Day: June 14, 2017

I’m never sure whether I should never watch the news or should always watch the news.

Every day, my heart goes out to the many different victims that reflect both the nature of life and the nature of our conflicted society.

I rarely end up feeling wiser or better, and my heart goes out to victims so often I’m not sure there is much heart left over. I’m grateful for Ed Gulley’s Tin Man, he reminds me to never forget my heart, even when the suffering of the world seems overwhelming.

In our world all of the suffering comes to us instantly and continuously, there is no reflecting on it or absorbing it, all we can do is reel and wonder sometimes. In color and on video, the images flow past us like a river of sorrow. We can, if we are not careful, forget the glory and love and good in the world.

How are we to process all of this violence and suffering, be merciful to the victims, and go forward with our lives? How are we to find enough mercy to go around, for them, for us?

I think of images of tiny things, grass, flowers, working dogs, sheep, babies, friends, can guide us. Things that love and live and grow are what really matter, they change everything, they bring us down to earth.

I think every day of mercy.

As Anne Lamott wrote in her lyrical book Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, “The world keeps going on. You can have yet another cup of coffee and keep working on your plans. Or you can take the risk to be changed, surrounded, and and indwelled by this strange yeasty mash called mercy, there for the asking at the frog pond, the River Jordan, the channel that flows between the lagoon and the sea.

Today, I think of mercy, I take the risk to be change and surrounded by it.

When I post this, Maria and I will head off to Vermont for one night to celebrate our great love for one another, our seven years of marriage. People can say whatever they wish about me, good and bad, but such a love inspires and defines me,  and gives me strength.

We will find an inexpensive hotel, read and love one another, find a gift for Robin, buy a belt and some socks, talk and laugh and sleep. The tiny things matter, they refresh and ground us. Our trips are sweet and short, we will return in the morning. We will leave the world behind.

A day of love for us, if we cannot pause to honor it, then how true could it possibly be?

I see my life as a kind of landscape, and it is always evolving, mutating, changing seasons and hue. The focal point of my landscape has been this perspective of the space between the farmhouse and the pasture. Here, Maria greets the donkeys and brushes them every morning as they stand still for her. Here, the dogs sit and wait to enter the pasture. Here, the chickens march back and forth in their eternal bug parade. Here the sheep hang out and munch on the stubs of grass.

And here, our newest addition to the perspective, the new element to the landscape, the Tin Man, symbol of heart and empathy. We are not sure where he will end up but this is where he is for right now. The new landscape of our farm, of or lives. The Tin Man, I ought to say (Ed will remind me if I don’t) was made by our friend, the farmer/artist Ed Gully, co-author of the very wonderful Bejosh Farm Journal.

There is something very special about barn cats. In our fearful and politicized culture, we rarely permit animals to live their natural lives, the lives they were meant to live. Our barn cats are part pets and part wild creatures in the sense that we make sure their shots are up to date and that they are wormed regularly and that they can come into the house on the coldest nights of winter to be warm (the basement is set up for them also.)

But I love their independence and their wildness. Barns offer all kinds of meditation spaces for barn cats – ladders leading up to dark lofts, hay bales, old chairs and shadowy corners. There are plenty of mice and rats out there. We spotted Flo in one part of the barn we’d never seen her in before, she was resting from a night of prowling and hunting, in complete peace adopt a hay bale. I loved the soft light on her head and whiskers, she was peaceful and at home with her place in the world.

At night, I imagine Flo dancing up in the barn rafters with the bats, scattering mice and upsetting the barn swallows. These creatures deserve to be free to live their lives.

I set out this morning to see how the Gulley Bridge was doing after all this rain, and I was amazed to see that it is now like the Amazon rainforest back there, the paths to and from the bridge are almost completely overgrown, the grass comes almost up to my knees, and are not passable at the moment.

This is our gateway to our woods, and we want to keep it open. It hasn’t been that long since we were back there, but between the Open House and everything else, it was enough to give the vegetation a chance to thicken. Maybe time to rent a couple of goats.

This weekend, we plan to go get a couple of scythes and hack our way back to our forest and the meditation bench in our woods. It will require some chopping. We are game, as long as the pollen doesn’t drive us back. It’s even too thick for the dogs.