Today, the refugee kids and Maria and Ali and me  walked into Ed Gulleys changing world, what he calls “the life of the now,” a place of what the gurus call radical acceptance.

I will always remember the looks on the faces of the refugee kids when I told them about Ed’s illness, his brain tumors.

They all knew about it, and they all seemed to know what to do and not to.

They didn’t mention it, but their feeling for this bit and loud and interesting man was evident in their eyes and bodies and gestures.

There was a real connection, perhaps because they know about trouble and suffering. I urged them to read his blog from yesterday. Some were reading it on their phones as their van left the farm for Albany.

I was struck by this post Ed wrote yesterday, it was a portrait in introspection and acceptance, and perhaps, courage also. I am a sucker for writing this good and authentic.

I suppose all of us might wonder how we might feel if we had just been told by a surgeon that we had a bunch of tumors in our brain, and there was nothing much to be done about it that we could accept.

Ed is an opinionated man, and he is used to giving lectures, a trait most writers tend  towards if they are not careful (I always do what I call “me” writing, to avoid this trap).

Mostly, he lectures about the plight of the farmer, about which he knows a great deal, and the artificially low price of milk, which sometimes drives farmers to suicide and ruin. Don’t mention milk to Ed unless you have a lot of time. Ed and I have argued about this, farmers sometimes forget, I said, that everyone who is not wealthy has it rough these days. He laughs at me.

Yesterdays posting was different, it has a softness and honesty and reflection that it is the core of real writing, and reveals the true nature of a soul. His piece showed vulnerability and was a portrait of one strong and independent man’s search to accept the new reality of his life, just a week ago.

What the doctor told him was unimaginable and utterly unpredictable. A great shock.

In his piece, Ed thought about a “barter on the time ahead.” He wanted to make a trade, to get to go to a grandchild’s ball game and get the difficult 4020 tractor running while he can. I hope he gets to make that deal, I’m sure he will.

“Today,” Ed wrote on his blog, “While waiting to get the 4020 ready and running, I felt angry and frustrated at first with my sight problems making it impossible to do what I felt should be so simple; done it before many, many times, but I couldn’t.”

Like the sickness eating away at him, he wrote, “I accepted defeat. I can’t do it, so with Carol at my side we went and pulled weeds..it was relaxing doing what you can, being content, choosing what is best for me at this time.”

If you know Ed, you will know what a powerful and significant and reveal string of words that is. The very proud and independent man, who has fixed tractors hundreds, if not thousands of times in his long life on the farm, is suddenly helpless and feels defeated by his own shadow.

He is the unchallenged master of his universe, the one everyone went to for miles around for help in fixing things and learning things. I think he may not ever have felt defeated in  his life.

But as we can see from reading this piece, he is not defeated, nor is he helpless.

Instead of feeling badly about his life, or pitying himself, or being angry what is happening, he chooses to do what he can, to be content in the choice he makes about what is best for him at this time.

That is a lot of wisdom from a person who spent so many years of his life in one small world, working from dawn to dusk. I have heard many people complain much more bitterly and piteously about the death of a dog or cat. Ed has  yet to complain about his cancer, although he has every right to do so.

Ed  says he plans to enjoy his journey, his time, his travels, getting back at long last to the “simple…the ABC’s.”

In his writing, Ed is embracing radical acceptance, he is not thinking about what he can’t do or can’t change, or even prepare for. Instead, he writes, he will “let our spirit guide us down this path without fear or guilt..staying int the life of the now…until our spirit helps us step over into the unknown…” Radical acceptance means understanding what while pain is inevitable in life, suffering is a choice.

Ed came to this value, which has long fascinated me, quickly, and I think it is a part of him, his very special way of looking at the world. Ed accepts the pain, which he cannot avoid, but chooses not to suffer.

This is a special piece of writing, a gripping and touching reflection from the darkness into the light. Which ever way it all goes, Ed will have a lot of important things to say on his blog in the coming weeks and months. A gift to all of us who face and respect the true nature of life.