I’m not superstituous but I was surprised to look at this photo – taken with my Achromat art lens – of Gus sitting on Lulu as the sun rose over the hills behind the farm. I suppose there might be a message there,but I don’t dare hazard a guess as to what it might be?
Last week, I wrote a rather anguished account of my grappling with my increasing identification with Antifa, the anti-fascist street movement popping up across America. I said I would wear an Antifa bracelet until Nazi’s stopped marching in torchlight parades through our city streets.
I am not complaining about it, but I did understand this was a controversial idea and that many people would be upset with me, although I was somewhat surprised that so many were not. I love my bracelet, I wear it every day and am taken aback that so many people in my conservative upstate N.Y. town thank me for wearing it and ask me about.
In America, it is increasingly the custom to celebrate freedom and patriotism while often denying freedom and tarnishing the very idea of American patriotism. It sometimes feels like a slogan without meaning.
Here, loudmouths and iconoclasts like me can speak freely, explore our beliefs, change them and learn and grow, or stand or ground. I write what I think, and as I go. I am not a fixed point, but a raging stream.
I love that about America, there are few places on our earth where one can do it.
Ideas swirl about my head like a whirlpool, I believe consistency is the process of small and fixed minds, the country of the left and the right. If the bad guys ever do takeover, it is understood that I will be one of the first to be dragged out into the night and shot or locked away, it always thus.
It would not be because I am important, but because nobody would want me to get important.
I change my mind about things, hourly, that’s what it means to think. But I have not changed my mind about my bracelet from Antifa.
This morning, I got a letter from Berkeley, Calif. from Tim S. Inside the letter was a lovely card which began: “Dear Jon, if your “heart is with Intifa,” I can no longer support your work. I do not believe in using violent means and destruction of property against opposing ideologies and groups. Further, I found your characterization of Antifa to be overly simplistic, naive, and lacking of nuance. If you were thinking of answering…Don’t Bother.”
t was an interesting message, it felt more like an e-mail to me than a letter. The letters I get every day are usually quite thoughtful and loving and wonderful to read. The letter was significant to me, because it raised important questions about what support of someone like me really means, and whether the idea of support means accepting ideas you don’t like as well as ideas you do.
I understand how Tim feels, and living in Berkeley, he sees a lot more Intifa than I have. This loosely knit coalition has done a lot of things I would not do and cannot condone.
I did, of course, reply. He doesn’t get to tell me whether I can do that or not, and I thanked him for the card and said he did, of course, have to follow his heart as I am following mine. People get the right to decide who they want to read, that is not my decision.
The letter got me thinking about what support means in the realm of ideas.
He seems to be against assaults on opposing ideologies or groups, but he is not in favor of my opposing ideology or beliefs. It occurred to me reading this letter that he obviously has never supported my work or he would know that sooner or later, having written 23,000 plus blog posts, I would express a belief he does not like. To me, that is sort of the point of reading something.
I don’t agree with the President’s belief that protests around the flag or the National Anthem denigrate the people who have given their lives for freedom. That is precisely what so many men and women have given their lives to protect. They were not dying for good manners, they were fighting and dying for freedom.
And freedom is not always polite or conventional.
If Tim were speaking to me, I would ask him why only read things you agree or like? If it is wrong to assault opposing ideologies of thought or political belief, why it is okay to ban me and call me names, an assaultive kind of message, as opposed to civil and thoughtful disagreement? You don’t change minds by calling people names.
But the difference between Tim and I is that I like dialogues, I never claim to always be right. And he doesn’t want to speak with me, which tells me how knows or cares little about me. By running away he rejects the very idea of dialogue.
This is the thing in America, we have to hate what and who we disagree with, and this what Tim is doing while convincing himself he is doing just the opposite. Is it possible that everyone is protecting freedom all at once, in their own ways?
I’m not going to run from it. I am a dialogue guy.
My heart is, in some ways with the Antifa because they have drawn the line against hateful ideologies that promote the slaughter and genocide of people with whom they disagree. People like me. If Nazi’s and white supremacists take hold, as they are beginning to do, they have made it clear that they will not observe conventional rituals and values about free expression. They will kill people like me and people who are a different color than they are.
And I should say I do differentiate between outspoken conservatives and Nazi’s. They are not nearly the same thing. But when Nazi’s and white supremacists march with torches through city streets, and are not challenged by our most powerful leaders, lines and distinctions get blurry quickly.
Unlike most politicians, Nazi’s keep their promises.
I always thought my government would protect me from people like that, but now, I’m not so sure. And Antifa is trying to protect people like me from people like them. If they become legitimate and secure, then history tells us there may be no stopping them. My family has, over the years, learned that lesson only too well, and I can’t run or hide from that reality.
