Day: May 21, 2016

This week, I thought I felt as if I were losing myself, drifting away from who I wanted to be,  how I wanted to feel. I realized that I have become discouraged by the angry and cruel political process, and disheartened at the thought of listening to many months of rage and accusation and ugliness in others. It cross over and into my consciousness, it is infectious, as panic and fear often is.

I was briefly lured into the trap of tapping into the news more than once a day, something I had avoided for years. It is so easy to do, without even thinking.

The ugliness of the political campaigns and the anger of so many people was pulling me in, like an angry whirlpool swirling around a ship in a turbulent sea. It was all around me, in the air, draining the consciousness and hope of good people on all sides. Cynical leaders pulling out the worst and angriest parts of us. It was crawling into my dreams, running back and forth in a neural rut.

So how I asked myself this weekend, can I get back to myself? I know now how to find myself when I get lost.

First, I stopped paying attention to the news, stopped checking on what awful thing this one or that one said about the others. All weekend, I had not heard a cruel or angry word, and this helped me to see just how destructive and disturbing it is too listen to too much of either.

Then, I set out to take some new and interesting photos. I returned to my lifelong passion of reading books, and I read three in as many days. I went on walks with Maria. I herded sheep with Red and Fate.

I meditated, two or three times a day for 15 minutes each. I

I turned to music. I spent several hours listening to my “Hamilton” album and and the new Beyonce album, “Lemonade.” I mowed the lawn it took me three or four hours, too long in the sun for me. I ran back and forth to the hardware with Maria to get seeds and supplies for the new “Three Sisters” garden.

I turned to photography, sorting through my photographs and sharing them. I turned to writing,  I blogged and put up photos, I felt better.

Those things all worked, they were helpful. But I am grateful to the boys of the St. Joseph’s home and residence. These young men who have suffered so much and struggled so long had come to the farm, reveling in my life, my dogs, my wife and her work, the life of the farm, the donkeys and pony.

It cost me nothing and took little effort to welcome these young men to the farm. But it turned out to be such a gift to me.

The farm opened its arms up to these men, taking them in, loving them, lifting them up. It was as if the animals were all tapped into this human frequency, they could have not been more loving or attentive or affectionate.

The boys were mesmerized by my dogs, my life, the farm. They asked me a million questions. They flocked into Maria’s studio and looked at her quilts and offered the most amazing observations about them and what they were about.  They see the world in the most unique way.

Listening to them, watching them, seeing the love and interest poring out of them and their hard lives, I came to see myself, to find myself,  and to find myself, it was clear through the mirror these kids were offering me as they petted the donkeys and the pony, stood along the fences to see my dogs work and run. The residual anger and unease washed away, as if I had flushed it from my system somehow.

It always amazes me how animals can open people up, and  how they tap into the love of humans, even where it is sometimes hard to find.

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you,” wrote Joseph Campbell, “and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

This is what I saw and felt, seeing the world through the prism of the St. John’s boys, who found my life as incomprehensible as it was fascinating to them. But they got it, every bit of it. They saw past their own anger and pain and struggle, they were awash in the joy of the world. And why then, could I not do the same?

They helped me to find myself in their own searching and yearning and feeling. They helped me to see that I have followed my bliss, I am on a track that has always been there, waiting for me, and I am not afraid any longer, doors has opened everywhere for that I never even knew existed, let along where they were.

All I have to do, I thought, is to open my eyes. The rage and cruelty in the outside world has nothing to do with me or my life,  I do not have to wallow in every turn of it or take it in. I do not have to inject this or any other poison into my veins. I will stay on my track, it has always been there waiting for me, and the boys could see it, and thus, so could I.

That is what it means to be strong, to have faith. To grasp what I can do and what I cannot do, what I can control and what I cannot control. The only one I can truly be responsible for is me.

If there is a God, the fierce power of my imagination is a gift from him. Joined with the glory of the mind, the power of intuition, the depth of ethical thinking, and a love of the divine, imagination becomes a powerful instrument for the holy spirit, by which I mean the sanctity of self.

I thank you boys, for helping me to return to myself through your own eyes and hopeful hearts and brave souls.

