This morning, I have to ask myself if I love the world, or if I don’t. I do love the world, the world is a mess, the world has always been a mess, the world is glorious and wonderful, full of love and connection and hope and challenge.
Grace for me is no a world without trouble, it is about how I respond to sadness and suffering and challenge. I will never give up on hope, I learn every day that people are good given the chance. Here, another chance.
I think today of what makes me feel better today, in a time of such horrific sadness and tragedy.
I think of the small things that lift me up, The curious face of a dog, clearly sensing a change in the people around him, trying t understand something a dog can never understand. He makes me smile.
He will do the same for you if you look into his eyes.
I think of small acts of great kindness that reconnect me to the best of the human spirit. I will avoid the politicians today, and their scripted compassion. I think I’ll walk in the woods, visit a friend, take some photos, bring a book to Bill at the Mansion, go deep inside of myself, hug my wife, call my daughter, and maybe even buy a few cheese puffs.
For me, there is no peace or solace in the news, I’ll stay away from the arguments of people.
James Joyce wrote that “if you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, not a door.”
Today, a gate, not a door. I will go out and help Maria prepare for our Open House this weekend, hopefully a place of compassion and good feelings.
I can control little in this world, but I can control my own emotions and beliefs. Everything is an opportunity, even a tragedy that makes me numb. It asks me how I mean to be a human, how I can work to do good. I will not succumb to cynicism or dogma.
Another chance to be a better human. Another chance to think of others. Another chance to do good.
At our farm, the Opening Of The Gate signals the beginning of the day, the three dogs rush in, Maria and I follow. The donkeys come out for their morning snack, the dogs move the sheep out into one of the pastures, the sun rises the fog lifts.
This photo brings me peace today, I hope it does the same for you.
If you are a border collie, it is not a simple thing to herd sheep with a Boston Terrier who thinks he’s a bear, standing on your head. Fate, a normally restless and excitable creature, loves Gus and takes a lot of stuff from him.
Today, doing her mad outruns around the sheep, I told Fate to lay down, and Gus rushed over and stood on her head for a better view of the sheep. He wants to do it too, and he is good at rushing around like a madman.
I thought Gus might get his head taken off, but Fate, Red-like, didn’t budge. There is no focus like a border collie’s focus when there are sheep about. Gus is studying the border collies carefully, I think he wants in.
There are times when I have nothing to say, there really is nothing to say, only to feel.
I hate that this is feeling familiar to me now, I hate the same questions I find myself asking when I see the news: I hope it is not this kind of person, or that kind of person. I hope it can bring us together, not tear us apart. I worry I am getting used to it.
I hope the politicians speak to our best hopes and fears, not our worst. I hope they comfort the afflicted and seek to give us hope.
My heart breaks for the families of the dead and for all of the wounded.
We are becoming horrifically skilled at taking bullets out of people, and keeping them alive, but not at how to keep the bullets from getting there, or keeping us safe.
The gruesome photos of bleeding people, officers with rifles, officers who die, the frenzied news alerts, the awful images we will see again and again, a thousand times, the bravery of the First Responders, the cascade of chilling tweets. I feel I have seen this so many times before, and I know I should not be seeing them at all.
My heart sinks knowing it will happen again and again, until we finally awaken to the real terror, the terror within.
I feel for the people who died and were hurt in this unimaginable tragedy, and I think of all of you who must wake up to yet another horror and hurt and struggle to know how to feel and move on with your lives. I hope I can lift you up and make you smile a few times today, here on the blog. I had this strange thought this morning that people like me are First Responders to, our job is to remember the color and light that exist in the world.
There are so many people showing the darkness.
I can hope that awful happening will bring people together, but I would be lying if I said I thought it would, at least not now. We do not seem to have yet learned the lessons the angels are trying to teach us.
I am moved by the accounts of brave and loving people helping one another, to me, the true American spirit, the real news, where the hope is.
In an hour or so, we will so those awful people – the vampires of our time – shouting at one another on what we call the news, angering the angry and the weak minded, turning other people’s horror into their own success.
For me, a time to be soft and silent, to ask where the hope is, and to post some simple photos that I hope will make you feel and smile and think. To offer something other than division and argument.
For me, a time to go inward. To take pictures, to walk and sit with myself. To listen to the silence. To be alone.
I will go to the Mansion, and try to do some good, perhaps they will need me and Red there. This morning, I’ll post photos in the hope they can take us out of ourselves and connect.
A time, I think to be gentle with one another, to put ourselves in the shoes of the suffering, to do whatever it we do when our heart breaks over what human beings sometimes to do one another.
To find our sacred spaces and go there, alone.
And to remember all of the good that comes after the shooting stops, all the hearts that reach out to help, all the love summoned in the name of empathy and humanity, the best of us I pray to my better angels to come down to me and show me the light and help me to never become accustomed to this awful new ritual in our country.
I ask in the name of the children and the innocent.
Where is hope? Inside of me.
Photos are on the way. I’ll put my words away for awhile, in honor of the dead and the hurt. And my own need to think and reflect.
