I suppose it is the nature of my life, my story, in a way. Here, once more, approaching my 68th birthday on August 8, I am thinking about my life, about rebirth and change. I am beginning to be old. I have plenty of time to finish my work here, but not infinite time. My choices are important.
I am facing great change again in my life, as always, it is calling to me. I understand that at my age, change is the very opposite of what most people seek, I am used to being an anomaly, I am committed to becoming the human being I wish to be, I will work at it to my last breath. And I have a partner who is open to change and seeks a life of purpose. We will not live for money, we will live to keep our spirits alive.
And there is something new calling to me. It is impossible to sustain the current level of human consumption, wrote Pope Francis in his encyclical, “Laudato Si.” We share a common humanity, he wrote, we shall heal the world or perish together. I have been reading this extraordinary work ever since it was published last month, it comes at a time where great change and opportunity looms in my life, and with my life with Maria. I want to answer this call.
“Laudato Si” speaks to how I wish to live, it addresses some of the major goals remaining to me as approach my seventh decade of life. My life is still marked by clutter and waste, the life I wish to lives requires commitment and rebirth..
Like many people in this world, I am just beginning to fully grasp the schism that exists between what I want, and have had, and what I need, and will have. At certain times in my life, I have been confronted with choices – change my life or keep it as it is. Sometimes I have chosen stasis, sometimes change. I am with Maria now, and the construct of my life is different. We make these choices together, or not at all.
I reject the notion that change belongs only to the young. My greatest change in life came in my sixth decade, it is underway still.
It is difficult to change one’s life, I have experienced that and I appreciate it. I appreciate that most people cannot and will not change.
Having a partner who shares this passion for a meaningful life is new to me. Thank God for Maria. I cannot do this alone, not any more, not at my age. We both fear the enslavement of the modern world, living our lives for the illusion of security and safety. Hospice work has taught me not to live my life for the end of it. We week a creative life, a life with community, we wish to help heal the earth that we and our fellow human beings are damaging.
It is exciting and frightening now for us. Circumstance has brought us to the brink of great change, and we are talking day and night about what we believe, how we wish to live, how we need to change, preserve our creative life. To that I add my own personal goals – I want to live more simply, to live in accordance with what I need, not what I want. I want a spiritual life, a life of self-awareness, authenticity, connection.
Maria and I both are committed to our lives with animals, our dogs, donkeys, our pony and cats and chickens, we are committed to share our lives on our blogs, in our work, in my books and photos. I want to come to peace with the meaning of money in my life. I want to grasp that we live in a world of diminishing resources, and that I live in a greedy and arrogant country that takes more than it’s share, and hurts the poor people of the world, and the world itself. It is a country I love, and we all serve it in our own way.
My way is to practice honesty and compassion and to explore the light and color of the world for others. And to share the lessons of my life with people who wish to learn with me.
We spent four years working to keep the first Bedlam Farm from being foreclosed, and we succeeded, although it was a pyrrhic victory at best.Our sacrifice has forced us to consider our lives, and that is so often how change comes. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we are now asking ourselves some of the most important questions we have ever asked ourselves in our time together:
– What do we really need to live our lives?
– What do we really want our lives to be?
– How do we wish to age, and in particular, how do I wish to age. I am older than Maria.
– Do we really need to own a home with upkeep and taxes and mortgages? How can we best preserve our commitment to a creative life? How can we change in a healthy and meaningful way? Help the earth, help the poor, keep our animals and care for them. Be creative, every day.
The world around us is changing, I wish to acknowledge this in a positive way, even as the world around me seems to slide ever deeper into denial. And my own world has changed. I no longer have the luxury of being oblivious, not in my own life, not in my life with Mother Earth. I am at a crossroads. Again.
And what does this mean? I will share the journey, as always.
Wrote Francis in Laudato Si: “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades, this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.”
I did not come to this point heroically, or even selflessly, I was dragged there, kicking and screaming and clawing my sorry way. But I am there, nonetheless, and I want to heed the call. Perhaps that is the final gift of my wonderful first Bedlam Farm. It made me see myself anew.
Some of my reasons are selfish, of course, and personal, some, I hope are about being human. I am no saint, I am slow to see the tracks of my own life. But is time for to recognize the need for changes in my lifestyle, production and consumption. I see that this is the choice every one of us will soon be called upon to make, one way or the other. One day at a time, one thing at a time. Crisis and mystery, always around the corner.