Some of the big horses at Blue Star are so beautiful they take your breath away, at least for a bit. Bo came to the farm from Rhode Island, his owner was gravely ill. Because Bo loved children and people so much, he could not bear to put him down and pleaded with Pamela Richenbach to take him. She did, I met him today, there is something almost spectral about him. Next weekend, sledding contests at Blue Star.
Horses came into my life a few years ago in big and mysterious ways. First, a blind old pony led Maria and I to our new farm, guided us towards seeing it and buying it. Then the New York Carriage Horses entered my life, and called me, say some, to speak on behalf of their cause. They led me to Blue Star Equiculture in Palmer, Mass., an extraordinary place I believe to be the future of animals in our world and a healthy reincarnation of the lost dream of animal rights (not the same as human rights for animals.) Now, we have another horse of our own, Chloe.
Today at Blue Star, a big horse name Feather came over to speak with me, and we touched heads and we did speak to one another. The horses there want to know the people they see, and if you let them, they will talk to you in many different ways.
Blue Star is an important place in the sphere of animals in our world. They have found the new understanding we need there, they save and rescue animals, they help and support the people who love them. There are no secret informers at Blue Star, no judgment and harassment of people who live and work with animals.
They cherish the work horses and people have done they seek ways to keep the horses among us and find important work for them to do, work that helps people, helps the earth, saves the horses, not sends them away in blind ignorance. Blue Star is a sacred place, and sacred things happen there all the time.
Maria says there is a light in this photograph that she has not seen before, I think it is the sun reflecting off of her camera in the bright snow. There it is, the different ways of looking at the world. Maria wrote about it beautifully on her website tonight.
Maria and I went to Blue Star Equiculture today to see our friend Pamela, and also to see the big horses get ready for the horse sledding contests at the farm next weekend. It was a beautiful sunny day, the horses wanted to run, and the young athletes of the farm wanted to sled behind them on skis and snowboards. It was both thrilling and heartwarming to see how much the horses and the kids wanted to run and work and compete together. More details on Blue Star’s Facebook Page.
We went to Blue Star Equiculture farm today to see Pamela Moshimer Rickenbach and see the young and older people who keep the spirit of the farm so faithfully, and who call us to a new understanding of animals. I also wanted to go to the tree where my friend Paul Moshimer hung himself last summer, I wanted to say hello and catch up.
There are few days over the past year that I, like others, have not wondered what brought Paul to take his life in that way, in that tree, at that time. I have asked myself how he could break Pamela’s heart in that way, knowing how much he loved her. I accept that I may never really know the answer, but I have also had this feeling that he has been trying to tell me in his way. I do not know that I am deep enough to recognize his message or hear him.
I ought to say I went in search of the divine spark, said to exist within all of mankind, imprisoned within the body of all of us. I have read about the divine spark for years, and when I think of Paul, I often think of it. It was very much on my mind today. In the mystical theologies – Sufism, the Kabbalah – the purpose of life is to enable the divine spark to be released from captivity in matter and re-establish it’s connection with God or the spirits of the earth, and with the divine light that shines in every soul.
In Christianity, Jesus Christ is seen as a prophet and Avatar of the Light which takes human form in order to lead humanity back to justice and compassion. Paul was much about justice and compassion.
I don’t know where Paul is, or if he is anywhere, but a number of prophets and wise men seemed confident this summer that he stayed by the tree for awhile before leaving, before he was given permission to go. I do still sense his spirit there when I visit, I believe there are sparks of divinity around that tree, I can feel them sometimes, and I could feel them today. My own feeling, with great respect to the wise men, is that he comes and he goes.
I am not a prophet or a psychic, I always have questions when other have answers, I am drawn to the mystical idea of deep prayer, meditation and contemplation to look for the truth. Paul was a mystic, I believe, I think we connected in that way, we both talked often about what we didn’t know or understand, not what we did. We were in a fraternity all of our own in that way, we always wanted to go deeper. I think all of my true friends are mystics.
In the old texts, the raising of the divine spark is an ethical, political and psychological event deemed to be a joint venture of God and men and women. The divine spark can only be seen or raised or freed when humanity – when people – learn to be good and just and loving to the poor, to fulfill its promise to be good.
Standing in the tree, watching the tattered peace flags flapping in the wind, looking up at the limb where Paul’s body hung, reflecting the crisp winter sun, watching the big horses trot by, I felt a spark, once entrapped in the shadows, released and swirling around me in the light, freed from captivity and in matter and re-establish its connection to the farm, to Pamela, to the young people there that he loved, to the Mother Earth he felt so deeply about, to the light of compassion and truth that he practiced and sought. He wanted goodness, he never felt he had achieved it..
In the field today, this spark came to me as a beautiful sparkler, a swirl of light and reflection, a caressing feeling and a whisper, tell me that all is good, that he needed to go, and was released. He is good.
The Gnostics believed that the material, empirical human being is essentially an illusion that traps and sometimes imprisons the inter and the true self. Life is a glory, but sometimes also a prison. The Kabbalists believed that their commitment to goodness meant that the sparks were a path to redemption.
When I first met Paul, he instantly confessed to me of things he believed were awful sins and crimes. He thought I would flee in shock and horror, but I was not moved by them. I told him these things that troubled him seemed more typical of the common travails of life. But he carried a feeling of deep shame and trouble around with him. He had failed to meet his own unrelenting standards, perhaps the inevitable disease of the rescuer.
I think I understand, I told him, you were not leaving life, you were seeking it in a larger, more mystical and powerful way. You were not trapped, but released, you are not lost but found, you are not destroyed but redeemed. The spark, not the body, is life. I saw it and felt it, it was a beautiful thing, it swirled around the big field, touching down here, there, and then sailing up to the sky.
For me, holiness is more than humanity. Sanctity consists of being myself and for you, perhaps, sanctity consists of being yourself. For the trees and animals, there is little choice. They are made without consultation, they are given no choice in the direction of their lives, they live without conscience, ambition or regret.
We are given the gift – perhaps the curse – of being free to choose, to be whatever we would like to be. We can be ourselves, or we can be the person others wish us to be. A mystic once wrote:
“The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, m own sanctity.”
To deny or refuse them is to refuse everything, life itself. It is the refusal of my very existence and being, of my identity, of my very self. If I have a fear, it this: If I never become what I am meant to be, but always remain what I am not, or what others mean for me to be, I will live in conflict and contradiction, spending all eternity in an unwinnable argument with myself, contradicting myself by being at the same time something and nothing. A life that wishes to be, but is hollow, empty, waiting.
For me, to be holy means to be myself.
