April 23, 2008 – Maria Heinrich and her husband Bill are among my closest friends. They work to restore old homes and historic buildings, and live a life of simplicity, hard work, purpose and fulfillment.
 Maria has been an artist all of her adult, and like all artists, struggles to balance her creative soul with the realities and demands of the outside world.
   She is a close friend of the poet Mary Kellogg, and an integral part of Mary’s new book, “My Place On Earth.” She was an ardent and diligent supporter of my photography and as passionate as I am about the notion of people’s inner spirits and creative souls being freed.
  Maria, a lifelong artist,  has been making art, fiberworks and beautiful quilts for some time, but this week she put one up for sale on this site, and told me this morning that it was purchased by a nurse in Maryland, someone she liked very much from the e-mail. This was a big moment for her, for all of us perhaps, as Maria has rarely wanted to sell her work. Never, actually.
    Maria’s quilts, I am told, would cost a fortune in New York or Boston, but this one sold for $200 and there were several offers.
  This week, Maria decided to re-organize her life, to continue the restoration work she and Bill love, but also to structure more of her time around her art, something she has been on fire to do since I’ve known her.
  It was one of the joyous moments of my life on this farm to see her in there this morning, buzzing over her sewing machine, finishing her backing for the “Quilt Of Nasty Colors,” moving along on her “Resentment Quilt,” spread all over the Studio Barn floor for Lenore to walk all over, hunched over her showing machine.
  This, I sense is Maria’s time, a creative time, an affirmation of life, and a period when she has decided to throw herself into her art, make a lot of it, and thus send the world a message: she is important, and so is her work.
  Seeing her in the studio this morning, I rushed over to annoy her by taking pictures, and she grumbled about it, but told me I could take her picture – she doesn’t like to be photographed – if I would not bother her, and then leave her to her work. Lenore and I came in, disrupted things, took a photo, and left.
   I love the picture.
  I wanted to shout out when I left, that I am beginning, slowly, to figure out why I am here. To be born again myself. So that I can grow as a human being, a writer, and an artist, and as a friend. So that Mary Kellogg can emerge as a poet. So that Annie can love animals. So that Maria can gather the strength to unleash her great talent on the world. We are in this together, encouraging one another, cheering one another on, rooting for each other. This is not, I have learned, a choice one can make for other people. Or than one can do for other people. They have to want it, and badly. They have to do it. Sometimes they can’t. Sometimes they won’t. Sometimes life just doesn’t permit it, and understanding that is a part of revelation as well.
   I can’t play God, just use my big mouth to cheer them on.
   Wow, I thought when I left the studio barn this morning.This is a big morning for me, and the farm is so greatly enriched by having this talented and loving spirit in one of its barns cranking out beautiful work. That barn has seen a lot of life, but nothing this pretty. This is the fabric of life, of the spirit, and of the passing of time.
  I switched dogs, got Rose and went out to herd the sheep. It’s odd in life how you do things, experience things, and then, if you get kicked around enough, come to consciousness,  summon all of your strength, you begin to understand why you did what you did, what you were called to do. And how to do it, perhaps, in the right way.
  I feel that way about writing. I feel that way about photography. I feel that way about the farm, and about Hospice work, and about my emerging spiritual life, and about teaching in Granville, and about the great support and commitment my friends and I have to one another, especially our determination to be fulfilled, to create as much as we can create, to not look back and say we lived a life of regrets.
 In this way, we lift one another up. Thomas Merton calls this salvation. Joseph Campbell calls it the Hero’s Journey, giving rebirth to life. Some people call it being Born Again.
  What I am coming to believe is that this struggle, this yearning, whatever we choose to call it, and however we choose to pursue it, is a universal human aspiration, the part of us that needs to come out, and often does not get the chance.
   So chalk one up to the artist in all of us, who seeks to be free, and sometimes, when the planets are aligned, and life’s circumstances converge, and whatever we choose to call God makes his presence known to us, we can say we have put our lips to the world, and just lived.
  I am eager to get to my friend Steve McLean, the pastor, and harass him about this idea I have that this work,  that I am trying to do, that Annie and Mary and Maria are doing, is God’s work, is as much the revealed word as any Bible or scripture.
 This is my message, and I hear it over and over again, with an almost messianic fervor:
Be fulfilled. It is not about what others think, but about self-respect, what you think about yourself. This is so, I believe,  whether you love goats or dogs or love photos.
   Perhaps I need to go to Church. Perhaps I need to go to therapy. In our culture, the line between one and the other is sometimes impossible to see.That’s what I feel in my heart. I am born again, giving rebirth to life, in my life and family, with my friends, in my writing and my art, with my dogs and animals, in my evolving conversation with God, again and again until I keel over and drop.