Day: November 17, 2015

“We are the hollow men,

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together,

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

– The Hollow Man, T.S. Eliot

 

Thomas Merton wrote that despair is the absolute extreme of self-love.  Despair is a state reached when a person deliberately turns their back on all help from anyone or any thing in in order to feel lost and be lost.  At some point in our lives, we will all confront the choice – awaken and seek out the truth about ourselves, or run away in denial and fear and close the door to self-awareness. To be what T.S. Eliot called The Hollow Men.

I think despair lives in everyone, it has certainly lived in me. Many of us carry the pride that vegetates and grows and spring weeds, it grows the garden of self pity. We speak poorly of our lives, we believe our own gifts and resources have failed us, we feel abandoned by other people, we fall into discouragement, and then, despair.

Despair then, is the complete absence of hope. As a mood, it passes, it sweeps over all of us. As a final destination it is dark and crippling. Despair, said Merton, is the natural development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it refuses to search for happiness, see it anywhere, work for it or accept it. Despair is an arrogant thing, then, a rejection both of divinity and life.

But a man who is truly humble cannot despair, says Merton, because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

Merton is one of many theologians who believe that it is almost impossible to overestimate the true value of humility and its power to shape the spiritual life. The beginning of humility is the beginning of peace and grace, it is the foundation of joy. Faith and humility are inseparable, humility is where the spiritual life begins, it is the pathway to self-awareness.

It seems I could only learn when I understood how little I know, I could only listen when I learned not to talk, I could only change when I turned away from labels and arguments and stood in the shoes of others. The monks always spoke of perfect humility, when all selfishness disappears and your soul no longer lives only for yourself, but for your idea of God, or for others that you might know and love.

I am not a monk or a person of conventional faith. I think humility began for me – it is a long road – when I realized that everyone in the world has it harder than me, is in more pain, suffers more than I do. I can’t know if this is or is not literally true, but I do know that the idea altered my perspective on the world. Before that, I was drowning in my own suffering, I couldn’t really see the pain in others.

Merton helped me to see that despair is a disease of the self-important, an illness of the ego. Humility is about holding a modest view of one’s life and one’s own importance. People often mention that I am a New York Times Bestseller, it is well-meaning and I appreciate it, but I usually cringe when I hear it. It is not important. In the general scheme of things, neither and I, and i don’t speak with false modesty. I am very fond of the things I write.

It was a very liberating realization to see myself in a modest way. Seeing oneself in grandiose and self-absorbed terms – seeking fame, wealth and the big score – is the quickest way I know to despair. Humility is the quickest way to peace of mind and happiness. Everyone has it worse than I do.

If you post a message on Facebook saying your dog died, and you are sad, you will almost instantly see a hundred messages from people saying that their dog  died too, and they are sad. They can’t grasp your suffering, and you aren’t looking for theirs. We have all lost our dogs or soon will. It is something that connects us, not divides us.

The message for me is not resentment – why are they telling me about their dogs when mine just died? – but comprehension and compassion. We all travel the the same paths in life, we all suffer the joys and travail of life, our parents will die, our friends will suffer, our dogs will die, we will die. We are all reflections of one another. As much as some seek to divide us, we are all connected, us and the animals, we are all one thing. No living thing suffers anything that other living things will not suffer.

Despair comes from feeling sorry for ourselves, for forgetting that suffering is a part of life, everyone who is alive knows of it or will soon. Yet we seem to lose awareness of this, we think sorrow and loss are all our own. That is a despairing feeling. If I can’t be humble, then I can’t know joy, because only humility could push aside the narcissism and selfishness that makes joy impossible. The more humble I feel, the more joy, the more pleasure, the more love.

I don’t need to be falsely modest, I don’t need to be disturbed by praise, as I have often been, or to need it, as I often have. Praise and hatred do not belong to me, they belong to others. Merton was correct, I believe. Humility makes despair impossible.

Okay, so I have bought Fate a bunch of toys, they litter the living room. Part is my training philosophy – give puppies plenty of stuff to chew on and they will leave your stuff alone – and part is that I am a mush. I brought my daughter home toys every other day.

Yesterday, I got Fate an orange moose from the Handsome Hound pet and grooming in Shaftsbury, Vt. Fate loves it, she has been flipping around all morning and growling at it. Then she got tired, as she does,and rested her head on it and went to sleep. Her nap was four minutes long.

Well came to me very well trained, in part back in Northern Ireland, and to a great degree, by Dr. Karen Thompson. I added a few commands to his repertoire, one, necessary for a farmer, is “back to the barn.” He tracks the sheep down, gets behind them, marches them up to the hill to the Pole Barn and then sits right in front making sure they don’t move.

He has a helper now, Fate loves to charge ahead, the sheep do not have much choice. But that is the nature of sheep.

Ken Norman, our farrier and Gil Miller, an equine dental specialist, came to the farm yesterday to work on Lulu and Fanny’s teeth, it is not easy or pretty work, but Lulu and Fanny held up well and behaved. Simon would not have liked this one bit.

