Month: May 2017

When Red was so sick just a week or so ago, I was worried that he might be dying, and I got a very clear signal from him that he was not dying,  he was eager to get back to work, and he has a lot of work left to do. I had the feeling he was telling me the same thing, that we have a lot of work to do together.

Red seems to have come into my life to open me up, and show me how to do good and be a better human being. To grasp the nature of empathy and show me the path to a richer kind of humanity. He has great powers to comfort and uplift people. The RISSE soccer team came to the farm this weekend and they almost all begged me to bring Red to their next soccer game, and to all of their soccer games.

I don’t know if all of that is possible, Red is much in demand these days. But he did make a powerful connection with these very beautiful people, who come from everywhere, and I am hoping we can join them on Thursday. They believe Red will bring them luck and inspiration, and I told them this is quite possible, I have seen him do it many times, to others, and to me.

Some of the kids asked if Fate could come also, but I laughed and said, no, the chaos dog is not ready for soccer.

So a new chapter for Red, a new chapter for me, and my experimentation with a new way of living. Difficult times bring challenge, they often bring community, connection and draw out our better angels.

I was moved deeply by seeing the English city of Manchester come together so powerfully and beautifully this weekend after the awful tragedy that befell them. Their suffering is not being exploited by politicians to further hate and disconnection. Thousands of young people are getting their bee tattoos and people everywhere are raising money to support the victims and their families.

The mayor of Manchester says the city has emerge stronger and better than ever, their values have been reaffirmed, not diminished.  The people who did this, he said, have failed in a profound way to dehumanize and divide them. I hope and pray we will do as well.

In a very different way – I have suffered no tragedy like that one – our own difficult times have somehow made me stronger, and challenged me to understand my own values, and to join a different kind of Army, an Army of Good.

It feels good just to write this words, we have already done more good than I might have imagined in such a short time. But this is work that is never done, I see.

The challenge of a meaningful life is not how to avoid suffering, but how to respond to suffering with grace and empathy.

Red is at the center of this feeling for me, he reveals the power of animals to heal us and lift us up, to make us better and to comfort us. Wherever he goes, people feel the better parts of the human spirit. You can put too much on a dog, or you can put too little.

I told the kids from the RISSE refugee soccer team we will see them on Thursday. Red will be there.

The RISSE soccer team loses many games. They are smaller than their American born counterparts, there are fewer of them, they have only one coach, no cheering section, and very little in the way of equipment or supplies. Some people on my blog generously paid for their training jerseys and colors.

At the game last week with Williamstown, Coach Ali (Amjad Abdullah Mohammed) was shocked to see the entire opposing team pulled off of the field to rest and replaced. “My God,” he said, “they all get to rest!” No rest for the RISSE soccer team, there are not enough of them.

The RISSE team had to go the full way. When the team came to Bedlam Farm Sunday, I asked them about what the team meant to them. “it is so important to us, said Thet Naing Min. “They are bigger than us and stronger than us, but it is not about winning or losing, it is about friendship, what we mean to each other. It is about staying together, playing together and supporting each other.”

Another player nodded, “this is about our staying together,” he said. “It is not about winning.”

This is Ali’s idea, really, the goal is not to win, although the team loves to win and works to win. The goal is to stick together, support one another and be a good friend to each other.

I went to the game in Williamstown last week and was taking photos and forget to cheer – Ali did all of the cheering. Thursday, I’m going to a game in Clifton Park, N.Y., and I’m bringing Red, we are going to make some noise. And take pictures. It didn’t really occur to me that the kids would care if I was there.

I get it. We will show up.

Here, the Army of Good has sent money so the team can go on Saturday excursions to parks and the ocean this summer. We have raised money for birthday celebrations and gifts. I am shortly going to ask for help in paying for a weekend retreat for the team at Pompanuck Farm.

I did not really consider that my presence was important.

But they did care, almost every one of them mentioned that I was there, that I showed up, and thanked me.

The team is very important to these kids, and I did noticed how out manned and out gunned they were at that game. The opposing team had a small army of team players, the snazziest uniforms, two or three coaches, and score of parents yelling from the sidelines. The  players loomed over the RISSE kids. Nobody quit or gave up.

As sports sometimes is, the team is a metaphor for the lives of these children, their journey here has been long and hard.

The team – I am going to work to get them to a retreat at Pompanuck Farm over this summer – is all about friendship, and they have already taught me a great deal about friendship, something I have always had trouble with.

“Friendship is unnecessary,” C.S. Lewis wrote, “like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself…it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

I do not really know what the term friendship even means, I have had few friends in my life, they seem to melt away, or I melt away. We just don’t seem to stick to one another.

The soccer team does stick together. The powerful experiences of being a refugee child bonds them to one another, perhaps for life. They have seen things and experienced things that few people understand, but that everyone on the team viscerally understands.

The team gives value to endurance and survival, two qualities these kids need as they enter their new lives in a troubled America.

Friendship matters to them. People notice. People care. The team is awaking me to the power and necessity of friendship, and I will strive to be a good friend to them, as they already are to me. I see that I am one of them, without quite noticing it.

Emerson wrote that friendship was more powerful and important than romantic love. “The emotions of benevolence,” he wrote, “from the highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good will, they make the sweetness of life.”

