Day: May 3, 2018

Maria and I took Ed Gulley out to lunch today at the Round House Cafe.

I will be honest, there are few experiences in life more stimulating or rewarding or disturbing than talking with an honest and open friend who might just be facing the end of his life, and knows it.

Ed and I have the most pure kind of  relationship, it is something a miracle for older men.

Neither of us knew  how to make many close friends, or keep them. We are happy to have found each other.

We are open and honest, we listen and hear. We are strong-willed but fairly beat up, we have both seen a lot. We don’t care to be told what to do, but will sometimes tell each other what to do.

We want to be better and do better, and we both fall on our knees in gratitude over our common truth – we have gotten second chances at life, we know the power of new beginnings.

We do not take life too seriously, we understand we are not in control of it,  our time is filled with laughter, and then, with truth. Neither of us is shocked by death or challenge, suffering is a part of life.

The first  thing I noticed at lunch today was how much bigger and dirtier and more powerful Ed’s hands are than mine.

If you ever want to capture the difference between a farmer’s work and a writer’s work, have one press hands against the other. I told Ed he was a monster, his thumb was twice as big as mine, the skin dark with the kind of imprinted dirt that never comes out.

He laughed and laughed.

We talked about a lot of things, we both see that our friendship is deepening, we are getting closer. The great adjustment is underway.

Another unusual thing is that Maria and Ed are close friends to, another unusual thing for men. Creativity is our powerful shared experience, that and the fact that we both see the brilliance in  Ed, in his mind and in his work. I think he was waiting almost all of his life to hear that, and until recently, never did.

Ed is just a few  days away from learning that he has inoperable brain cancer.

Without much hesitation, or any at all, he declined any further medical treatment. Almost everyone who has been through that kind of brain surgery told him he has made the right decision. Apart from some loss of peripheral vision and some balance problems, Ed feels find and looks his usual healthy, strong and vibrant self. He knows what may lie ahead.

Ed is planning a cross-country trip with his beloved Carol – they have been married for 45 years –  to Montana and other places, and he is planning to write his way across America and share every word he writes. He is deeply into the symbolism of life.

I told Ed I had some frank things I wanted to tell him, and Ed thanked me for being honest in advance.

He always wants to hear what I have to say, and he always listens, and he always makes up his own mind, which is the way it should be.

He told me he wanted me to make sure to come to him with problems or troubles, he didn’t want the next step – “looking forward” is how he put it – to be out of balance, to be all about him. I said I was pretty happy right now, but I heard him and appreciated it.

I told Ed I didn’t like him recording a video while lying on a sofa, which he did the other day,  I know he didn’t think a thing about it. But it seemed disrespectful to me to the people watching.

He nodded and said he only did that because he didn’t want to disturb the cats on the bottom of the bed. I laughed and said next time, disturb the cats. You have to show respect for the people reading and watching you, he said. They deserve it. Would he like it if he came to one of our Open  Houses and I was speaking while lying on a couch? He got that.

I said I had been a hospice volunteer and therapy worker for some time, and I was concerned that he hadn’t taken the time to really listen to himself and adjust to this very shocking and upending news. I knew he had cried several times, but mostly, he was sending messages to other people, reading their messages and speaking to the outer world, worrying about everyone but himself.

In his hero journey, I said, he needed to go inward, not outward, at first, and find his center. I said he needed to come to an understanding of what had happened to him so suddenly, and without warning. Take it in, chew on it.

You mustn’t skip past that and worry only about other people and answer their many questions and try to be strong for everyone else and pass on your wisdom. Find your sacred space and learn to love it.

I said that Ed had some grieving to do, and some meditating, and some talking to nature. He needed to let his own emotions come to the surface, he needed to show them to the people he loves and trusts.

I don’t know what will happen to you, I said, how it will all turn out, I’m not a seer. No one has the right to tell you how to grieve for what has happened to you.

I would love to see you spend some private time with yourself before you share this new chapter with the world so intensely. And I am someone who loves sharing things with the world on my blog. But I don’t have what you have, and I am not you.

For me, a man who hates advice, that was a lot of advice. I felt drained, but content. And still closer to Ed.

We sat at a rear table in the Round House, I saw a number of people looking sympathetically over to Ed, and I’m sure he saw it too. He does not wish to be pitied, and I do not have an ion of pity for him.

