Saturday, Maria and I will get up early to go to Blue Star Equiculture, to see our friend Pamela Rickenbach and to attend a remembrance ceremony for Paul Moshimer, who died a month ago. Paul is on my mind, of course, but so is the idea of Blue Star, especially the idea of Blue Star rising.

Last year, Pamela asked Maria to make flag, a symbol of the Blue Star Prophecy, the inspiration for the Blue Star name. Blue Star was stunned and shaken by Paul’s death, but the Blue Star idea is much bigger than one person, and Paul’s death seems to have inspired and invigorated it anew.

The future is at Blue Star, every thinking person in the world knows we need a new and better way to live on the earth, to live with one another, to live with the animals and keep them in our every day lives. Blue Star celebrates the love of people and the love of animals, the horses are sacred spirits there, the ancient partners, healers and guides of human beings. Blue Star is what Pope Francis had in mind when he wrote his encyclical, Blue Star is what the medicine men says the world needs – to respect the animals, to live in harmony with people, to heal Mother Earth.

More than that, there is none of the hatred, rage and judgement that seems to have infected the animal world and endangered the lives of so many animals. Blue Star is about saving animals and keeping them among us. It is also about the future. A remarkable gathering of intense and idealistic young people have come to the farm to carry on Paul and Pamela’s work. The place has more energy and focus than ever, the future seems to have arrived.

Blue Star is moving in the right direction at the right time, this is a model for where the world must go if people are to survive here and if animals are to remain in our everyday lives.

There is the great love of the horses, the passionate devotion to the environment, a commitment to loving people and treating them with dignity. Each of us, says Pope Francis, has a vision of good and evil, and people must be encouraged to move towards what they think is good. Everyone must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he or she conceives of them. That alone would be enough to make the world a better place.

Out of darkness, light. Out of death, life. Out of hatred, love. Out of greed,  selflessness. In the coming months, I hope to write frequently about Blue Star. But tomorrow belongs to Paul Moshimer.