Ken is looking great after his double knee replacement, he is actually cheerful, it is great to see the operation so successful. His friend Gil comes around once or twice a year and visits farms with horses and donkeys. The donkeys need to have their teeth filed, or floated. Their teeth can get sharp and dig into their gums and cheeks, which can make eating difficult for them.

We are a bit overdue, we missed last year. When Gil comes, Ken spends the day driving him around, it is a valuable thing. Horses have big jaws and Gil can force his arm into the back of their mouths, keeping them from biting him. The mouths of the donkeys are not as big, Gil has to be more careful.

It is amazing for me to see that people make a living filing down the teeth of donkeys and horses, and we are grateful for that, I imagine Lulu and Fanny were both more comfortable today than they have been in awhile.

This morning, a request. It’s free, but very important.  I’m asking the people who are reading this and who care about animals and their future in the world to post a review of Blue Star Equiculture on a site called Great Non-Profits, an important site in the fund-raising world. Blue Star is moving aggressively to stabilizing their finances, looking for long-term security to expand their programs and ensure a safe and good life for the horses there, many of them rescue animal and retired draft and carriage horses.

Blue Star has become critically important in the animal world. I believe the Blue Star idea  represents the future of animals, and is a model for keeping them safe and in our everyday lives.

Why is this important? Our civic life has been polluted by polarization and greed and cruelty, the news suggests a world wracked with conflict and violence. I’m sorry to say that the animal world is now no better. The movement so many of us depended on to protect the rights of animals – the animal rights movement – has sadly become a mirror of the outer world. In recent years, it’s focus has been to remove domesticated and other animals from the world and make it more and more difficult for people to own them

Their increasingly rigid and angry ideology holds that it is cruel for working animals to work, from horses to elephants to dogs to ponies, these animals are in great danger without their connection to humans, many have already perished, more are in peril. They work to separate animals from people, and to alienate the very people who are so desperately needed to keep animals in the world.

Time has moved past this movement, they have no answers for the vanishing animals of the world.  The often cruel industrial factory animal farms grow unmolested, carriage drivers and pony ride operators and the poor and the elderly are harassed mercilessly.

We have destroyed the natural habitats of animals through our human greed and obliviousness, climate change is ravaging nature, and the there is great conflict and rage in the animal world.

Blue Star has found a better way, a new way. There, the big working horses are honored, they are healed and understood, good and healthy work is found them and new homes. The people who live and work with them are treated with love and respect, Blue Star understands that it is not possible to love animals and hate the people who live and love and work with them.

Saving animals means something different than it means 20 years ago. Today, it means finding work for them, creating economic rationales to encourage governments and people to keep them among us, treat them well, make whatever sacrifices are necessary to keep them safe and care for them well. It is not enough to think of animals as abused and piteous creatures, it is not enough to persecute the people who own and live with them, to punish and frighten and isolate human beings. Animals are not only our pitiful dependents, they are our partners in the world, and it is our moral responsibility to grant them their most basic right – to survive with us and be with us.

Blue Star is not about accusing or harassing or hating people. It is a place of great spirit, a place of salvation for people, for animals, and quite possibly, for Mother Earth. Pope Francis may well have been thinking of Blue Star when he wrote in his encyclical, Laudato Si, “the social dimensions of global change include the effects of technological innovations on employment, social exclusion, an inequitable distribution and consumption of energy and other services, social breakdown, increased violence and a rise in new forms of social aggression…When media and the digital world become omnipresent, their influence can stop people from from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously.”

Blue Star is about living wisely, thinking deeply, and loving generously – for people, for animals, for Mother Earth.

The big horses are the perfect symbol for this new struggle, this new awakening, this new movement to protect the true rights of animals and their well-being and to show us how to live in harmony with one another. The horses have been with people since the beginning of time, they are living in the greatest peril, slaughtered in growing numbers, driven from their natural and important work, confined to the new animal ghetto – the rescue farm and preserve.

You can check them out Blue Star  and/or join their herd here.

Blue Star offers us a better way. They are important. They deserve the support of every person who wishes to keep animals in the world, and who hopes to see the day when we great one another with respect and dignity.  The farm, an organic farming center and draft horse sanctuary in Palmer, Mass. is widely revered and respected for their groundbreaking work in animal rescue and organic farming, gardening, composting,  and their timely ideology. More and more, we need them and their vision. The Native-Americans believe the horses have come to warn us that we are at a crossroads – we will either learn to live in harmony, or we shall perish together. You can read more about the Blue Star idea here.

Sadly, the animal rights movement has  no vision for the future of animals or their rights. We need a new and wiser understanding of animals than this. Blue Star has one.

If you wish, you can post a review of Blue Star here, and help them find the stability they need and deserve. It is free, it is important. This year, they came for the carriage horses, and failed. One day, they may well come for you and the animals you love. That is what is at stake.