If you have a farm, you need weather forecasts. Weather effects all of the animals, and the things they eat and drink. This morning, my Iphone began beeping early, and I awoke to no fewer than five “severe weather alerts.” The Weather Channel hasn’t yet begun naming windstorms as it does winter storms but I suspect that is coming. Amid all of the beeping and hot red graphics and stacked warnings were urgent cautions about objects blowing, falling trees, downed power lines, slippery traction for cars, flooding and roof and structural damage. Be careful, stay indoors, alerts to come.
This is the point where I see that I know all I need to know and turn off the phone. The alerts can stack up. We did have some wind and rain and it was muddy out there. The animals huddled in the pole barn, and in between gusts they went out into the pasture to graze a bit. I took Lenore and Red to the groomer. I went shopping for food. At the grocery store, a customer asked the cashier if she heard that we were going to get “big gusts, up to 65 miles per hour maybe.” Yes, she said, she had heard that and what she did was tie a bright purple banner to the antennae on her car so it would blow in the wind on the way to work. It was pretty, she said. And then she turned to me and said “well what are you doing about the wind?”
I am taking photos of the wind, I said, no small thing, since you can’t really see it. But sometimes you can get a photo that gives off a sense of it. We both laughed and high-fived each other. Stay inside, I said. Oh, I will, she said, I’m here till 5.
I am beginning to understand how closely tied fear and anger are to self-loathing, to shame and regret. My own search for a spiritual life began in earnest when I moved to upstate New York, bought a cabin on a mountaintop and wrote “Running To The Mountain.” I’ve told that story in books and blogs and have no need to repeat it. I suppose it was the fear I had been living with that sparked my urge for something more peaceful, more meaningful. I did not know how hard the process would be, how long, taxing and complex. I suppose I had the fantasy of the perfect life that so many people have when they think about spirituality – or buying a farm, or going off to a monastery.
The people on farms and in monasteries know better. Spirituality is not about where you go, but who are and who you want to be. For many years I dealt with fear in a medical context – therapists, analysts, MD’s, pills and medications, prescriptions, etc. That approach did help me sleep and get through the day, but it also meant I never had to deal with the reality of who I was. So I turned to a different kind of healing – spiritual counselors, naturopaths, massage, chiropractic, shamans, meditation. Here, I find the approach for me and began to move closer to where I want to be. Lately I have been hearing a lot about self-love and about shame. Shame is a trauma symptom I gather and I have only recently become aware of how much shame I carry, how many regrets and sorrows. So the next chapter for me is to understand self-love. My teacher at the moment has told me that I need to love myself in the same way that I love Maria, and only then will be able to love her fully, love myself and other people and get to the next place I want to be. I know what she means.
I do not love myself in that way. I never though to connect them. But it is a big idea. Thomas Merton, a strong spiritual influence in my life, also wrote frequently about self love. It was essential, he wrote, in the spiritual context, essential to getting close to God or each person’s idea of what God is. Merton understood, as most truly spiritual people do, that this is a personal decision, and everyone makes it in his or her own way. In our culture, people beat other people over the head all the time with their ideas about what God must be. I am still looking.
It begins with self-love, the only real antidote to fear and judgment. I have begun in this way: when I look back at things in my life that I regret, that make me ashamed and comfortable, I stop. I did my best. I did what I could, as almost every human being does. I forgive them, I forgive me. There are always many voices out there to tell us what we did wrong, how we failed, how we betrayed and abandoned, messed up and stumbled, what we need to fear and beware. There are so few telling us that we are good and beautiful, true and important. I see that I have to be that voice for me. I am the one that counts.
How many times have I picked up a phone in panic or sent out a frantic e-mail. I don’t do that anymore. I talk to me. Without self-love, I am hollow inside, my love is a reflection and a reflex, but how true and genuine can it really be? I am learning to smile when I think of me, and when I look back on this precious hero journey into the soul.
This morning, out in the pasture, where I go at least once a day to check on the animals in between chores, the donkeys came over to say hello to me. Donkeys are intuitive, they read us and our emotions, they sense what we are feeling. They watched and waited. Lulu, imperious and aloof, stood back. Fanny brayed softly, hoping to charm me out of the carrot in my pocket. Simon wanted some attention, an ear rub, a neck scratch, even a hug and a kiss on the nose. These intuitive creatures look right through to me. And I closed my eyes and imagined them all saying to me in a chorus, you are good, you are beautiful, your light shines brightly.
Creativity is not a job for Maria, it is here life, her way of being. All around her, beautiful and arresting things pop up. I went to visit her in the Studio Barn this morning and saw her windowsill, sparkling in the sunlight.
A cold front is sweeping in this morning, behind strong winds and rain and a glorious sky. All night, Storm Center sent out warnings – wind and flood warnings, freeze alerts. Drive carefully. Stay indoors, Fasten things down. Stay away from creeks. Black Ice.
They forgot to alert us to be ready for this great and enchanting beauty, this affirmation of the seasons, the wonder of Mother Earth clearing her throat, puffing up her chest. Alert: This kind of sky can take your breath away and make you feel small and humble.
This photo is for Pheby, wife of Jabez Buckley. She dies in 1848, is buried next to her daughter and her husband in a small plot surrounded by a rusty mesh fence on a lonely country road. I have driven by Pheby’s grave so many times in my life her, but recently, I have begun to stop and pay her a visit. I speak to her, and tell of her my life, toss a flower over every now and then, take a photo so she will know that she and her life with Jabez are not forgotten, in a country that sheds it old ways , shakes them off like a dog shakes fleas. And what is respect anyway? Is it money in the bank? Health insurance?
What would Pheby make of us, I wonder? Of what we value, of what we want, of a world where spirituality is a late night skit, a joke, something to jeer at and rush past. Oh, those people again. I get sad when I visit Pheby, I don’t know why, sometimes I cry. But not for her. For me.
