One of the greatest obstacles to my spiritual practice is my struggle to learn the art of doing nothing. One reason I like border collies is that I am so much like them. I have never been good at doing nothing. Donkeys are teaching me how to do nothing, as they are masters of the art. At night, they graze and move around the pasture. When the temperature goes above 80, they simply do nothing, and they do it well and for many hours. This is a true contemplative, meditative state. I want to work harder at doing nothing. Donkeys will help me.
When Red and I arrive at the Hubbard Hall Writer’s Workshop each Thursday, the members of the group are usually gathered outside at a picnic table, talking to one another about their writing, their blogs, their lives. They encourage each other, praise one another’s work, trade blogs and ideas they have found useful and interesting, laugh about me. We go inside. We talk for two hours, sharing our ideas, talking about the structure of stories.
I am struck by their support for one another, their eagerness to listen to each other and share their passion for their work, which is as varied as their lives. The group includes a physician, a former milkman, a professor and artist, a professional photographer, a student/waitress, a housewife/programmer. Their gifts are astonishingly varied – writing, photography, animation, poetry, collage. They have great ideas and are telling them in ambitious and exciting ways. I am nourished just being around them.
I wanted three things from applicants to the workshop. Experience in writing or other creative forms, a willingness to listen. I wanted them to be nice and generous. I looked for that in their work. It was important, I have learned, that creative people feel safe when they seek to break out. When I hear stories about writing groups, it often sounds like going to the dentist – necessary pain. I wanted them to see writing and creativity as businesslike and challenging, but also joyous and fun. This is, I think, the formula that has often eluded me and many of the writing workshops I know about.
I think I got it this time. We have a powerfully strong line-up of ideas. We are working on structure and form, the process of writing. The next workshop will be at Bedlam Farm. I can’t wait.
Red took his first swim this afternoon, we took him and Lenore to the Battenkill River in Shushan. Lenore took off after sticks, Red waded back and forth between me and Maria. He seemed to enjoy the water but isn’t sure yet about swimming. I’ll go in with him and get him paddling soon. Red herded sheep this morning, helped us settle in with some new sheep Darryl Kuehne brought over. Tonight, the third meeting of the Hubbard Hall Writer’s Workshop. I can’t wait.
For me, fear has always had two faces. The internal one, the one that grows inside of us biologically or neurally, or was brought to us, that we saw or learned immediately around us as we evolved – from parents, siblings, relatives, friends, teachers.
The other is external – the messages of fear we are taught, that are broadcast, mandated, shared by the communities around us – the modern media, cable news, medicine, the law, politics, conventional wisdom. It has come as a surprise to me to see that fear has become a profit center, one of the major industries in our corporate culture. The more we fear our world, our health, our neighbors, the left, the right, the weather, or age, crime, retirement, work, the more we think we can buy ourselves to safety, live forever, preserve our bodies. It was my major miscalculation in life. It is a major miscalculation I see in so many people.
Tests, IRA’s, expensive software security programs, weather alerts, medical tests, weather alerts, political blogs, pills and pills.
I saw that I was caught between these two faces, see-sawed from one to the other. I saw that most people are, and that they rationalize their fear. They have to get their tests, they have to be careful. They dare not flaunt the faces of fear or tempt it’s horrific consequences. Don’t put up your blog because someone will come after you, steal your money, be nasty to you. Don’t trust your neighbor or customer because he might sue you – the airwaves are full of greedy lawyers and doctors looking to alarm you and save you for money. Don’t leave work you hate because you will lose your health care, sail into the abyss.
Don’t skip the news because you might not know that the world has just stopped rotating on its axis, they are rioting in Egypt, there is yet another urgent controversy in Washington. Don’t forego your blood pressure or cholesterol pills or you will have a heart attack or stroke and end up in one of the biggest fear-for-profit machines of all, care for the elderly. The faces of fear are creative, active, greedy, ubiquitous. They eat people up like popcorn and snuff out more lives than any cancer could dream of.
I have been working for years now to construct a center, my own space between these two systems. Part of that is building a spiritual life, a place within me of calm, safety, peace and affirmation. Part of that is finding love, an anchor to share my life. Part is living and working with animals, many of whom possess such a center and remain steady and accepting in their evolving lives. Part is disconnecting from some of the external world – conventional medicine, the so-called news, the legalistic way of looking at the world, the fearful way of living in the world, looking over my shoulder all the time for the many dangers – food, Web, people – I am constantly being told will harm me. It is an awakening for me.
I live very much in the real world in a very real place with very real people and animals and realities, bills and issues. When I see the faces of fear, I withdraw into my work-in-progress center. I ask myself if life is good, if I love my work, if I love my wife, if I love my animals. I meditate, walk, take photos. I write. I read, sit quietly. Piece by piece, my center grows.
