The past few months have served as a benchmark for me, a test perhaps, a measure of how fear works as a geography, as a space to cross, as a boundary. I have come to see fear as a devotion, like faith or love. Something of a choice.

It was my faith once, it governed most, if not all of my life. And then I lost faith in fear, and chose other devotions – love, encouragement, creativity. And the dogma of fear as devotion began to crumble, always there, always hovering, always fed by life and by the culture of fear in which we live. A kind woman e-mailed me from North Carolina and told me that she begins every morning by reading the New York Times, and it makes her angry and upset, and then she turns to my blog and often – not always – feels better, reading stories of Red, Simon, the old sheep.

I did not answer her, but I wondered why she reads the New York Times every morning, as I gave that up several years ago, and can honestly say I have not missed a single piece of news I need to know to live my life each day. It was hard to do, as it was difficult to give up the idea of modern medicine as the path to health for me. And hard not to be with people who talk about their health all day, or who warn me about my life, and the dangers of life, and the dangers of the world. I recognize them as the faithful followers of fear which is their devotion.

Fear stalks the world, our lives, our culture, hovers like the mist over a meadow or the spots on the moon. But it is also a choice, a faith, and I have found a new faith, and my life is so much better, brighter, more meaningful. When I watch Red work, and look at photos of him, I feel he is showing me how to concentrate on my true devotion, which is not fear but the absence of fear. He inspires me, he knows how to concentrate, to focus on his life, to avoid fear, the great distracter and destroyer of life.  I am a believer, as is he, it is something we share, a bond we have formed.