We were both glad Maria decided to come to lunch, Ed and she are very close, and he credits her with opening him up to his creativity and art. It changed his life, he said again today. We felt so easy with one another, sometimes I forget how extraordinary and rare our friendship is.

I had things on my mind, an agenda.

I felt morally obliged to share what I have learned in my hospice and assisted care therapy work. I felt I needed to challenge Ed, I felt that if our friendship was real, we had to be able to really talk to each other over these next days and months, our friendship will “freshen,” just like a cow..

I thought Ed was floating in space a bit, I told him so, and who could blame him?

I told him the saddest I see him is when he talks of the things he lost in life, not when he talks about his tumor. He seems to be accepting that, even as he reviews his life and finds some things to regret, and ponders some lost time. Farms are like that. They are bastions of acceptance.

First, I said, you need to figure out who you are now, and what you want “looking forward.”

We talked at some length about Ed’s affinity for Native-American symbolism and culture, his life has always reminded me of the Native-American interest in symbolism and connection to nature and the animal world. He would have made a first-rate Native-American warrior.

There is already some strong and mystical elements in Ed’s life. He is working closely with his grandson Jordan to finish some of his art work,  and he is teaching him welding and machinery.

Ed wants to pass along his knowledge of farming to Jordan and the rest of his family. He speaks into a new digital voice recorder as he moves through the day. He is always telling his story.

This reminded me, I said, of the Indian chiefs who passed along their wisdom to their children when they got old and before they passed away. There is great symbolism in your life here, I said, you don’t have to go to Montana to find that.

And you don’t always have to appear so cheerful and strong in your writing and videos. You can show your vulnerability, for your sake and everyone else’s.

We went back and forth, it was easy, honest and loving.

The affection we have for one another and the trust was evident and easy. it was assumed. Ed talked about having spent his entire life in the grip and grind of the small farm, it was all he knew, it was narrowing. He was so grateful, he said, to find rebirth now,to be free,  he felt, as if he was walking through a big and open door.

We did a lot of laughing and joking, and even some hugging. I pressed my hand against his and it was dwarfed by his giant fingers and calloused hands.

We went to the Battenkill Bookstore, I wanted to give Ed some books on Native American culture.

I had called ahead.

Connie and Eve had left out a pile of books for us to look through, and I bought three for Ed. One was called Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, by Sherri Mitchell, and it was just about the perfect book for Ed to look at right about now.

I felt especially close to Ed, as we browsed through the pile of books Connie had chosen for us.  I flipped through Sacred Instructions, and I came across Chapter 5, “Grief, Trauma, and Intimacy.”

“We are all carrying grief,”  wrote Mitchell, “a deep, unimaginable grief that impacts how we receive and connect with one another. It is a cumulative emotional and spiritual wound that results from the history  that we all share. This creates a barrier that prevents us from being able to truly see one another, meet one another, and connect with one another.”

Wise words for men everywhere.

I bought a copy for myself. Reading it, I see the glorious work ahead of Ed, and I see the glorious work ahead of me. A beginning, and an end.

Ed already knows that sickness, even death, is sad but not only sad. He is very smart and perceptive and he knows that doors will open now in his life as well as close. He is excited about that, he feels he has a great deal to look forward to.

For me, I will have to practice what i preach and admit to my own pain and vulnerability thinking this good man and dear friend might stumble and fall. I will  have to go on my own journey and show my emotions too, and open up as well.

I will have to look into the center of my heart also.

I will need to find myself once more, for my friend’s sake, for my sake.

I think we both will be glad to have the company.

Patience is the mother of expectation, I think, and perhaps hope. No matter how sorry and angry I get, I can always have a change of heart.

I am grateful for Spring, my Sun Dial has returned. Life in the country has taught me to tell time from the shadows, I don’t own a wrist watch any more, and today, I surprised myself by realizing I can tell time by the shadows falling this very old metal hanging basket that Maria just filled up with pansies.

Shadows are a faithful clock. I was so disconnected from nature I still forget sometimes how much it has to teach me. This is the grace of Spring, this basket.  I call this a gentle photo.

I am more patient in the Spring. Simone Weil once wrote in her notebook that “waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” I believe it.

Waiting patiently – sitting still – is the simplest thing to do, but also one of the most difficult.

We fear silence, doing nothing, putting the devices down or turning them off. Silence is so rare it is frightening. Everyone else is scrambling around out there to do something, how can it be all right for me to do nothing?

