This month, a covenant explored, a collaboration considered, a coming together of two ideas, the Bedlam Farm experiment, and the Pompanuck Farm ideal. My writing class has moved from the Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education to the Pompanuck Farm Institute, a beautiful 78-acre farm, spiritual retreat and environmental campus just outside of my town.
Sometimes my class meets inside of a beautiful building at Pompanuck called the Round House, it is a great indoor space to meet, but today we moved outside under the tent, where we could look out at Pompanuck’s gardens, ponds, forests and streams. All the students wanted to go, I balked. I worried that it might be too beautifully distracting for a writing class, I am a Calvinist that way, but it was just right. This is the most creative space I have ever tried to teach in, with one of the most creative classes I have had the privilege to teach to.
We all felt at home, at ease, stirred by Mother Earth’s sweet embrace.
Behind this idea, a stirring notion of collaboration. Pompanuck Farms is a spiritual retreat, a beautiful space committed to Mother Earth and the natural world. The Bedlam Farm idea was born as a center for creative encouragement. Scott Carrino, the co-director of Pompanuck, his wife Lisa, Maria and I have become friends.
What, we have wondered, if the two ideas could come together in some ways. At the first Bedlam Farm, a sprawling 90 acre farm with four restored barns, we had the facilities for our Open Houses, art workshops, writing classes. At our new farm, the Open Houses work well – the animals are central – but we don’t have the buildings for our other projects. The recession and the new world of publishing sent us packing. We kept most of our dreams, but not all of them.
Can dreams return?
Pompanuck and Bedlam Farm were both challenged by the great recession to maintain our ideals, both places had to retrench and rethink what we could do and wished to do. Scott and Lisa opened the Round House Cafe, but Pompanuck is very much alive as a retreat and nature center.
What is these two ideas could come together, if we could re-commit to these dreams, give rebirth to our ideals, create a spiritual, creative and ecological covenant together? In addition to my writing class, we are holding a day-long Creativity Conference at Pompanuck in October, a gather of 50 members of the Creative Group At Bedam Farm from all over the country on the eve of our October Open House. It is not something we could have done at our farm.
I don’t know if this is possible, or where it might go. But the first step – teaching writing there – is underway, and I feel the spiritual and creative magic in Pompanuck, it fits us like a glove in many ways. We want the same things, we have the same dreams in so many ways. Maria is considering teaching an art workshop at Pompanuck this Fall, my writing class – exceptionally motivated and committed writers – are planning to publish a book of short stories in the Spring.
Pompanuck is fertile ground for us, there is no better place to teach and learn about writing. Or for Maria to explore her art.
Red and Fate came along. Red sat quietly as usual. Fate immediately rushed into the pond for a swim and came tearing back to greet and jump on every single person under the tent. I am struggling to curb her enthusiasm for jumping up on people, it is hard for her to stop. (A major training challenge. She is a mayhem machine, this photo marked the only second she was still during the two hours of the class.)
In this collaboration with Pompanuck, I am inspired by the need to uplift people, light the creative spark and help heal the world. We must not think that this kind of covenant cannot change the world. I believe it will benefit the earth, society, that it can call forth a goodness which will spread like a contagion. We cannot ease the suffering of the world, we cannot by ourselves health the earth, but we can call forth a goodness and generosity of spirit that will inevitably spread, just as hate and fear spreads.
Love and creativity are a contagion, as well as rancor and argument.
I am excited by this new covenant with Pompanuck, eager to see where it may go. So is Maria. My wish is that it enables us to lie more fully and peacefully and to feel that life on earth is both hopeful and worthwhile.
