Day: April 15, 2018

I have a wonderful friend who is an Evangelical Christian, struggling mightily to reconcile her faith with the bitter politics of our time and its jarring affects on her religion.

“It is my purpose to comfort you,” she told me last week when I said I was disheartened by the anger and cruelty in our political culture now. “it is not my mission to argue with you or make you agree with me or dominate me or call you names.” We sat together and prayed silently and in our own different ways to our own different Gods.

“We are not,” she said, “about gaining political power or bending others to our world. In fact, we are the opposite of that. That’s how you know a true Christian when you find one.”

I haven’t found too many of those in my recent life, perhaps they are in hiding or doing their good work silently.

My friend knows me, she knows I do not identify myself as a Christian, but I am a lifelong follower of the early Christian prophets and writers, and an admirer of the true Jesus Christ.

And when we talk ideology, she agrees with me. “Our faith was founded on one word, one idea, one ideology: Love.” Anything other than love, she added, is not about faith, is not about the Christian religion.

Where there is no peace, wrote Thomas Merton, “there is no light and no love.” We love each other, said Christ and the prophets. We love the poor, and the wicked, and the vulnerable,

We are wary of the rich and the powerful, and keep them at arm’s length, we are not them.

Only in silence and solitude, wrote Merton, in the quiet of contemplation, the reverent peace of prayer, the adoration in which the entire ego-self silences and and becomes humble can we grasp the word and its meaning: Love.

Because Western man is afraid of solitude, and sees love as a sign of weakness and naivety, he is  unable to be alone. Or to love his friends and neighbors.  He is unable to be silent. He is unable to be find empathy, the highest of human values.

He spreads his spiritual and mental sickness to the men and women around him, and to politics and business and the poor, and to the other parts of the earth.

The founders of the Christian faith were not divided but were one with all in Love, that was their faith. In the Kabbalah, God says Love was the point, Love was what endures. The Koran demands that the faithful care for the poor and love their neighbors.

What happened to the central tenets of these great religions, so many people embrace them and swear loyalty to them, but they are not  reading the same teachings as I am, or perhaps I’m just a fool who is not reading them correctly.

My task is to tear to open the inner door to my heart to the infinite silences of the spirit. Out of the abyss love wells up without fail and gives itself fully and to all. It is not a feeling I can always carry with me but it it is always a feeling I can find in solitude.

The mind that is hyper active, says Merton, seems to itself to be awake and productive, but it is dreaming, driven by fantasy and doubt.

For me, the message of faith is about unity, not division or conquest or self-interest.

All words, all ideas then, say one thing only: that all is Love.

This image of Maria, my Willa Cather girl, a goddess of the farm, is an enduring image for me, it is one I often think of when I think of the farm and our stewardship of the animals.

I am honored to be a steward of our animals, I saw this quote from early Christian writings recently about stewardship, it quoted Peter as saying “as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”

In the Kabbalah, God is said to have blessed the stewards and asked them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and watch over it and care for the people and the birds and the animals and the fish of the sea and “over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Work heartily and faithfully for the poor, he said, and for the vulnerable, and be wary that the rich and the powerful do not take advantage of the weak ,or acquire too much power. A steward, said god, “must be above  reproach. He or she must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or cruel or greedy for gain and power.

Maria and I both feel a great sense of stewardship over the animals in our care. We see it as a sacred responsibility, as do so many farmers we know. (I think in particular of our friends the Gulleys, devoted stewards of their animals.)

Once we saw that Gus was suffering and beginning to starve, our responsibility was clear to us.

The early Christians valued the stewards, then called them the faithful and wise and benevolent managers of the world, he cautioned his people to be especially good to the helpless animals, on whom we depend for so much, to be sure to “give them their portion of food at the proper time.”

I think of this responsibility every day on our farm. We do not eat out meals before the animals, we give them their portion of good every day at the same time, we make sure it is  fresh and dry. They trust us to do this and follow us to their feeders.

Nothing is healthier for me than to be reminded of the idea of stewardship every day. My study of stewardship theory helped me to clarity when we had to decide to end Gus’s life. Some people were furious with me for not doing more, but I was very much at peace with my own sense of responsibility. Stewardship is clear, we are not her to prolong suffering, especially not in our own self-interest.

