E.B. White was a famous writer and columnist for the New Yorker Magazine. His writing about rural life in Maine – his column was called “One Man’s Meat”- inspired me to start the Bedlam Farm Journal twenty years ago. His column featured essays about his life as a saltwater fisherman and on a farm.
One of his quotes that stayed in my head even now was his notion that joy was a matter of faith.
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.” The answer, he eventually decided, was that he had to do both. I agree.
I wake up thinking the same thing and reaching the same conclusion. Our world has taken the issue out of my hands; greedy human beings are destroying the world all by themselves, and skipping the good part. The thing about making a lot of money, I’ve observed, is that you can never have enough.
…coffee yesterday at a friend’s house, sitting on rocking chairs on the porch, lilacs heavy in the air over the “neat as a pin and not a weed in sight” acre of a yard, I listened to his high energy quest and struggle to find gratitude and joy. Angry at how hard it is, with so much that “needs” to be done (to be socially acceptable and acceptable in his God’s eyes), to find joy or to be thankful. The sadness was overwhelming and more than a little cliche…expending life to secure other people’s approval and his own approval for being better than others…
Control was a theme that was recurrent. Aging was raged against…taking from him, etc. I asked if he could be thankful for all that he could still do; I suggested that we wander the yard and take in all that was beautiful as it is; I asked him what he could let go of rather than holding with a clenched fist…
I suggested Bedlam Farm Journal.
And I reminded myself of the same.
Thanks for the plug Steven, the journal can’t transform people or mace miracles – he sounds unhappy, but he is welcore, I hope it is helpful. You have the spirit inside of you, otherwise it wouldn’t help..j