Ma is filling out a bit, there is milk in her udder and her lambs are active and seem content. She is a good mother, this has not been easy for her. Tomorrow, Memorial Day, Maria and I are going to meet George Forss at his art gallery in Cambridge, N.Y., we are going to set up our cameras for the Memorial Day parade.
George and I take photos very differently, he is very careful about his, he takes five or six. I take scores, if not hundreds. Later on in the afternoon, I’m going to pick George up and we are going to see “Godzilla.” It sounds like the human part of the movie is so-so, the special Godzilla effects are supposed to be great. I can’t imagine anyone better to go with than George, I am trying to persuade Maria, who is reluctant. The original movie scared the wits out of her.
The white lambs are often together, they day is different from other lambs. They are often well apart from Ma, who has begun grazing away from the pole barn. They are always together. They are comfortable around me and my camera now, I can come close to them, sit down. They do not hop and jump around like the other lambs, and they seem content to observe their surroundings – me, Maria, the pasture, the house, the dogs.
They sit in the pole barn when it is hot. They take their time answering Ma’s pleading calls to them. They like to be with the other lambs, but to not play with them.
They do not fear Red, they often walk up to him, and they do not run from him. They look me in the eye when I appear, they convey the idea that they are trying to tell me something, that they are bringing me messages. They look into the camera. Have they come to tell me something? I don’t know. I think they have come for a purpose, yet to be revealed.
We doubled the size of the Dahlia Garden today, we took about 50 bulbs out of the cold storage room in the basement including some of the new yellow ones we got (maybe some black Dahlia’s too), Maria did the hard work of digging out a new bed on the left, we have doubled the size of the garden. Dahlia’s are late bloomers, we expect the garden to be up around July. Maria worked hard for hours to dog out the bed, haul manure and soil, plant the bulbs.
I have realized in recent weeks that this is no longer work I can do, I can help out but I can’t dig and plant much. I felt badly about it – I am not built to watch other people work – but I decided to accept who I am where I am in my life. I am not going to struggle against reality or complain about getting older. Grace is about acceptance in many ways, and I will not speak poorly of my life. I do a lot of things around the farm, but there are some things I cannot do.
I appreciate having some wisdom to love who I am and accept who I am. That was a long time in coming, and the Dahlia garden has reminded me of it. Fortunately, Maria loves to do this physical labor, I decided to get wise and I left her do it, I brought food and drink to her, helped where and when I could. We will have a beautiful Dahlia garden, I am grateful for it.
Over the past year, we’ve gotten to know Bernie Hyatt well, he is our UPS driver and I am not sure I have ever known a more courteous, hard-working or efficient working man than Bernie. He and his wife Pam are also passionate animal lovers. Bernie is here several times a week at least, he always has biscuits for dogs, and we have gotten to be good friends. Even Frieda has given up barking at him, she pretended not to see him today. We depend on UPS for many things around here, and Bernie is dependable but now, more like a member of the family. People all over town hope he will choose to stay on this route.
Last week we invited Bernie and Pam to come to the farm to spend some time with the animals – Pam follows the blog and is into the lambing drams. Out of uniform, Bernie is lots of fun, I’m used to seeing him rushing to one place or another, he works long and sometimes grueling hours without complaint or mishap. He can recite the name, nature and address of every cat, dog or goat in the country, he carries photos of many of them on his Iphone.
The Hyatts hung out with the lambs, hugged dogs and cats, photographed chickens and brought two bags of carrots for the donkeys who wasted no time loving them. Bernie said he told his kids that was more of a real author than their Uncle Harry but not as big as John Grisham. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, he said.
Why not, I answered? It is sure true. I love many things about the country, but one of them is that is is possible to get to know someone like Bernie, someone one might never get to talk to in New York or Los Angeles or New Jersey. I am grateful he felt comfortable enough with us to come visit here and bring his wife.
I believe it is connection that drives most human beings, and I feel so many connections here. Bernie and Pam are coming back for the first Open House on the weekend of June 21-22.
Several weeks ago I met In New York with Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the leader of the Lakota clan of the Sioux nation, the 19th generation Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Bundle. Chief Arvol, the leader of the Horse Nation, invited me to meet him in New York, he believes I am an answer to the prayers of the horses in New York.
