the personal significance is for me, and the things I love I come back to the same thing. There is divine love in all things, and the only way I know understand this is to list the things I love and am grateful for. Maria. My daughter. My writing. My photography. My body and my health. Izzy, Lenore, Rose and Frieda. Lulu, Fanny. Simon. The barn cats, the chickens. My family, even though it is not fated for us to be very connected to one another, I love them and bless them and wish them happiness.
I love my farm, more than I can say, and I am so grateful I followed my strange impulse to come here. It is home for me. I love the friends I am making. The seasons. The people like Chris and Jessica Barrett and Ben and Liz Osterhaudt that make it possible for me to live her. Quiet evenings talking to Maria, reading in front of the wood stove. The people who keep me healthy. Mary Muncil, my friend and spiritual counselor, who has helped me make my ways towards a spiritual life, something I have always wanted.
And what can I say about my spiritual life? I am working on it. I am getting there. Working to understand fear, anger, judgement and the choice to see the beauty and light and love that is in the world. Later I want to write about the spiritual stages have discovered. And tomorrow, Maria and I will cook Thanksgiving Dinner together for four good friends here at the far. First, we will give thanks, each in our own way, for the wonderful things we have found here, together. And with you.