I am sorry to feel that this very Christian idea of stewardship seems to be losing ground among people of faith, especially here in our country. The idea of Stewardship is a seminal idea behind the Army Of The Good, we watch over the helpless and the vulnerable.

I find myself taking it more and more seriously, for animals, for people. It is a profoundly beautiful idea, and I am grateful we get to practice it her on the farm, all day, every day. I always think of it when I see Maria carrying her hay to the feeders, the trusting animals walking patiently along, receiving their portion of food at the proper time.

Some time ago, I got a e-mail message from the wife of a man I was once close to.  As often happens to men, we both got too busy to tend to the friendship.

She was writing to tell me that he had committed suicide and left what he said was a note for his friends. It was simple: “I lost hope.”

A writer, his books no longer sold. This is quite common since the rise of e-books and the Great Recession.

I knew that he felt worthless in his work and, I think he had been persuaded by the Corporate Masters who run our country that he no longer had the resources to maintain the security and lifestyle he had been told was necessary.

This man was gifted and much-loved, I considered him a far better writer than I was or am.

I understood his despair.

At the time, I was in financial trouble and was feeling that my work was worthless and my many years of writing were without any good result, I had no gone as far as I had intended to go. I lived in despair but it never occurred to me to take my own life, and I wondered for some time why he did and I didn’t.

I think I am finally beginning to understand why that never occurred to me.

The philosopher Henri M. Nouwen wrote in his meditations that whereas patience is the mother of expectations, it is expectation itself that brings joy to our lives. It almost goes without saying that it is hope that brings joy, and joy that brings hope,  without the one, I cannot imagine feeling the other.

In a sense, hope is the stepchild of imagination, I have always imagined a better future even when the present was crumbling all around me. I have a rich imagination, and my hope has often turned out to be justified.

Nouwen, a Christian scholar, quotes Jesus as saying to  despairing followers, “You are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy.”

While I always had my fair share of problems, I never lost hope, and had the greatest expectations of learning from my life, understanding my mistakes and shortcomings, and experiencing  joy in the future. This hope always sustained me.

How, I wonder, can a man or woman without hope in the future live creatively or contentedly in the present?

I knew almost from the time I can remember that hope was something deep inside of my and my soul. What began as a survival tool evolved into a kind of faith.

They could take almost everything I had away from me, but they could not take hope away, only I could do that.

Hope is the great balm, the most powerful anti-depressant, the most enduring peace of mind, it is the light that fills even the greatest darkness. It is unique to the human soul, no other creature, large or small, has it or knows what it is.

For the past few years, I have struggle with the new realities of the writer’s life, as so many Americans have struggled with the changing nature of work.

I have at times felt worthless, the corporate system can spawn that, I  wondered what my life and work might add up to.

As with politics, I resolved to change rather than  drown in self-pity or despair or anger, or worse yet, lose any hope for my life. My blog gave me hope, and that has sustained and uplifted me. I hoped it would work. It did.

I always hoped I would find love, and I have, and it has brought me great joy. Hope is the fuel that moves me forward.

What reason did I have to hope for such a thing? Where does hope come from? In my case, from fantasy and dreams.  I can’t say, hope is internal, it lives somewhere between the heart and soul, it can be felt but never seen.

Whatever happens to me, I have the greatest  hopes for my life, at any point, any age.

The paradox of expectation is that those who believe in tomorrow can live much better today, and those who expect joy to come out of sadness can discover the beginnings of a new life in the center of the old, in the midst of darkness.

I wish I could have spoken with my friend before he took his own life.

I would have told him not to depend on the hope of results. At some point in all of our lives, we awaken and grasp that money does not bring happiness, nor can it purchase security and peace of mind. Living for other people’s idea of success and glory is a disaster, almost every time.

I have to face the fact that my work may, in fact, be worthless in one sense – who am I so say?, and has sometimes been the opposite of what I expected.

As I got more and more used to this possibility – I can’t know if it is true or not – I began concentrating less on the results and more on the value, the truth of the work, it’s meaning, my integrity and accomplishments.

Gradually, perhaps day by day, I have struggled less and less for a single goal and more and more on the promise of my life, of the new joy that would bring me happiness and meaning, empathy and compassion.

I never once lost hope, and that made all the difference.

It is hope that turns sadness into joy and finds new life in the old.