I asked Ed and Carol Gulley if they would teach me the modern milking process and let me do some milking of my own. I thought it was something I ought to know. I am not a farmer, but a writer with a farm, and there is an enormous difference. I do not care to be a farmer, I could not survive long in that grueling and beautiful and often mystical life.
But Maria and I love the Gulleys and we are close to them both. Ed has just launched his own blog, and he and Carol were gracious to take me to their evening milking round – they milk between 30 and 40 cows twice a day. It’s too late for me to write about it tonight, but I’ll share the experience tomorrow.
I was in the parlor for about two hours, and we also got to see Ed artificially inseminate a cow, a landmark experience.
It was very different than I expected, I am grateful for farmers and even more grateful to be a writer. More tomorrow.
Maria and I are getting to know the trees in the deep woods, she has already seen them and knows them, I am just beginning to see them and recognize them. It is beautiful thing for me to learn and feel, it is a journey of the soul. In the ancient texts I am reading, the soul is a feminine, and the purpose of the soul entering this body is to display her powers and actions in this world, for every soul needs an instrument, and we are her instruments.
Watching Maria climb into this tree, a living thing she loves, and seeing Fate eager to follow her and and share this experience, I was lifted up and touched. They both seemed to be reaching for the upper world.
By descending to this world, say the mystics, she – the soul – increases the flow of her power to guide the human being through the world. In do doing, she perfects herself both above and below, attaining a higher state by being fulfilled in both worlds. And on the journey, inspiring us to be fulfilled as well. When we are lost, the real journey begins.
So this is the journey of the soul, the search to be better, to fulfill our promise.
If we are not fulfilled both above and below, we are not complete, theb our souls are not complete. Before descending to this world, say the mystics, the soul emerges from the mystery of the highest level of spirituality and life, beyond the comprehension of humans. While here, our soul is completed and fulfilled by our own humanity, and by her life in the lower world. When she departs this world, she brings us with her, and we are both filled with the fullness of all of the worlds, the world above and the world below.
I was thinking of this idea of the soul, and of our journey of the soul, when I saw Maria climb into this tree, and point up. She seemed to be reaching for the world above and point to it. I didn’t ask her what she was doing, I didn’t want to know, I wanted to imagine.
I felt a great rush of feeling, and a very pure kind of love and joy, a great sense of fulfillment. I do not always understand these things that I feel, I just feel gratitude that I can feel them at all. Perhaps it will make more sense to you. I feel a great kinship with the mystics and their deep contemplation and understanding of life. It makes so much more sense to me than the modern thinkers and philosophers. They had so much hope for us.
The mystics say that the soul, like her human, is imperfect before descending to this world, she is lacking purpose and is filled with emptiness. When she returns to the world above, she is perfected in every dimension, and if we accept her and believe in her, so shall we.
In the forest, I felt the trees were full of souls, perhaps were souls, displaying their powers and actions in the world, waiting to join with us. The woods feel like a cathedral to me.
Being open is being open. I told my class today that writing in any way but honestly is just another form of hiding and lying. No one is ever completely open, that would be an almost impossible way to live. I have many secrets, so does Maria. No one knows what we do not choose to share.
But authenticity is important to me, with some very personal exceptions, I don’t really want anyone to know more than my readers know about the important things in my life. Student after student tells me they are protecting this person or that, they are afraid of writing this or that, they are hiding this and that. Nothing kills more writers than fear.
I do not know of any great writer who writes to hide or protect him or herself from what he or she knows to be the truth, at least not intentionally.
Walking in the woods today, I made an important decision, and I want to share it. I am going to participate in the political process this year. This country has been so good to me, my parents and grandparents, my child. I care about it and want to do what i can to help it through a difficult time.
So I am going to choose a candidate to support for President this year, and I will get engaged in my own way. I don’t plan to write about my decision on the blog, the blog is not about politics, there are many places to go for that. I’m not joining the left or the right, my choice will be the free choice of a free man, made independently and from the heart.
I have many things to write about, I don’t care to climb in that boat.
I will not argue my decision, not here, not on social media, not in living rooms or with friends. This is one of those personal decisions for me, it is not a process I especially need to share. People have to make up their own minds about these things, we are drowning in rage and argument, I won’t be adding to it.
It is a hard decision for me, in some ways a difficult one, in some ways a simple one – I have strong values and beliefs, and it ought to be easy to decide who shares most or all of them.
I have avoided politics for some time now, it has become something I don’t recognize or feel comfortable talking about. But I want to do the right thing, i want to be there when it matters, I want my daughter or granddaughter, if there is to be one. to know that I tried to do the right thing when the right thing is really important to do.
There might be some organic reason I need to refer to this, and if so, I’ll do it. Otherwise, it is a matter of the heart for me, my own humble stab at being patriotic. I wish you all good luck in your choices. To me, the left-right thing is a poison, an abandonment of the mind and free well. I’ll navigate it as best I can, given the choices I’m offered.
I was a political writer and editor for awhile, but the politics I covered was very much different from the politics I read and hear about now, I have to find my place in all of this. It matters.
I will work hard to stay away from anger and despair, one way or the other. In our lifetime, politics is a spiritual challenge, and grace is participating without ever becoming what I fear and hate. Humanity is my ideology, I think, my left and my right. I wonder who will even have me.
The birds don’t appear at the feeder until 8:30 or so, don’t really know why. When the chickens get out of the roost, they help themselves to some birdseed scattered on the ground. The Red Hen is usually apart from the three others, they don’t bother her much but she is usually off nearby or by herself.
After awhile, the birds appear and the chickens wander off. Part of the daily parade. A neat today today, teaching my writing class at Pompanuck Farm and then some writing time, and this evening, learning how to milk cows at Bejosh Farm. I’ll write about it, of course. More later.
