A border collie has to do a lot of things with sheep, one is to stop them if they are panicking or running away, as they sometimes too. Fate, at seven months, has not been able to do that yet well, she is getting close. Today, she didn’t stop the sheep as they ran for the barn, but she did turn them by rushing ahead of them and circling them. They paused, then stopped. Next we’ll work on driving the sheep, moving steadily behind them. It’s Red one weakness, he comes on too strong, I think Fate will have a more subtle approach to that.
Food is life itself for animals, they spend most of their lives looking for it, in the cold months particularly. Feeding time is the most satisfying chore, the most nourishing. All of our stock animals are grazers, but the grass is mostly gone, and what there is has no nourishment. The good hay we provide them offers warmth and energy, it is critical on this bitter cold days in January through March.
Then, we supplement the hay with grain for extra strength and energy in the bitter cold. It is windy today, and getting cold, the sky was beautiful and preening, the animals were especially hungry. Food connects us to them, helps us communicate with them and train them, it teaches them to trust us and pay attention to us. All of our animals know they will get enough to eat, every day, there is no conflict or anxiety about it.
It is a nourishing part of the day for us, usually Maria fills one feeder, I feed the other. When the light is as beautiful as it was today, when the sky suddenly opened,, Maria brings out the hay and i take photos.
Watching the sheep with Red and Fate, I appreciate Red’s presence and skill. Fate is young, she is just coming of herding age, she is not yet able to get the sheep to move anywhere she wants, although she is getting stronger every day. The sheep move the instant Red challenges them to move, and they move quickly, he is right on them if they don’t. This morning, Susie and Pumpkin balked at heading back to the barn, Red got right up there butts and move them very efficiently up the hill.
There is never any drama or wasted motion with Red, he gets the job done.
Sometimes I am heartsick in the way of the mind. A year ago my heart was literally sick, they stopped it took it out and refurbished it. Sometimes the things people do to one another make me heartsick. To be heartsick means to be severely depressed or unhappy. There is a physical component to being heartsick, it feels as if your heart is sinking down into your stomach, a great deflation of the spirit and soul, like wandering through a black cloud with no light, a kind of emotional nausea.
I was heartsick today. And then I remembered how not to be heartsick.
When I was 14 and in great trouble, I wandered into a Quaker Meeting in Providence, R.I. It was the first place in my life where I felt completely safe and very welcome. It was as if they knew me and liked me there. I felt as if I had come home. I kept coming. No one bothered me much, but one day, a year or so after my first visit, I had an awful time. I came to Meeting as I had been doing faithfully. I sat looking miserable, I might have been crying, I’m sure I was, but I don’t remember.
An older man, an Overseer in the meeting, came and sat by my side and touched my shoulder. He had smiled at me before, but we had never spoken. The Quakers were like that, they seemed to know when you wanted to talk or needed to and when you didn’t.
Could he help?, he asked. He said I looked heartsick. I was, I said, I told him some of the things that had been done to me that had made me so sick and frightened and sad. I told him how angry I was.
He said he had an idea for me. He said when people do things that make you heartsick, you have to do one of the most difficult things people are ever asked to do. You have to put yourself in their shoes, see the world through their eyes. Everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, he said.
People will rationalize doing the most brutal and vicious things to one another, and then congratulate themselves on their courage and virtue. History is full of such things, he said, just think of holocausts and genocide. Wars happen when we can’t see through the eyes of others, when we dismiss them as being so horrible that they can be hated and killed.
If you hate someone, it’s likely they hate you as much or more. Hatred will make you heartsick. In a heartbeat, he said, winking.
Remember that everyone loves someone, he said. They are heartsick when they lose a love one, no matter what they have done. There is always a place where we can connect with one another.
Yes, I said, but I didn’t see what was wrong with hating people who hurt other people.
What’s wrong is what it will do to you, he said, it will make you heartsick. It doesn’t feel good, does it? You don’t have to forgive them, he said, but it will help you if you try to understand them. Everyone does the best they can, by their own lights. That is a cure for being so heartsick, he said, try it. Somehow, it restores hope.
It’s a tricky idea, and it fails for me as often as it works, and it was an extraordinarily difficult thing for me to do today. But I did it, and it helped. I wondered at people who love so much they will kill others and themselves for their idea of it. I wondered at children who will sacrifice their lives to kill other children, and in the most horrific way.
I felt for them, too. Could I possibly put myself in their shoes, was it possible for so small a person as me to take such a giant leap? I can’t tell anyone else what to do, or how to feel. I don’t really even know how I feel. It is not easy to be a human being.
In the small transitions of life, there is healing and hope. I took the dogs out to the sheep, and laughed as Fate rushed headlong into Zelda and butted her in the head by mistake, shocking the both of them.
Maria came to my office as I wrote this and told me solemnly that there were big changes in the kitchen, and she wanted me to hear them from her first. I though the ceiling had fallen down. I’ve moved the oatmeal into the cabinet with the cereal, she said. You may not be able to find it at first.
I said I would be all right, I would figure it out. I had to smile.
She said she was going to the hardware store to buy some shelf paper. I know how she will spend the day. And I got an e-mail from Stephanie, a retired English teacher who has been trying – without much success – to save my grammatical soul for years. She had a favor, she asked. Would I at least try to understand the difference between its and it’s.
I would try, I promised, but not too hard.
I’m not sure about the God thing, if he or she exists, I think God can’t or won’t help with being heartsick. God seems unreliable to me, too many nasty things happen for me to count on him. He is not reliable for me. We have to figure it out ourselves.
Life is the Mother, she never stops, never dies, never quits. She is the God of the small things. Every awful thing, I learned, is a reason to be better, to hope for the best.
I worship life, it is faithful and reliable, it goes on and on.
A farmer friend advised me once to never own an animal who was smarter than me. When you have dogs and donkeys, that can be a problem. Same with goats.
When you live with Fate, it’s a problem on a whole other level. I’ve been taking photos of “Posted Art” lately, and Fate, who misses nothing and wants to be involved in everything, has picked up on this. On our morning walks, she runs up to posted signs and sits down and waits for me to catch up.
I think she is spotting them for me, or perhaps she wants to get in the photo. This could be useful in my photography. Fate, who is never still, sits quietly as I frame the photograph and take the shot. She spotted six or seven signs for me, she sees them, runs up to them, sits down and waits. Definitely smarter than me.
