Day: February 10, 2012

So I think, sometimes, that the spiritual challenge, the life challenge, the daily challenge, is to hang onto myself. Every day, I am learning to find what one friend calls the quiet place inside, and go there. It is my place, out of reach of the anger, frustration and confrontation that sometimes seems to swirl inside and out.  One person posted on my Facebook page today that we have lost our humanity and society is breaking down.

I know some people feel that way.

I do not.

I  find love and humanity and society everywhere, and I look for it and am open to it, and I do not accept that the news is the reality of life in our world. For me, it is not. I have worked hard to live in a different world and to look at in a different way. So does my wife. That is a choice. People are drawn to drama, conflict and disintegration. I’m not really sure why, except that fear is crippling and destructive, and  it is addictive and profitable. I believe the very definition of awakening is to not accept that bleak and fearful view as reality, and look for a different truth. I find beauty and connection everywhere, where real people live real lives every day, even as that idea is continuously challenged or discarded.

Sometimes, like everyone else,  I worry about things. Money, health, life, death,  my family, civility and all of the things we are told almost hourly are urgent and important things for us to worry about and prepare to lose. The notion of a world losing its humanity and society is popular. I hear it everywhere I go. I do not believe it, and I do not accept it. Instead,  I am learning to go to the quiet place inside of me, and I hang onto myself. I am not giving myself over to that other world as I did for so many years, and at great cost. The real terror for me is not I will lose my pension and health care and mortgage. The real fear for me is that I will succumb to this gray view of the world, a vision created in large part by immoral and hollow or angry people who make a lot of money from frightening and angering people. The world I live in has its own problems and troubles and surprises, but it is also a place of love, connection, creativity and affirmation.

I have not lost my humanity and my world is not breaking apart. I am hanging onto myself.

I stopped by to see Rocky this afternoon. In the late afternoon, he is always standing by his barn, which collapsed in the heavy snows of 2011, like so many others. Rocky looks well, as always, fed and groomed. He is waiting on the farm with his elderly companion, and she lives alone on the farm with him. The two are making a stand together on the farm, and they touch me  deeply, symbols of strength, loyalty and love.

Rocky is always curious to see me, and I think he isn’t sure what to make of me. He used to be skittish, but now he listens when I come over and talk to him and take photos of him. Some see Rocky as in need of rescue, but I do not. He has shelter, love and attention and his own pasture. And he is with the person he has spent all of his life with, and she is with him for as long as she can be.

Simon and Lulu and Fanny have their own geo-thermal heating (and braying.) When it is cold, they stand perfectly still, exposing half of their bodies straight on to the sun, especially when it is high in the sky. Their coat absorbs heat and as the day progresses, they tilt as the sun moves. It is efficient. Simon is braying hello to me, as I came out to say hello this afternoon.

The chickens have their dance, and we have ours. We can join in the General Dance, and make our own lives purposeful, meaningful, conscious of the beauty and light in the world. Thomas Merton believed this was the writer’s work – to call up the beauty and light and meaning in the world.

How lucky, I thought, that I can see the light in this way, and see the love that can pass between a human being and an animal, in the natural world, as the beginning of my day. How foolish, I think, to waste a single minute on the angry and fearful echoes of a world unmoored by greed and anger and money.

Every day I am called upon to decide which way I want to go: a life of warnings, fear, argument, or a life of love, joy and fulfillment. Wanting something does not make it true, and nobody’s path is easy. But when I look at my wonderful wife, radiant and filled with love, saying good morning to her beloved donkeys, and I see them talking back to her, in their own ancient and mysterious way, then I am clear about which path I want to be on.

Every day, a choice. My choice.