As is my new and happy custom, Sunday is a day of rest for me, from sunrise to dusk. Not that I don’t run around. But I turn off the computer, the Ipad2, the cell phone. No e-mail, text messages, Facebook or video equipment. I want technology to serve me, not run me, and my creativity and ambitions for life require this disconnection at least one day a week. I take walks, visit the animals, take photos, read, meditate, visit friends, work on my spiritual life. Been very good for me. Come and see my video, images of calm. In the winter, we are the animals only source of nourishing food, and so we are their focal point and we matter.
See you tonight.
Yesterday I stopped at an old abandoned farmhouse and I saw, in the reflection of the living room window – the farm wives always leave their lace curtains behind when they leave – an image of a small barn. And the barn spoke to me, and told me the Story Of The World. Do not believe the people who tell you the world is a bad or evil place, falling into ruin and despair. A spiritual life, a conscious life, a self-determined life asks of us that we tell our own Story Of The World, and not hear it from small, angry, frightened or greedy people. It comes from inside of us, and My Story Of The World, I told the barn, I told the farmhouse, is that the world is a beautiful place, filled with countless creative sparks and showers of light, untold miracles, fates, fairies, cherubim and angels spewing rainbows and color in their wake.
In the world every day, millions of people are born, find love, give birth, rescue, hurt and maim and kill, tell their stories, get work, struggle, die, hope and despair. This, said the barn, has always been the Story Of The World, and will always be, and those of us who wish to hear are called to find the images and words of light and the color of the world and bring it to the shadows and corners where fear and sorrow and hopelessness thrive.
The world, say the old farmhouses, is what you make of it, what you want it to be.
This, said the old barn, is the mystics call to life.
Jefferson wrote that politics always occur from the ground up, at the “roots of grass,” far from politicians in their counsels. Everywhere I go, I see, hear and sense this burgeoning idea of buying local, shopping local, eating local, being local. You won’t see this movement evolve on the news, or in the angry, “left” “right” fishbowls of Washington. But I don’ t think my news ever comes from there. Today at Gardenworks, Arlene, a wise woman who mans the register, told me that for the first time, shopper after shopper was asking her if the artwork, food, or fiberart was local, if it came from a “local” artist or farmer or craftsperson. Connie Brooks has had hundreds of calls from book buyers wanting a local, independent alternative to online conglomerates or chain or box stores.
Organic and small farmers say they are asked every day how they grew their crops, treated their chickens or cows. People say they prefer locally produced food to supermarkets and chains. The news media didn’t much cover Plaid Friday, the local shopping alternative to Black Friday, but Maria sold out her potholders, and the digital arts collaborative Etsy.com said they were swamped and Battenkill Books sold more than 100 copies of my book “Going Home,” and you heard this buzzing everywhere online that business was up. I do not turn my life over to gloomy reports of the economy, or believe the world is a hopeless and declining place. Those ideas are places to hide, traps to make us cower and run. This is the story we are sold, usually for profit. In our culture, the economists are the ones asked by journalists how the country is doing, and so most people, with little choice or option, see our collective lives as measured by stock markets and investment bankers.
The economists don’t like buying local. It doesn’t work in the global economy, were we trade our jobs, lives and communities for corporate profits and hourly productivity and are asked to sacrifice schools, libraries and compassion for efficiency. Buying local is intensely personal for me. It is not an argument or political position. It does not serve the “left” or the “right.” It is not about economists, journalists or economies of scale. It is, every single time, an affirmation of life, freedom, and the right of the individual to life in the world. People to people, not people to corporations, box stores or politicians. One person to another. I think we want that. It’s a beautiful idea.
