I was sitting in my study when I saw Chloe walk past the window and head towards the road. No Maria. I ran outside calling for Maria, but couldn’t find her or the pony. I looked up across the road and I saw them heading up to the hill, a beautiful hay field. Maria had been walking ahead of Chloe, who was on a rope and I didn’t see her in the window.
I ran back and got my camera and climbed up the hill as they were crossing the top at dusk.
Maria takes Chloe for a walk every day, it is a peaceful thing they do. Chloe stops every now and then to graze, but is extremely responsive to Maria and goes where she is told. She is big enough to do what she wants, but she is either too agreeable or just doesn’t know it. Pony mares are notoriously difficult, but Chloe is generally a sweetheart. Once in awhile, she doesn’t feel like riding and puts up a fuss, but Maria has that in hand.
Touching class went well today, Chloe completely gets it and touches the pan every time, to the delight of Maria, the donkeys get it but only do it when they feel like it. That is the key to understanding donkeys, they only will do something when they can be convinced it is their idea, not yours. Maria has a series of 26 exercises to do to help her communicate with Chloe and work together. Maria says “touch,” and if Chloe or the donkeys touch the pan, they get a treat.
The other morning, the sheep were out grazing in the far back pasture, I send Red and Fate out to go find them, and a few minutes later they came running back to the barn. Fate rides shotgun, she gets ahead of the sheep or runs alongside of them, Red brings up the rear and keeps them moving.
The relationship between a border collie and a sheep is mystical, curious and almost unique. Border collies control sheep with their eyes, as much as their bodies. The border collie eye is an intense, almost hypnotic stare. It doesn’t need to be eye-to-eye. It works best on what are called “light” livestock, less well on heavy livestock like cattle or cows. The eye is often accompanied by a predator-like crouch, the sheep think they are being stalked, and being prey animals, they begin to move away from the stalker.
Often, when Fate is approaching the sheep, she will look to the side, as above, and the sheep will freeze. Sometimes, she will look them directly in the eye. As her herding skills develop, I am encouraging her to use her eye, to slow down and test the sheep. This is where we are not. Lying down on the ground with her is helping me to see how this fascinating connection works.
Last night, we went to a little museum in Shushan, N.Y. to hear a wonderful singer named Ellis Delaney, she is from Minneapolis by way of Texas, and she was engaging and gifted, it was so special to sit in that small place and hear her beautiful songs. Early on in the concert, I began to get sick, I could feel my insides turning to jelly, I knew I couldn’t hold out long.
At the break, I bolted from the museum and rushed outside, I was almost violently ill, my inside had turned to jelly. when Maria found me she ordered me home. Before I left, Ellis talked about Radical Acceptance, an analytic way of facing problems. She had flown into Albany for concerts in Shusan and Saratoga, but her guitar, “an extension of my arm,” got lost at the airport.
She said she practiced Radical Acceptance at that moment, she made arrangements to rent another guitar and decided to accept what she could not change or control. I got to practice radical acceptance all last night and this morning, and just got out of bed. I have a big weekend coming up – our blogging weekend with Pamela Rickenbach – and last night, around 4 a.m. I went outside – there was a warm and beautiful wind, the stars were clear – and I threw up arms to the stars and asked the angels to make me better.
I closed my eyes – I had no clothes on – and offered myself to the spirits in my own ritual of acceptance, I felt awful. In a minute, Maria came outside, startled to see me standing out naked with my arms turned upwards, but then she joined me, and we held hands and closed our eyes and let the wind caress us, and heal me. I will tell you something many of you already know, I am not the kind of man who easily runs outside with no clothes on in the middle of the night to offer himself to the spirits of the earth for healing, this is not something I would ever have done for nearly all of my life.
And how lucky, to be able to share this way of looking at the world with someone who understood it without my even speaking.
It did feel wonderful. You know what else? I could feel it begin to work. I could feel my body respond. I knew it would be all right, whatever happened.
Before that, I considered feeling sorry for myself. Pamela was coming this afternoon, a dozen people were gathering to join us, the weekend was opening my eyes to all sorts of new directions for me in life. Why was this happening to me today?, I wondered. It was an echo of an old thought, an old way of thinking. I shifted a gear in my head. Okay, I said, people get sick sometimes, I didn’t get hit by a car, or have open heart surgery. I’ve got a stomach bug, let’s see what life has in store for me this weekend. I’m not going to complain about it, or pity myself, or wonder why I was singled out. Everyone in this world has it worse than I do.
I embrace the notion of Radical Acceptance. I have written before about my transformational moment with the Rev. Billy Graham, whose crusade I was covering some years ago. He told me to be careful about what I complained about, I would face many problems in life, and the key to a spiritual and centered life was not living without problems, but understanding how to deal with the problems I would face.
Do not speak poorly of your life, he cautioned me. It is listening.
I can testify that it is difficult to accept what you don’t wish to be true, and it is even more painful to not accept what you don’t wish to be true and cannot change or control. This idea is a key element in most spiritual teachings, old and new. Graham warned me not to complain about my life, about taxes, hardships, rising prices, arrogant politicians, feckless friends. If I didn’t learn this, he cautioned, you would spend much of your life in anger, and misery and lament.
I knew the idea was important, but it took me a long time and lots of hard work to grasp it. It seems we are all taught to complain – just listen to the people around us – but very few are taught not to complain.
This was prophetic. All around me I hear people lamenting the nature of life – disappointment, the death of people and animals, injury and illness, taxes and bosses, the left or the right, financial struggle, failures and missed opportunities.
Loss and disappointment and suffering are not only a part of life, they are life itself. They are as much a part of living as breathing, no one escapes them, avoids them, or can alter the world to make it perfect for them. What, I often wonder, did they expect? The wise man and woman accepts this, makes peace with life, the rest of the world complains about it, complaint the great chorus of our world.
Almost every day, someone sends me a message, online or by mail, telling me I have a perfect life. I live on a farm with animals and someone I love, they would love my life. These are gracious messages, I appreciate them. But I do not, of course, have a perfect life, nor would I ever want so shallow an existence. Having a farm with animals, or someone I love is great, but a perfect life is beyond human reach or expectation. How empty it would seem to me, and of course, no one living my life would ever call it perfect.
I was happy to hear Ellis talk of Radical Acceptance last night, I thought of it this morning when I couldn’t get out of bed and wondered how I could possibly get through this weekend. I accepted it, I turned it over to the stars, I began to heal and recover. I am just about fine now, my weekend will be exciting.
I embraced Radical Acceptance not too long ago when my own notions of life began to break apartment, and i simply could not accept what was suddenly happening to me. I learned in therapy and meditation to accept life as it comes to me, and be grateful for all of it, and it altered my life. Ellis was an inspiration to me, I can only imagine what she felt when her guitar was lost. It could have been so much worse, she said, she has a five-year-old daughter. What if she were lost?
So the spirits were listening, and I am feeling strong and clear again. I am eating a carefully prepared lunch of rice and pears. I feel like a monk coming out of a deep meditation. My weekend is here, and I am ready for it.