I will never know for sure if that is so, but I do know I have been called to this story by forces much more powerful than me.
Chief Arvol, the holiest man in the Sioux nation, told me that he believes that the appearance of white animals in the world signals the re-uniting of humanity, the re-connection of human beings to spirit, Mother Earth and an end to fear, abandonment, loneliness and conflict. He believes the horses must stay in New York, their work and sacred connection to human beings affirmed and respected. To banish them would, he said, be a catastrophe.
The white animals have come to bring humanity together and to help humans understand the urgency of saving the earth.
The appearance of white animals, said Chief Arvol, speaks of a time of great urgency. They have come, like the horses, to bring healing to Mother Earth and to humanity, both in desperate need. Chief Arvol said he understood my reluctance to accept the idea that the horses were calling to me to tell the story and share their message, but he said I would come to accept it, and I would receive messages from other animals in my life. This is happening.
A day before I met Chief Avrol, two white lambs were born here on the farm to Ma, an older ewe I decided to euthanize until a country vet, an animal healer, persuaded me to try and take additional steps to heal her. I did, and she has survived and has struggled, but is growing healthy. The results were two lambs – we called them Deb and Jake – unlike any other lambs I have ever seen. They are spirit animals, profoundly spiritual creatures, calm, beautiful, frail with a presence an aura that has touched me deeply. I have been photographing them ever since they arrived, the light follows them and comes from within them, they carry it with them wherever they go.
I showed an Iphone photo of them to Chief Arvol, and he laughed and smiled. Sacred animals, he said.
This morning, Maria held Deb and the two exchanged heartbeats, I could have cried watching it.
They became one in just the way Chief Arvol predicted would happen when the white animals come. In his essay “The Sacred White Animals Of Prophecy“, trainer and author Scott Alexander King writes that the white animals “are here to fulfill an ancient prophesy to invite us to follow them into the forest – into an unfamiliar place of deep healing and personal acceptance so that we might finally emerge into the other side as rebirthed and reformed individuals, whole and healthy beings in an interrelated world. They are reminding us to reclaim our beauty, our soul-essence and our Personal Power; to find a place of trust and acceptance within ourselves, to know our Sacred Self and to systematically and forever banish the world of “evil” in its unlimited guises.”
Chief Arvol’s prediction for me has come at least partly true, I knew it the minute I pulled the lambs from Ma’s swollen belly and saw them struggle to their feet and come to life. They had come for a reason, they had come with a prophecy of their own. In my long journey of rebirth and renewal, blinded by so many years of pain, anger, fear and abandonment, I am finally learning to see what it is front of me, and to accept what I cannot understand or even explain. I am finally strong enough to look anyone in the eye and say the animals are talking to me, and I am listening to them. I have shed my fear and skepticism of such an idea, it is no longer a question for me.
The journey began for me years ago, when I left my world behind and came to my farm and the animals there and began listening to them and hearing their messages for me, and feeling their healing of me. On the hero journey, guides often appear in the form of animal helpers to get us through the darkness and back into the world.
I know a lot about animal helpers. A dog brought me to my farm, a dog brought me to Maria, a donkey taught me the meaning of compassion, a spirit dog has entered my life as a guide, the horses called me to a deeper understanding of myself and the role of animals in the world. Animals brought me to rebirth and renewal, and animals are here again in my life, the journey is never done. If you listen to them, whole worlds will open up to you, so I suppose it is not really all that much of a surprise that the horses are talking to me, I’ve been talking to animals for years.
The New York Carriage Horses are shrouded in controversy and surrounded by hate and danger, yet they have brought me nothing but connection and meaning and passion for my work and my words. And they are helping to unify their divided city, to show the people that they can all come together to save the earth and the animals. Now come the white animals, just as an Indian Chief predicted in Central Park, and I am called to go deeper in my search for rebirth and understanding.
I have lambed a dozen times, seen the birth of scores of lambs. These two are different, they have a message for me, they are calling me to personal acceptance. This morning, I awoke trembling and said to Maria that I wanted to go further in my spiritual life, and then I heard a lamb calling from the pasture, to her mother, perhaps to me. I see why they are here, I am anxious to hear their prophecy.
