I spent the afternoon at the Blue-Star Equiculture farm this afternoon in Palmer, Mass. I believe the people at Blue-Star are forging a new and wiser and more mystical understanding of animals there, I believe they have found the path to saving the domesticated animals of the world and showing us how to love their people as well.

Blue-Star is a non-profit  draft horse sanctuary and organic farming center. They are to me, the new way of understanding animals.

– They rescue horses in need, many rejected everywhere else.

– They find work and human connection for the horses, they seek good homes for them, they keep them in our world.

– They are a place of compassion and spirituality, they support the ancient tradition of people and animals working together.  They believe the horses can help our wounded mother, the earth. They are finding new ways for animals like horses to support the environment, help farm  and clear land in an environmentally sound way.

Just think, someone said today, how valuable these horses will be when the fossil fuels finally run out or must be curtailed. Nobody will be daring to trying and ban them.

At Blue-Star, Pamela Richenback-Moshimer and Paul Moshimer shower great love and compassion on the horses, most of them rescued or retired. In great contrast to the anger and conflict raging throughout the animal world, they practice love and compassion for people.  There are always people at Blue-Star – artists, writers, poets, students, police and fire officers, emotionally challenged children in school vans, passers-by, photographers, people drawn to the warmth and connection of the place. And to the gentle giant horses, whose ancestors helped to build our world, whose great healing powers are evident.

Everyone is welcome there. Cruelty, cliques, envy and pettiness are not permitted. We see in the larger world that animals are vanishing, their habitats destroyed, their work banned, their lives shrinking. Too many good people who love animals and who work with them are under siege, subject to harassment, intimidation, abuse.

We need a better understanding of animals than this, a new way to understand them.

I believe I have found such a place at Blue-Star, a new model for the future of animals in our world, one that does not peach hatred and anger. At Blue-Star, people take responsibility for what we have all done to the world and the world of animals: we have destroyed their natural places in the world.

We need a better understanding of horses, elephants, ponies, donkeys, dogs and cats. I am always excited and touched to go to this old farm, to feel the spirit of the place, it is so rare and so important. I believe I see all of it coming together on the blood and sweat of a handful of visionaries in Palmer, Mass., they have become friends and soulmates.  I believe Blue-Star is a historic place, a needed place in our troubled time. It is, I believe, the seat of the new social awakening as animals desperately wait for human beings to keep them with us, not just take them away.

That is, I believe,the messages of the horses. And the elephants. And the ponies and the dogs and the cats. Keep us here alongside of us.

Blue-Star shares every value I have about animals, knows everything I have learned, teaches me what I do not know. There is no hate or ignorance there, nor arrogance or cruelty. Each animal is known as an individual, each intern and helper is treated with dignity, every horse is groomed and loved and worked with every day.  They are not emotionalized, but respected. Their true needs are known. And met.

It is such hard work they do at Blue-Star, they do it from dawn to dusk and beyond, they do it every day. It is such good and important work. And they need everything there, money, hay, support, community.

At Blue-Star today, I met some students, future farmers, drawn to working with the big horses rather than big machines on the small farms they hope to have. They are attentive, idealistic, intelligent, gentle.  They are eager to learn about animals. They say they horses are drawing them to a meaningful life, I met a young man back from several tours to Afghanistan, his work with the horses has shown him how to feel again, he said. He has already bought his small farm.

The animals at Blue-Star are not pets, furbabies, children. They are our partners and fellow spirits in the earth. And there is this great truth there: domesticated animals need to work, love to work. They need the people with whom they work, they attach to them powerfully, suffer greatly when they are taken from them. The great and untold secret of the animal world is this: people who seek a life with animals rarely harm or abuse them, they love them, and they love the lives they lead with them.

Our world has become blinded by its narrow version of animals as abused and piteous creatures who need to be taken away from people and banished to  remote preserves, where they pine for exercise, work, purpose and attention. We have lost our connection with them. You can re-connect at Blue-Star, it is what the farm is about. It is, to me, a historic place,  a temple of understanding and reconnection to the natural world, a shrine to the holy space humans and animals have shared together since the beginning of time.

There is harmony and safety at Blue-Star, it reminds us of what is possible for the people and animals in our world.

I’ve written a thousand times that people who hate people cannot love animals or do them justice, and have no right to determine their fate. Animals are not about hate and persecution. At Blue-Star, they teach the word and spread it:  how to love people and animals together, to treat animals and people with great love and care. There is no conflict, intimidation, harassment or judgment there.  You are very welcome, you will not find hatred there.

Go and see the new future of animals for yourself. See the students that flock there, the emotionally disabled and ill who flock to be healed by the horses.

I hope to call attention to Blue-Star, for all of our sakes, and for the sake of the animals left in our world. The Blue-Star idea is their salvation. If you choose to support Blue-Star,  you should know that they do not harass people, they have no secret informers. Your money will go directly to helping animals, there are no highly paid executives, marketers, politicians, lobbyists, marketers or publicists there. Only horses and people in need.

You can find Blue-Star’s blog here. You can join the herd here. You can visit them and like them on Facebook here.