On Saturday, from noon to 5 p.m., a remembrance for Paul Moshimer, my friend and the friend of many, a great lover of animals, the husband of Pamela Moshimer RIckenbach, the co-director of the mystical Blue Star Equiculture farm, will be held at Blue Star in Palmer, Mass., from noon to 5 p.m.
Maria and I will be there. I am so sorry Paul did not get to read Pope Francis’s very powerful encyclical on the future of the earth, the first thing I thought when I read it was that I wished I could have talked to Paul about it, it would have given him hope for his own dreams, for the future of the horses and all of the animals, for his beloved Mother Earth, for whom he worked day and night.
We are all connected to each other, Paul told me again and again. He would have loved the vision of Pope Francis, he spoke Paul’s heart.
“Everything is related,” wrote Francis in “Laudato Si,”and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth.”
Paul was a spiritual man, I believe, not a religious man, he worshiped the idea of the better man, the peaceful man, the loving man, the kind and gentle man. He heard the call of the horses for harmony and to heed the wounded cries of our Mother, the earth. When Paul’s world comes to pass, and we meet him there, it will be a gentle and healing place, not a greedy and violent and disconnected one. And the animals and the people will live in harmony, and the earth will be healed. Paul was a holy man in his own way with his own writ.
I think sometimes the world was simply not ready for him, for people like him.
In the weeks before he chose to leave the world, Paul was concerned about a young farmer named Joshua Rockwood who was arrested by police in his upstate New York town during the worst cold wave in recent American history. Joshua was charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty and neglect, including citations for having frozen water streams and bowls, an unheated barn, and inadequate amounts of feed the police and officials of the humane society decided he ought to have for his pigs.
Paul felt, as I do, that the charges against Joshua, a loving and honest farmer, were unjust. Paul came to New York to attend one of Joshua’s court hearings, he called me days before he died to offer to drive to New York with his horse trailer and bring home the three horses that officials seized from Joshua’s farm during their raid. Make sure Joshua knows there would be no charge, he said.
This was very much the way Paul lived. He cared deeply about people, he helped many, and had the rare quality of empathy and intuition. Justice was important to him, he was willing to suffer for it, he was willing to hold out a hand and heart to others. Thomas Paine might been writing about Paul when he wrote “I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
Paul and I had bonded in many ways, one of the most enduring connections was our anguish over the persecution of farmers, the poor, people who lived with working animals, with the horses, at the hands of the new animal movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals but does not, which he and I both believed has become a new kind of inquisition in many ways, a cruel and cold social movement he could not abide, and which managed to hurt him and those he loved deeply and continuously.
Paul saw that we needed a better understanding of animals than this, a better love of human beings than this, that we had to be better than this. In the name of animals, in the name of people. That was the Next Step, The Third Way, the idea behind Blue Star that he and Pamela shared so passionately. We live, he believed, in fond affection for brother sun, sister moon, brother river, mother earth. And for our brothers and sisters.
So this is a man worth considering and remembering, an idea that deserves to live. It is not for me to judge or even comprehend how he chose to say goodbye, but goodbyes always have two sides to them, and I have the right to mine. Go in peace and compassion Paul, I pray that you find what you want and need in whatever world and space you have chosen to occupy. I know that some day, in a time and place of your own choosing, when we meet once again, it will be in that better world, the world of your dreams and passions, a world of your visions and love.There, the better man will live and prosper, not in a patriarchy any longer but in the community of people and the brotherhood of humans and animals.
You planted some powerful seeds, they will grow and grow and grow. Just look around here today, they already are.
There, in that world, you will find a way to say goodbye, to me, to your many friends and family members, to Pamela, the powerful army of the young that you nurtured and guided here, to the horses you came to love so much.
The remembering ceremony is open to the public, but you don’t need to be there to celebrate Paul’s life. There is no better way to honor Paul and to remember him than to help Blue Star fulfill it’s promise and his dream.