Got up just after dawn to go check out the light and our new saint of the gardens statue – brought from the first Bedlam Farm – and Flo was following me around out there checking it out. She has taken to walking around the farm with me. Got a border collie and a barn cat watching my back out there.
Maria is happily washing and drying her vintage handkerchiefs and turning them into magical scarves. One of her customers is wearing one to the Kentucky Derby. Flo seems to want one.
On the path, the dogs of Bedlam Farm adapt, adjust, accept – the lessons of animals. They do not grieve for their old path, or wonder where it went, or mount it’s absence. They find a new one and drink in the smells, sights and sounds of life. They teach me to do the same, they remind to do the same. My spirit dogs open doors for me, take me to new places, bear witness to my life, are magical helpers, guideposts on the hero journey. Out on our new path, a neighbor’s much loved and cared for path, they seem like mystical creatures to me, one path is as good as another.
It is a great sin to me to live an unused life. To slip into regret and to sip from the poisonous cups – anger, fear, resentment. That is not life for me, just an early way of dying. T.S. Eliot wrote of the “hollow men,” those whose lives are empty of joy, meaning and connection. I resolve every day to not live an unused life, to give my life away and blame it on others.