I have a Sacred Hour, I call it, it begins every day around four I turn everything off, feed the dogs, place a bottle of water alongside my chair. I take some deep breaths.

Sometimes I plug my earphones into my Iphone (today I listened to the new Van Morrison album – with Jazz Trumpeter Joey Defrancesco – it’s called You’re Driving Me Crazy, it is an album that invites patience.)

When the album was finished, I read some of the daily meditations from Henri J.M. Nouwen.

Then I sat in silent expectation. I am learning patience, every day.

As you know, I am drawn to the writers of what i believe is true Christianity. I am not a Christian, or a believer, I just love some of their ideas, they were great thinkers.

I wish they were the ones with the TV shows and political lobbyists,  and angry Christian spokespeople of our time, but of course, hurting people  and politicking is not something most real Christians do.

The prophets often counseled patience. Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances such as perseverance and/or the ability to wait in the face of delay.; provocation without responding to negative annoyance/anger/or exhibiting forebearance when under strain.  Patience is rare in our world.

The more of it I practice, the better I feel.

Nouwen writes that without patience, expectations often degenerate into wishful thinking, anger, jealousy or regret.  I can testify to that. I have to be patient to  get past the awful things clanking around in my head.

The early Christians promised nothing but suffering. “I tell you..you will be weeping and wailing..and you will be sorrowful,” Jesus is quoted as having said. He was prescient,  I suppose. That is how so many people feel every time they awaken to watch the news.

Sometimes I wish I were a devout Christian rather than an admirer of Christ, it would be easier to move through the anger and conflict that seems to fill the very air we breathe.

But the prophets called these pangs of suffering birth pains, and that is a great way to look at them. As a human being, I am bound to suffer. As a human being, I am bound to feel great joy and love.

But suffering is a beginning, not an end for me. I have no wish to join the throngs of the angry and aggrieved. Patience is the path.

What seems a hindrance becomes a way, what seems an argument becomes an opportunity, a misfit becomes a cornerstone.

I get angry and mournful sometimes about the things humans do to one another, and about the things I have done to human beings. I think about the dispiriting heartlessness and greed of some our leaders, but i change my narrative and my own history when I sit in silence and enter a state of patience.

I see the constant opportunity for these sad cruelties and disappointments to also be a constant opportunity for a change of heart.

The great thing about suffering is that there is always the chance of a change of heart.

The unhappiness and  unease is merely a purifying preparation for me, I am always ready to receive the hope that we alone, of all the creatures on the earth, can feel.

We had our first hot spell of the year yesterday and today, the Mansion was warm, the air conditioners are in the basement still, the residents still getting over the harsh winter.

Julie, the Activities Director, was reading a short story to the residents, and many of them had gathered around her, some to escape the sun still beating down on their windows, it was in the mid-80s. Courtney came into distribute some medicines to joan and others, everyone was following the stories closely.

Red came and sat down next to Jean in the background, she leaned over and stroked his back while Julie finished the story. Some of the rancor and grumpiness of the winter seemed to ease in the warmth. The residents can get out, take walks, sit on the porch, they feel less confined. I can feel the different mood. Barb, one of the residents I often spoke with, has left the Mansion.

So has Debbie, who loved to smoke a pipe. I still have a spare pipe in the car in case she runs out. I stood in the doorway, gave Red a chance to visit anyone who wanted to see him, and then left. Next week, I’m taking Madeline out to lunch. I think I’ll invite Maria two, the two are close and talk often. I think Minnie would like to come also.

Tomorrow, I’ll post a new residents list for people who l like to send messages to the residents. I think we’ll do Bingo again also. Saturday, the Albany Warriors, the refugee soccer group, is  heading to my town to visit our friend Ed Gulley and hike in our woods and have lunch at the Round House Cafe.

I’m hoping to surprise them with their new colored sweatbands. They are looking stylish these days.

In the morning, when the sheep are eating, Red is gracious enough to stay back and keep an eye on things. If anybody moves towards me or Maria or the donkeys, he comes right up and keeps order. By next week, the animals will be eating grass, not hay. A big day in their lives and in the life of the farm.

Next Tuesday, I’m going to visit Saad in his new apartment. We’re bringing groceries and some clothes. And we’re going to have a talk with him.

I wrote about meeting him two days ago. The Army of Good is responding.

