Day: July 28, 2018

Eight or nine years ago, during my darkest winter, I went regularly to visit Steve, a fiercely religious pastor in a country Presbyterian Church. Steve always told me he was a Jesus man, and he was quite open about hoping I would embrace Christ as my Lord and Savior and keep myself out of Hell.

But he was always drawn to rescue, he took me  in like a stray dog wandering in the cold, offering me tea and peanuts when we met, sometimes in  his kitchen, sometimes in his big old drafty Church. He even invited me to his weekly farmer’s lunch. I loved going.

Steve was, as he put it a “Jesus man,” he was also a very good friend to me and a minister of compassion, when I would come to him in panic and pain, he always invited me in, we would talk together and pray together. Steve was – is – the real deal and I will always be grateful for the refuge and comfort he gave me.

We argued a lot. Steve was opposed to divorce, and also sex out of marriage. I was in the process getting divorced, and determined to have sex often. He said he had to try.

He also said I was a good Christian in many ways, better than many of the churchgoers that he tended to.

We were curious friends, but the friendship seemed deep and valuable to me. I think I have always been drawn to friends who are  not like me.

When I got married and moved to Cambridge, we drifted apart.

I was no longer living in a panic, and Steve had souls to save. He often told me that we were all sinners awaiting salvation. The Presbyterians around here are tough and they are not kidding.

Sometimes I would invite Steve along on my hospice runs, especially if people wanted to be baptized as they approached the end of their lives. Steve would come and question the seekers closely about their faith, if he didn’t hear real conviction, or were just looking to be safe, he would politely decline the baptism and recommend someone else.

Steve told me once that the strength and conviction I was looking for was inside of me, and could not be found outside.

He said the answers I was looking for could never come until I was able to live from my center, and not from my head, or the beliefs of other people. For all of his fundamentalism, he talked often of the new spirituality – mediation, solitude, Zen, even Yoga.

He told me he was convinced that I was profoundly sincere in seeking to live a spiritual life. He told me that I would come soon to discover my own idea of God, and he even blessed that journey in a prayer we said together in his office one winter morning when I felt I just could not get through another day.

He asked me to remember that God was a gentle breeze by which he would make his presence known to me, and that I would feel this in my center, not my head.

I’m still looking for God, but I have found many gentle breezes, they always seem holy to me. The recent troubles and tensions in our country have inspired me to embrace a spiritual life, one it seems that will always be outside of an organized faith or religion.

The best response to discord and controversy is to ignore it, and go to the center, and live a good life.

I envy Steve his absolute conviction, I am a creature of grays and hues, I always look to step in the shoes of others. In the past two years, I have turned inward to the call of an inner life  during a time in which social problems are so pressing.

This is not political work for me, I have absolutely no interest in politics as it is practiced in our country now.

I seek to relate to myself and others in a creative way and to live from the center of my existence. I hope to be a gentle breeze that can touch and help others.

I think of Steve often, and of the great gift he gave me that I use almost  every day now. He called me to guide myself and hopefully some others to go beyond myself in a  search for meaning without losing my own home.

More than anything else, this means not being distracted by the trivia of argument and judgement and hate and  frustration. Easier said than done. I’m on it, though.

My new British Partner’s desk arrived today, it is a heavy, serious, beautiful old wooden desk, and I took to it right away. The minute I sat down it felt like my desk.

Maria is never happier than when she is  re-imagining a part of my house, and while she can be scary sometimes, I am grateful. I hadn’t really touched or cleaned out my study since we moved into the farmhouse, I write every day and am wary of disruptions.

This was a big one. I was writing on an old farm kitchen table surrounded by two more old farm tables. Every surfaced was covered with books, papers, cables, camera equipment. We removed two large piece of furniture from the study, the old Victorian sofa that Lenore took over, and a farm table Maria requisitioned for her studio.

We hauled out numerous camera bags, book I don’t use, garbage bags, old papers. In the new arrangement, the big desk sits at the end of the room, flanked by a farm table on one side (my former writing desk) and two old bookcases on the other.

It took hours to get this far, and we have hours to go tomorrow. I was freaked out by the process, when my writing system is shut down I feel like a man on oxygen with the tank turned off. More later. We are tired.

My study is in shambles, I’m a bit of a wreck. We bought this 150 year old “Partner’s Desk” at a local restoration shop called the Shiny Sisters for $220. It has drawers and openings on both side.

These desks were made for British Banks who had a two-partner system for loans. They were built for the banks in the 1840’s and 1850’s. It is a beautiful old fashioned and sturdy desk, the price seemed irresistible to us. I am nervous about it, as I always am when anything in my study is moved around or changed.

They were made of the best hard wood and have lion knobs on all of the drawers. Maria decided it was time to completely re-organize my desk and throw out the clutter. So everything in my office is in chaos.

More later.

Fate was excited to go to the dump to see her pal Bob, who has treats on hand for her. She was also excited to see herself in the mirror just as I got my camera out of the car. I love this portrait of a one-in-a-million dog.

In 2006, a year before the Bedlam Farm Journal was spawned, I began visiting local farmhouses to take photographs and meet some farm families. I was eager to know the farmers and see their farms and write about them. I found that many of the old farms were occupied by farm widows, their husbands had all died riding tractors or out milking cows in the barn.

It seemed that male farmers who went to Florida or retire tended to die quickly, they struggled to find purpose after decades of milking their cows twice a day and tending to the fields. In one of the first farms I visited, the elderly widow, who was in her 90’s and courteous and supportive, went up to an old dresser and pulled out what she said was a Farm Journal.

It was her grandfather’s, she said, and it was a thin leather-bound volume, it said “Diary, 1861,” and  in it, in small and meticulous handwriting, was the life of a farmer.

Every day, he recorded – with incredible brevity – his day. What he bought, what he sold, what the weather was, what catastrophe’s occurred. Storms and heat waves, droughts and blizzards, the cost of feed and bales of hay, the slaughter of pigs,  trips to town, broken wagons.

On one short passage, he recorded the escape of one of his most belligerent bulls: “Bull got out,” he wrote on a Tuesday, “Bill came back,” on a Thursday. He recorded the sudden deaths of two children from colds, and the death of son when a tractor rolled over on him.  His son, who was 12, broke a leg which got infected. There were no antibiotics then.

The notations were brief and without emotion.

The farmers were honest and direct. Their lives were hard and unsparing. A surprising winter storm could easily wipe out their herds and their farms. So could a flood or a drought. There was no net under them.

In the coming months, I visited a score of farms, and came back with a score of beautiful old farm journals. None of the widows would accept any payment, they just wanted the journals to live.  I eventually gave all but two the County Historical society, and this one, the one above, inspired me to write a farm journal, I called it the Bedlam Farm Journal.

It is an amazing thing for me to realize this journal was kept and written in the first year of the American Civil War. I keep it right in front of my computer where I can see it when I write.

I was struck by the farmer’s openness, their wish to record and share their lives. This was my inspiration to do the same thing on my blog. I found this journal today as we were going through my books and drawers preparing to make room for a new desk.

I was very happy to see it. It is the mother of my blog, which I love very much.