8 June

Save The Animals, Save The Earth

by Jon Katz
Save The Animals, Save The Earth
Save The Animals, Save The Earth

More than a month ago, sitting on a park bench in New York City, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the Dalai Lama of the Sioux Nation and the spiritual leader of the Horse Nation, asked to talk with me, he wished to explain to me that I had come to the carriage horse story in response to the horse’s prayers. On the cusp of being banned from our greatest city, and vanishing from the sight, understanding and consciousness of human beings, the horses had called out to spiritual people and people who loved animals to answer their call and save them suffering the fate of all of the horses of the Indian tribes. The chief told me a dream he had in which a gray horse appeared to say goodbye to the Indian tribes, “we are being driven from the world,” the horse said, “slaughtered and sent away. When we are needed, we shall return.”

The chief said I would be having visions and dreams and urged me not to fear them, Native-Americans have visions and dreams all of the times, they worship them. He told me the white animals are sacred, a sign that the world is changing, a call for human beings to come together, to stop destroying the earth and doing violence to one another, to see that Mother Earth is bleeding. If the horses go, he said, the rain and wind and thunder would follow them, and disappear from the world.

Since then, I have been thinking about Chief Arvol’s words and trying to grasp the meaning of the white lambs that followed so closely his prediction. There is something different about these two lambs, their eyes follow me, greet me, they permit me to come within a few feet of them, to kneel and take their photos to sit and talk with them. I hear from the horses every night, they call out to me to remember them, to help them remain in their sacred connection with human beings and the work that they have always done.

The horses are needed, the chief told me. The earth is bleeding to death and they have come to help us save it. It is not cruel for a horse to work with people, Chief Arvol told me, it is their most sacred tradition, it is what they need to do to survive in the world. When the Indians had no work for their horses to do, they vanished. When the horses on the plans had no work to do with the new white settlers, they vanished also. The only horses that have survived, said the chief, are those blessed to work with human beings, and horses who give people work are much loved by them. In the twisted Western culture, this is considered abuse. In the Horse Nation, it is the most sacred and ancient bond.

And the horses are powerful. They have awakened so many people to the great injustice done to them and the people who live and work with them and ride them in the great park. The Draft Horse Journal believes the horses are powerful indeed. They have united the city in support of them, perhaps showing us what it might mean to be human, how we can fight to save the world, as we have fought to save the horses and will continue to fight to save them.

Once I get my head around something and think about it,  I usually get it, I am getting the purpose of the lambs, the messages of the horses.  There is the political thing, the mayor, the money, the animal rights people. There are the arguments – the horses are being abused, the horses are not. Beyond that is the most powerful thing, the spiritual thing. The lambs have come to teach me about it,  to encourage me, when they stare at me in their way, I understand that animals everywhere – including our own – are calling to us to save the animals in the world, to keep them among us, to find good work for them to do, to treat them well and make sure they are not forgotten or banished again.

8 June

Back To The Future: Technology And Spirituality

by Jon Katz
Technology And Me
Technology And Me

The tragedy of technology, the writer and engineer Samuel Florman wrote decades ago, was that for everything it brings us, it takes something away. I think we all know this story – we are increasingly slaves to messages, e-mails, notifications, likes, too much information raining down on us from all directions at all times. We are losing the sense of thinking in our own heads, many people are becoming message, grieving, soothing, like,  and news addicts, their consciousness is increasingly agitated by information and connection we cannot always control.

Every day, I see people grieving for cats and dogs that died years ago, and hundreds more people rushing to be sorry for their loss, and to share their own. Every day, my inbox is flooding with the ranting political messages from the left and right, our civic culture has become a dispiriting cesspool of rage and accusation. There is nothing uplifting in these messages that I can find.

The vast messages are not, in fact, messages at all, but feelings, impulses, unfiltered emotions and thoughts. The most wonderful messages I receive mostly come in my Post Office Box (P.O.Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816), people actually have to stop and think about what they want to say.

The corporate nation has taken away any vestiges of privacy or personal space and we can only hope we never get the kind of government that wants to do bad things with the information it can gather on us. Every friend I have is talking about how to deal with the intrusion of technology in lives, with the lack of personal connection and communications,  the managing of equipment and hardware and security, the the stress of coping with so much information that comes to us in an unbounded and intrusive way. One friend is planning to travel overseas this month and she is considering leaving her cell phone at all. I doubt she can do it.

Another friend has become seriously addicted to catastrophic global news, he is coming to see the world in imminent peril, he trawls the Web for information about the decline of Mother Earth, his million to follow every story and alert us to it. He speaks of the news the way addicts talk of drugs or alcohol, he can no longer turn it off. I am going to take his Ipad away from him for a few days, he has agreed, but the terrified look in his eyes tells me it will be very hard for him to do.

My own story is more benign but also serious. New technologies like my blog and Facebook have literally saved me as a writer and altered  my creative life in profoundly meaning ways. But I am also struggling to balance the crush of technology with a spiritual life, peace of mind and the space to think creatively. I miss all of the people I used to speak with but who now only communicate by text and e-mail. A major reason I chose to leave my long-time publisher, Random House, is that hardly anyone in that good and worthy place will speak to me directly any longer, and in some ways, this was choking my creative life, turning me angry, leaving me confused and disconnected. My new editors speaks to me, it makes all of the difference.

I am not on Facebook all day, I do not see half of the messages I get there, it’s now well more than 1,000 a day. If I read them all, I would be doing nothing else. I love to blog and put up my photos, it is both spiritual and peaceful for me, I will keep doing it. I am thinking of taking one day a week – a Saturday perhaps – and joining with Maria in having a Sabbath kind of day (I am not religious but a am drawn to the idea of a day of rest) and turning off the phone, and messaging system. I would still drive for things I need – the hardware and grocery store –  and blog but put some boundaries around my space. No e-mails, no news either.

I have come to see the news as part of a system that increasingly has little to do with my life, it distorts the world, it does not keep me informed. It is unhealthy most of the time, and there is no healthy way to pay much attention to it and remain undamaged and in a spiritual place. Technology is a powerful force in our lives, I see that every day I must consider how I wish to manage it and keep my mind healthy and free.

8 June

Red With Chickens

by Jon Katz
Border Collies
Border Collies

I think the hens have come to see Red as a protector. There are many dogs that eat chickens, and chickens usually run from them – they stay well clear of Frieda, and don’t come to close to Lenore either. But when Red is lying down by the gate which he usually is as he always is in hope of going there to work, the hens come and hang around with him, lie down with him. I never really know what the motives of animals are, as we all tend to project our own motives into their lives. Photography gives me a wonderful way of chronicling the experience, we can all make up our own minds.

Red has an unusual quality for any animal, especially a dog. He is very businesslike, very focused on his work and the other animals seem to sense that he is safe.

8 June

Cow Ring, Big Barn

by Jon Katz
Big Barn
Big Barn

Sometimes, the most beautiful things are the ones you walked past every day and never quite see. In the morning, the rising sun beams through a hole in the outer barn wall and spotlights the old cow ring in the big stall, and the webs around it. This image was enchanting to me this morning, I must have seen it a thousand times yet never really seen it at all.

8 June

Lamb Connection

by Jon Katz
Animal Connection
Animal Connection

The lambs seem very connected to one another. They explore the world together, climb on rocks,and check on one another. Very often, when I enter the pasture, I see Liam or one of the other lambs come up and put their noses to the other, touch heads. It  might be simple curiosity or affection or concern. Or perhaps playfulness, but it is touching to see.

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