This week, to commemorate the first anniversary of Mary Muncil’s blog, Lenore and I stormed her beautiful and sunlit office and I got a photo. Mary and I celebrated the remarkable dialogue we have been having. I sensed rather than saw Rev. Muncil – she married Maria and I and is my spiritual counselor – in the mirror, and that is the beauty of photography, which often reveals more than the photographer can see. I took a series of Morning Lights images and they are on my Facebook page.
Have you ever seen a cable news panel or media story on the things we all agree on? It seems sometimes as if there is nothing all Americans agree on. But from my perspective as a writer about animals and the creator of this blog, I have come to see that isn’t so. There is much disagreement, but the animal world is not cloven into two ideologies, a left and a right, locked in eternal deadlock and division. Both sides love dogs, cats and other kinds of animals. Some of the most touching messages I received after my writing about Planned Parenthood were from people who identified themselves as “far right” conservatives saying they liked bedlamfarm.com because it was not political, and because they shared with me a passion for animals, and an interest in them. They were sorry to see a political idea injected here.
This has always been so, something I’ve seen on the book tours and elsewhere. The blog attracts all kinds of people with all kinds of political convictions, and they all say it is rare for them to find such a place. So there was some pain and shock as seeing politics intrude, even for a day. It’s interesting to me for many reasons, one being that every subject in our culture, in Congress or on television and the Internet is now presented as an argument. Journalism doesn’t present stories, but arguments about stories. Politicians don’t present solutions, but arguments about solutions. Online forums are not discussions, but arguments about discussions. We seem to be forgetting how to even talk to one another directly or listen. Our open spaces are polluted with hostile messages and rigid positions and outrage more than reason is the currency sometimes.
But there is something that unites many of us, and I see it every day – animals. Animals have not been politicized. Lenore and Simon are not controversial. It’s hard to disagree about them. There is a lot of politics in the animals world, but in general, it has not been partitioned off in a “left” and “right” the way social issues like abortion and politics have been. In many ways, the blog has been a safe place for people with differing political views to come together, as there is nothing political here, either about the animals or the political world beyond. There are disagreements, but much more often, a sharing of affection, interesting and love for the animals in our lives. That was mostly deliberate. I wanted the blog to be such a safe place, and I still mean it to be.
I don’t regret writing about Planned Parenthood, and I very much cherish my right to speak freely about my beliefs when so moved. As my daughter cautioned me recently when I told her of my dislike for conventional politics, that’s fine, she said, but don’t stick your head too far into the sand. Still, it has dawned on me slowly that there are things that still powerfully can unite most, if not all of us, and some of them are expressed right here, perhaps a reason the blog is on target for between five and six million views this year. This is a very powerful thing for me, something to be celebrated and appreciated. It is also a very spiritual thing. Animals touch something very deep and powerful within us. They remind us of our humanity, of the love and emotional connections and empathy that underlie the human experience, despite hoary efforts to label us and put us all into opposing boxes of the “left” or “right.” The Planned Parenthood disturbance brought that into focus for me, and it is a powerful thing to see. The world beyond may always try and divide us, yet the common experience of being a human – and the powerful experience of loving and needing animals in our lives – may be even stronger.
Maria has a cold so I got up early to do the morning chores. It was a sweet morning, very cold, very bright, very beautiful, and it was like a ballet out. The chickens came running to eat yesterday’s garbage, Mother was prowling around, Meg was all over the place, riding donkeys, prowling the feeder, and the dogs rushed in for their morning meal. I loved the farm this morning, it was so peaceful and beautiful and I am pleased that you can come long with me and see.
I’m learning more and more that Lenore is a powerful force, and her image is a good way to move forward, a day after the real world collided with my blog and shook up the peaceable kingdom a good bit. You can not look at Lenore and fail to smile if you have a beating heart.