Maria spent almost all of the day digging out a new garden at the farm, she calls it the Three Sisters Garden. Above, she was explaining it to the boys from the St. John’s Residence (formerly orphanage) in New York City. A few week ago, I gave Maria a present, a beautiful book by Robin Wall Kimmerer called “Braiding Sweetgrass,” it is a tribute to plant life and a description of their inner lives and history.

In one chapter, Kimmerer tells a story so beautiful Maria can hardly stop crying when she reads it. It is about an ancient garden tradition, told to Kimmerer by a friend,  Awaikta, a Cherokee writer, who pressed a small packet into her hand. It was a corn leaf, dry and folded into a pouch, tied with string. She was told not to open it until Spring.

In May, she wrote, “I untie the packet and there is the gift: three seeds. One is a golden triangle, a kernel of corn with a broadly dimpled top that narrows to a hard white tip. The glossy bean is speckled brown, curved and sleek, its inner belly marked with a white eye – the hilium.” And there was a pumpkin (squash)  seed like an oval china dish, its edge crimped shut like a piecrust bulging with filling.

She held in her hand, writes Kimmerer, “the genius of indigenous  agriculture, the Three Sisters.” Together, these plants, corn beans and squash, fed the Native Americans, fed the land, and still feed our imaginations, showing us how we might live.

When the colonists in Massachusetts first saw the Three Sisters, they scoffed at the natives, thinking they did not know how to make real gardens, which meant straight rows of single species, not a three-dimensional sprawl. But they ate the squash, beans and corn greedily and often.

The Three Sisters support one another, they offer each other shade, protection, nourishment.

Native people speak of this gardening style as the Three Sisters, there are many legends and stories about this kind of garden, but they all share the understanding of these plants as women, sisters. Some stories tell of a long winter when people were starving and suffering from the cold.

According to legend, three beautiful women came to their dwellings on a snowy night.

One was a tall woman dressed in yellow; the second wore green, and the third was robed in orange. The three came to shelter by the fire. Even thought food was scare, the three shared generously, and then the three sisters revealed their true identities – corn, beans, and squash – and gave themselves to the hungry people in a bundle of seeds so that they might never go hungry again.

So in this spirit we dug out the garden in the rear of the farmhouse next to the pasture fence, went out to buy the seeds we needed, dug out the stubborn roots and brought some bags of topsoil and decomposed manure. We will  dedicate this garden to the earth, and plant it tomorrow to the spirit of generosity and community, of which we are all sorely in need.

The boys from St. John’s in New York City were mesmerized  by the story of the garden, they peppered Maria with questions about it, they grasped it’s meaning and power right away.

We will plant some corn, beans and squash, protect it with some chicken wire, water it and love it every day,  and see what happens. Maria is deeply committed to this project, and so am I. It is the most wonderful tradition, and it fits perfect into our lives here at the farm.

Now, we have a Three Sisters Garden.

 

Everyone of the St. John’s Residence boys said goodbye to me, to Maria, to Red and Fate. Everyone of them shook hands with us or hugged us, thanked us for having them visit the farm, hugged Red and Fate. In the way of working dogs who sense what their humans need both dogs formed a greeting party and said goodbye to each one of the St. John’s boys. Next time, I said, you can spend more time with them.

These boys remind me of the healing and loving power of dogs and animals, how much we need them in our lives, how much good they can do, given the chance. We need a new movement to keep animals in our world, not take them away. I think the movement is underway.

I saw how much love there is in the hearts of young men today, even those who have every reason to be hateful and angry. They do good work at St. John’s.

Talib is a gifted and skilled animal lover. He never saw a donkey until he came to visit Bedlam Farm last year, now he comes and asks for a brush and the donkeys love him, he brushes them lovingly and as if he had grown up with them. They stand quietly, almost purring, while he brushes two of them at once, confidently and skillfully.

He lives at the St. John’s Residence For Boys in New York City, and I asked him how it was he knew how to care so well for donkeys. His name in Arabic means “student,” he said, and he loves to learn. The donkeys loved him from the first, and they are among the best judges of character in the world.

Red and Fate are powerful ambassadors from the animal world to people. The St. John’s Residence comes to the farm several times a year, and the boys have not seen dogs like  Red and Fate, and the love is deep and mutual and moving. We miss them when they are gone.