Day: December 13, 2012

I see that the last few months have been intense and exhausting, even as they are exciting, even exhilarating. The process of moving was a whirlwind of decisions, changes, work, and all of it was good. We are happy to be where we are, confident Bedlam Farm will find its deserving lover. In recent weeks I have been confronting sold old and entrenched issues in my life and that is a gift I have been awaiting my entire life. I often say that there is no price too great to pay for a meaningful life, but a friend suggested I simply say instead that I am living a meaningful life. I like that.

I see that struggle stories are in the air, and are a tough habit to drop. I am not paying a high price for my life, and it is meaningful. It’s the same reason I don’t need to say I have a rescue dog or a rescue donkey. I just have a dog and a donkey.

I am exploring this notion of faith, a central element to a spiritual life, and the best hope for a spiritual life, the best way I know to find moments of peace, and whispers of faith. My friend – she is also a teacher to me – says I need to gather myself now and let life happen. I have done everything I can do to about the exterior world – about selling the farm, about money, about moving, about loving my life and finding love. My decisions to change were good, and I believe in them. So for now, it is time to take that leap, to stop. To let life happen, rather than try and make life happen. All around me I hear the clamor of arguments and feel the stings of fear and anger. Within me, the world is becoming clearer, calmer, meaningful.

I am learning about me, liking me better. It is true, I think,  that you cannot love anyone if you cannot love yourself. In my meditations – a deepening part of my life – I have come to know me, to see who I am, who I want to be. I am beginning to understand the power of living in the moment, of staying here where I am now, rather than there, where I have been, or here, where I might be going.  Shame, like guilt and fear, are geographies, spaces to cross. They are not made of anything real, the mind’s useless sewage. I can’t change the past or control the future, I can only experience where I am as I end the day, share these thoughts with you, type these words.

Those of you who have shared my thoughts and mind these past few years know what it was like, see it more clearly than I did or do. My mind ran like a rabbit from life and love and fear all day and all night. I did not think it could ever change, but it is. It has. It will. You just have to tell yourself that you can’t quite. You can’t stop. Because you are never done, it is never done.

I just close my eyes, take a breath, hold Maria’s hand perhaps, gather a dog or two, and then. Leap.

Lenore is not a puppy anymore, there is some gray on her chin and she sleeps a little more than she used to, but still has boundless energy and a passion for people and food of any kind. She is the Love Dog, always, the most generous living thing I have known, the most unconditionally loving and accepting. Hers is a light that lights up everything around it. I saw the chance to take this portrait of her today, and it spoke to her sweet, sweet soul.

I overexposed this photo a bit, because it captured the particular time when the sun came up over the pasture and was moving towards the farmhouse. The space between light and dark.

Last week, I went to see a shaman, and she leaned forward and asked me, in a soft voice. “What kind of man are you?”

And I heard myself saying this to her. I am a man who believes that men are destroying the world. And that only women can stop them, if they will. And, I said, I wish to be a different kind of man. For me, being masculine means offering love and support, not conflict and greed.

Men are making wars. Committing crimes. Committing acts of violence. Wrecking economies. Destroying work. Destroying the planet. Are ravenously greedy. Anger. Dominating.  Turning our lives into arguments and conflicts. Refusing to listen. Refusing to hear.

What will stop men from destroying the world?, she asked.

Women, I said. Only women can stop men from destroying the world.

Do you sometimes think you have failed?

That you’re too big?

Too small?

Too ugly?

Too tall?

Too broke?

Too strange? Too this? Too that?

Let go of it. Dance a new dance. Sing a new song.

Tell a new story. Which is this. No one is really powerful enough to make you feel

so wrong. But you.