I’ve mentioned political things two or three times on the blog, and I don’t care to do it much. Politics has become a disturbing, unenlightening thing to me, and to many other people, and I have come to see both ends of the shrinking political spectrum – the far left and the far right – as increasingly fascistic (parts of the animal world as well) in that disagreement is no longer tolerated, different points of view no longer heard or considered, and people with different opinions increasingly demonized. I have the sense of these eternal and rigid arguments going on forever, no one ever again meeting minds or changing any.
For many years of my life, I lived in a world where the demons were Republicans – Nixon, Reagan, Bush, gathering forces of the evil right. People were brave and outspoken at dinner parties and dinner tables, but they never seemed to do much beyond anger and outrage. When I moved upstate, I encountered the same thing from the other side – the evil Clintons, the villainous Obama, the massing forces of the left.
Everywhere, what I saw was anger, self-righteousness and paranoia, but nobody was making much progress talking to actual humans who felt differently or understanding them. So there are Red States and Blue States and a left and right, and the media and political system has embraced this idea that there are only two ways to look at the world and you have to be one another. That is not a hat I want to wear. I get to label myself and if there is an existing label that fits me, I have not heard it. Women’s health and women’s rights are important to me, for all kinds of reasons, some of them very emotional for me, and this isn’t a place to go into them.
When I wrote about Planned Parenthood yesterday, I knew I would catch all kinds of Hell, and I did. Aside from the obvious, many people see the blog as a sanctuary from the real world, not as part of it. But it didn’t turn out badly. Some people assumed I had to be on the “left” and a goodly number threatened me, promising me that the blog would become extinct and all of my readers and followers were flee. Sadly, I knew if I had taken the other position, I would have gotten much the same response from the other side. Genuine conservatives remember that freedom of speech is a patriotic, almost sacred American tenet, and so do true progressives. We have forgotten how to listen to one another. I had good conversations with a number of people who disagreed with me, and when the shooting was over, I had only banned one person from my Facebook and only a handful of people said they would leave.
People who disagree with me are welcome here, as are people don’t. I’m not running for mayor, and I don’t ever argue my beliefs. I just have to be honest about them. Nobody has to leave because they see things differently, but I won’t be told what to say or threatened. I’m not ready to give that up, even in our political culture and I have the most wicked temper when somebody tells me what to write. I have a Thomas Paine chip embedded somewhere. I don’t know as I’ll ever be that spiritual as to give him up. I believe politics should generally stay away from my life and from the blog, but I do not live in a fairy tale, or a magic kingdom. Sometimes things come along that I need to talk about. And I will.
I very much appreciate the good people who struggle with painful and emotional issues but I really admire those who also remember that they are talking to other human beings, who feel things just as passionately. Leaders like Gandhi and Mandela always remembered that their opponents were human and thought of them that way. Leaders like Stalin and Mussolini did not. People who disagree with me in a respectful and listening way are not my enemies, they are the friends of a free world. Lenore, do your thing.
A few years ago, I lost faith in myself and my ability to manage my life and make good decisions. I lost faith in my ability to find love and connection. I lost faith in myself as a writer and story-teller able to navigate all of the changes in publishing. Bit by bit, day by day, I am regaining my strength, the strength that made me a journalist, television producer, writer. I am making good decisions for myself. I am learning how to say what I feel and what I need, and to shed the anger and fear that used to be such an integral part of it. Talking to Mary Muncil, my spiritual counselor today, she said something had changed in me the past week. I was finding myself, making decisions more easily, with clarity. My confidence was returning.
Perhaps not as much as I used to have, and that is a good thing. I think this is so. I am going to have such a good year this year, I can feel it on so many levels. We will be in a New Bedlam Farm. I will publish three very different kinds of books. I will cherish my wife every day of my life. I will continue to learn from the accepting and affectionate animals on the farm. I will make the decisions that are best for me, my work and my family and without anger and fear. I am regaining faith in myself. I do not believe I can live a life without faith. I will pursue my zeal for life, search for my full moon. I will blame only myself for my failures and struggles in life, not others. It is such a beautiful morning her on the farm, and I see the potential in my life. It is up to me to fulfill it.