In their friendship with one another on their soccer team, I see the Risse refugees, these children, discover the emotions of benevolence, and rediscover the sweetness of love. Next to that, winning hardly matters.

This is not about politics, it is about people.

Emma and Robin left Albany today on the noon train for New York City. By this evening, Emma, Robin and me all had  fevers, some of the wonder of being around babies. We did, however, all have a wonderful and meaningful weekend together.

Emma was, as I expected exhausted, and by Sunday, so were the rest of us. Maria and I snatched Robin early each morning and gave Emma as much of a rest as was possible – about three hours. My diaper-changing, formula preparation, and cajoling all came back and Robin and I spent much of the weekend smiling and making faces at one another.

I think our bond deepened.

She has certainly brought Emma closer to me.

On the way back to the train, Emma encouraged me to embrace my role as a grandfather, and to accept the idea that I would be important to Robin. I agreed to do that. It is not clear to me how all of this will work out, but I tend to overthink things rather than accept them.

It will be what it wants to be. I told Emma I imagined I was preparing myself for the disappointment of not being present for the vast majority of Robin’s life.  My experience with family has been difficult.

I also see what wonderful parents Emma and Jay are, and I have no interest in injecting myself too deeply into that.  Robin will be well cared for. There is such a thing as being too cautious, and I do understand that, so I will just go along with the flow.

What Robin and I – and Emma –  have together now is quite lovely, I have been working on it, and if that grows and deepens, all the better. I believe in acceptance and practice acceptance in almost all of my life, I want to apply it here as well.

Robin and I did a lot of laughing together, and by today, we were both quite comfortable with teacher. A good result for any weekend. I don’t expect to see Robin again for several months, unless I take that train myself down to New York City for a day. When I see her again, she will be walking and starting to talk.

She is a lot of fun right now, easy-going with a lot of mischief in her eyes. She knows how to laugh and how to dance. Maria and she also bonded quickly, and danced together through the weekend. Maria is a natural.

Having Robin and Emma here deepened the pleasure of hosting the RISSE refugee soccer team. That was a groundbreaking experience for me, and I will remain committed to supporting these very worthy young people.

I was sad to see her go, but also thoroughly exhausted. I forgot just how hard it was to raise a baby and spend days with her.

And also working to show that the vast majority of refugees and immigrants are no threat or danger to us, but a part of our very national DNA.

According to Iroquois legend, corn, beans, and squash are three inseparable sisters who only grow and thrive together. This tradition of mixing corn, beans and squash in the same mounds, widespread among Native American farming societies, is believed to create a healthy,  sustainable system that provided  soil fertility and a healthy diet to generations of Native Americans, and colonists.

Growing a Three Sisters garden has also become a kind of feminist symbol and garden, it was named to evoke three inseparable sisters, or more broadly, women’s unflagging support for one another.

We planted our Three Sisters garden last year and successfully grew corn,  squash, beans, cucumber and sunflowers. Today, Maria and I dug out the weeds, watered and raked the soil (closely supervised by the ever-curious Fate, who must be a part of everything) and put up the fences again.

I checked the Farmers Almanac for nutritional details:

• As older sisters often do, the corn offers the beans needed support.
• The beans, the giving sister, pull nitrogen from the air and bring it to the soil for the benefit of all three.
• As the beans grow through the tangle of squash vines and wind their way up the cornstalks into the sunlight, they hold the sisters close together.
• The large leaves of the sprawling squash protect the threesome by creating living mulch that shades the soil, keeping it cool and moist and preventing weeds.
• The prickly squash leaves also keep away raccoons and other small animals, who don’t like to step on them

Mostly, the deer and rabbits left our garden alone last year.

We are also adding a sunflower garden to the farm this year, and turning a section of lawn into a natural grass/sunflower growth. Maria re-planted the Dahlia garden as well.

A reminder that our Spring Open House is coming up the weekend of June 10-22, ll a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. I will herd sheep with Red and Fate,  read and sign from my new book “Talking To Animals.”

Maria has another great art show planned, more than a half dozen talented artists selling affordable art, including her own potholders and hanging pieces.

Ed Gulley is coming with a young and friendly calf, there will be some poetry reading, some talks, donkey visits and good feeling. You can follow the details on Maria’s blog, on the events page.

We don’t promote the Open  Houses anywhere but on our blogs, and the Open Houses have taken a soft and comfortable tone, they are more of a family re-union than anything, intimate and low-key, but the art is increasingly popular and central to the weekend. We have lots of fun. Ken Norman will also becoming on June 10 to trim the donkey’s hooves.

Please, no dogs. thanks.

 

After we dropped Emma and Robin off at the Albany Train Station, we drove back to Cambridge and stopped at the Farmer’s Market to buy some bread and one of Scott Carrino’s thin and delicious pizzas for lunch. (a white pizza with vegetables and some sausage bits.).

The Cambridge Community Jam Band was playing and it seemed timeless gathering to me, another example of community where people come together and know one another. It doesn’t matter to me if I am loved. I need to be known.

The music was good and fit the day and the place. Community is made up of a million small things, but the essential element is being seen and known to one another. It is much harder to hate someone you know that someone on Facebook or Twitter.