A lot of people have messaged me hundreds of dollars in donations for him via Paypal, and I have pledges of more coming through the mail to my post office box, P.O. Box 25, Cambridge, N.Y.,  12816. I have good use for all of these contributions regarding Saad and more.

I’m keeping them in a special account to keep track of them and so we can plan a long -term program to help Saad. Last week, we gave him $400 so he could rent an apartment in a senior housing project, the first place of his since fleeing Baghdad several years ago. He was nearly in tears, he was so relieved.

His story is a heartbreaker. He is in his 60’s, has heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, and small wonder. He worked for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during and after the outbreak of our invasion there.

After the war, he started a successful business which was seized by the government there to support its civil war with the Islamic State. He lost his business and was target by religious extremists and had to flee the country immediately and leave his wife and eight children behind.

He was able to gain entry into the United States, but due to current immigration restrictions, the family has not.

Saad was in a UN. refugee camp in Los Angeles and then was brought to America in the final days of the Obama administration.

He lived in a crowded one-room apartment with other Iraqi refugees for more than a year, until the apartment was sold for development. He had nowhere to go – no job, no family, no friends. Because of his health, no employer will hire him, even if he could do the work.

He came to Albany because he heard it was more affordable than LA and there was a sizeable refugee community there.

He has been living in a one-room apartment with one other man, and that apartment has been sold for development. Sometimes, the refugee workers at RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center, found him shaking with cold and hunger outside of their office buildings on winter mornings.

Under our new  immigration laws, families are not permitted to come here unless the head of household has a job and income larger enough to support them all. Even then, few people are being admitted now. A Catch-22.

So my plans for Raad.

First, to stay small and move slowly. The Army Of Good is not rich, and neither am I.

As a steward of other people’s money and am tight-fisted and careful about it. But this is perfect opportunity for us to help a deserving and very needy man – and friend of our country – in a thoughtful and proportionate way.

I’m putting him in touch with an immigration lawyer so he can see if there is any legal way to bring his family here. The lawyer is also exploring whether the state can add to the small subsidy Saad is receiving.

Saad was not precise on  how much money he has left after rent – we heard it was very little, we’ll find out.

Then, Ali (Amjad Abdullah) and I will purchase several hundred dollars worth of groceries, enough to last at least a month and bring them to Saad’s apartment. We will replace the groceries as often as needed.

Saad may need a small amount of help obtaining the medications he is supposed to be taking – eight pills a day. It seems he cannot afford them all.

We will make sure Saad receives intensive English language speaking and writing training, perhaps even tutoring under the new program Ali and I are trying to set up.

We  will check to see what clothes he might need, and also whether or not to get him a cell phone so he can begin to manage some of his own affairs and communicate with his family and build a life in Albany.

We’ll check on lamps, towels, clothes, soap, etc. I don’t  yet know how much money has been raised to help Saad, his story has definitely touched a nerve.

Saad drove in Iraq and he has a New York State driver’s license. One day, it would be a great leap for him to have a car and drive.

I’ll report back regularly on what I am doing,  how much it costs, and will take photographs to show you what you have done. I am mindful of the many limits on resources, and the many people in need. We’ll take problems and people one at a time. We’ll do the best that we can for as long as we can.

This is important work to me, just what I had in mind when I started. More than anything, I wanted to humanize the refugees and immigrants who are now being demonized. They are no danger to use. There are 55.5 million refugees in the world today, according to the United Stations.

Getting Saad his apartment was a huge step for him, and for us. He’s on a good path now.

As a nation, we have slammed the door on almost all of them and turned our backs on one of the great humanitarian crises of modern times. We are now a heartless nation. I could not live with my own soul if I did not try to help some of them. That’s why we started the Army of Good – people like Saad, good people caught in other people’s storms.

Your help is most welcome. You can contribute by sending a check to the Gus Fund, c/o Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 23826, or via Paypal, [email protected]. Every penny will go precisely where it’s supposed to go, you’ll get to see it.

i’m not sure how much we will need for this, or how much we will end up having. I’ll know these things soon. We can’t take over Saad’s new life, but we can help get him started on it.

Thanks so much. With your help, we will help Saad get back on his feet. He has always taken care of himself and his family and is mortified to be in need. At the moment, he has nothing but us.

He wanted me to thank all of you for the support he received to get his first  place to live in America.  He is a good man and a sweet man. So thanks.