People who have been enslaved know it as well. This, I think, is the great disconnect. You are either close to it or you are not.
I could be wrong about this, it is not a simple issue for me at all, despite what Tim thinks. I would have enjoyed hearing his thoughts about it, name-calling and banning and storming off in a huff is not the way in which I communicate, it is the national disease, it is not an expression of freedom, but an assault on freedom.
I do not argue my beliefs on Facebook, or even in letters with classy notecards.
I think the national conversation underway about patriotism, the flag, and free expression is a great and hopeful thing, and it is long over due. Freedom is worthy of debate, it is a fragile thing, given human history. I don’t have the answers to it, all but I am listening, and I am especially interested in listening to people who think differently from me.
If Tim feels this way about me, and if he can’t express himself in a more thoughtful way, he is wise to move along, life is short. But I would define support differently than he does, and remind him he could never have possibly supported my work if he could write a letter like that. In this way, he makes himself irrelevant to me when he very well might have something to say that I need to hear.
Irene, from, South Dakota, has and does support my work. And she doesn’t like what I wrote either.
She sent me a letter this week also and in it, she said: “Jon, I have enjoyed your writing, books and blogs for years. I often disagree with you, but often find reasons to think in your writing. I was sorry to see you are identifying with Antifa, it seems to me you stand for very different things than they do. You are not a violent or angry and destructive person.
You are entitled to your opinion, I’m not writing to attack you, call your names, or quit reading you. I’m see you explain yourself over time – I am not agreeing with you on this – and I am interested to see whether you change your mind or not. I thought your piece was powerful and it did make me think, and for that, I will always be indebted to you. Keep on trucking, you do good work. Best, Irene.”
She added a very thought page or two on just why she disagreed with me and gave me much to think about.
I don’t know Irene, but I love her. She is a patriot, she understands what it really means to be an American. She understands what it really means to be free. And she really does support my work, for which I thank her.
At the close of his letter, Tim wrote “goodbye.” Goodbye to you also, sir, and I hope you find what you need.
My own faith evolves all of the time, as I move through life.
I believe life is a gift to be used well and wisely.
And when we fail to use it wisely, we have no right to it
we surrender it to the angels:
Every day I find a joyful surprise in life and nature,
in the apples on the trees,
the pumpkins in the pasture,
the swallows in the barn,
the dogs and the sheep,
the mists on the hills,
the donkeys in their meditations,
the shadows in the forest.
Every day I wonder if human beings deserve the world they live in,
their failed history awash in blood and hatred and cruelty.
When we abandon the poor.
When we abandon Mother Earth.
We we kill one another,
When we create a world of bitterness,
trial, greed and war.
When we abandon the animals of the world
to their fates and our avarice and blindness.
Do we really deserve the world we live in,
the earth we have been given, the cycles of life,
the wonder of the sea, the power of the seasons,
the sun and the moon
the humble snakes in the garden?
I am not important, and the human race is not important.
I am going to the woods in my heart and soul. I
take my place among the living things – the soil, the flowers, the trees,
the animals and dogs and butterflies and birds.
The trees do not kill in the name of righteousness and flag,
and bend their knees to the false Gods of hatred,
pride and domination.
It turns out, that
humans are not as important as they thought.
Already, the earth is taking itself
back from us, not because we
give it no choice,
really, if it is to live on,
and then
the animals will have a chance to live in freedom and peace again,
the rivers may flow again, the marshes grow back, the skies clear and cool,
the seas recede,
the ice will grow back.
I hope our better angels rise up and take the world back,
because it feels to me on some days,
that we have set fire to The Contract,
and broken our promises to God.
I am not important, and in this way, I rejoice.
I am free.
We take our sweet and loving donkeys for granted, we see them every day and forget sometimes how rarely other people get to see them. Jean got up out of her chair and walked stiffly and slowly down to see the donkeys, so did Peggie. Barb and WInnie couldn’t make the walk.
We gave them all some carrots to give to the donkeys and they just soaked it up. The donkeys, as always, seemed to sense what was happening, and stood patiently to get the pats and carrots. They are profoundly loving creatures.
Red put on a fine show for the Mansion residents, he went out and got the sheep and brought the right up to the gate where everyone was standing. Fate joined in, in her inimitable way. Gus was inside the gate cuddling with people, we are fortunate to have dogs that love people so much.
They peppered me with questions about the dogs and wanted to know everything about them. Standing out in the field, watching the donkeys and sheep clustered at the gate (donkeys know visitors mean carrots), I felt so grateful for my life.
I love the farm, Maria, the life of the farm, and I love having a farm that can mean so much to the people who visit it. I remind myself every day to be grateful for my life, there may come a day when I can only think of it in memory. In the meantime, every day here is a treasure
