Mithra Kulatunga may not know it, but he is hard at work building a shrine and a sanctuary at Blue Star Equiculture. People will soon enough be coming to see Mithra’s beautiful Garden, to walk in it, sit on it’s benches and see the coming of the new world, the city on the hill, where people and animals live together in harmony and purpose, and are treated with love and dignity.

They say mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause. The mark of the mature and exceptional man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

Mithra is an exceptional man, and I am going to Massachusetts to spend some time with him in a few days.

Most nights now, Mithra can be found at night sleeping outdoors in the gardens of Blue Star Equiculture, which he went to build and tend when he heard the news that Paul Moshimer, the co-director of Blue Star, had hung himself in the great old tree that is the spiritual center of the farm. Mithra knew Paul, he knew Blue Star. He wanted to come there and help.

Mithra is a college student. And perhaps an angel. No one asked him to come, he simply appeared soon after Paul’s death. He has taken it upon himself to till and plant and cultivate the garden, now big and long and beautiful. For now, he has given himself over to the farm, and the idea of the farm.

He comes to answer the call of his generation to build a better world than we have, while there is time.

Sometimes Mithra comes into the farmhouse for food, but mostly he tends to his garden, rain or sun. Mithra is from India, his family used elephants to help care for their gardens. Flowers and nature – and horses – are a passion of his. He invited me to spend a night with him when I met him, when I talked to him after Paul’s death.  I accepted, we are picking a time. I saw the spirit in his eyes.

I want to know more about him, why he has come to Blue Star, why he has devoted himself so selflessly and fully to the garden there.

Mithra studies at the University of Massachusetts Stockbridge campus, he graduated from Blue Star’s Draft Horse Husbandry Class in 2014. Pamela Moshimer Rickenbach says he is one of the kindest and most loving humans she has ever known. When Paul died Mithra appeared at the farm and took over the farm’s production and flower garden.

He and some others have helped build a sanctuary for people in the shadow of the 400-year-old tree where Paul took his own life.  Without any money, Mithra has collected seeds and plants and gathered contributions and is building a beautiful garden.

And spending long and hard hours planting, weeding, watering.

When Mithra comes to the farm – four or five days and nights a week –  he sleeps out in the garden and works out in the sun all day long. Coming from India he is used to heat.  Pamela says they only see him late at night, and briefly, when his work is done and he needs something to eat.

He says he could not be more fulfilled. Mithra says he loves the big tree, it dies not upset him that Paul hung himself from it, or that he works and sleeps in it’s shadow.

Mithra is important for many reasons.

His work and time at Blue Star speaks to the  power and meaning of the farm to so many people. How many people of any age do you know who would live out in the garden and love it for free?  His story is important, it speaks to the goodness in human beings, the healing power of the horses,  and to the importance of animals remaining in our world and in the lives of everyday people.

This act of selflessness ought to be noted, I want to know more about it and share it. I know to know Mithra.  In a sense, he is the perfect poster child for Blue Star, as important as the horses are. Mithra is, in a way, just why Blue Star is so important, why it is so worthy of support and  recognition. Somehow, the farm has given meaning and direction to this great heart and soul and to the lives of countless others.

There are actually many Mithra’s working and volunteering and circling around Blue Star, but their stories can only be told one at a time.

I am not one of those to talk about the old days, or lament the state of young people today. The young in our world are amazing, tolerant and stimulating and filled with the energy of change, smarter and more intelligent than ever.

But I do not know many people, young or old, who would come to Blue Star and sleep outside for weeks in a pasture to build a garden for someone else. Our culture is obsessed with the fragile idea that success and happiness are mostly about money and security. We live in an aspiritual and increasingly angry world, we are obsessed with money, we live in fear, we dread risk, we work as money slaves for people who care nothing for us doing work we do not love, our spirits drowned by warnings and argument. We are disconnected from nature and from the world of animals. Our leaders are mired in greed and conflict and isolated from the real world.

Mithra is profoundly connected to nature and to animals. Like so many of the young and older people who find their way to Blue Star, they have found a better way to live than the frantic legions that have come before them.

Mithra is answering the call of the Native People and of Pope Francis, now one of the world’s great spiritual leaders, to live in harmony with people, to begin the very personal and individual process of healing the world, and of helping the beleaguered animals of the world and treating them well.

Mithra is drawn to people and to Mother Earth, he is  helping to heal and honor her right in the Blue Star Pasture, right in the shadow of the great tree that has shaped so much of life on this farm. The horses, he said, have changed his outlook and his consciousness.

That is the power of Blue Star, really, that is why the place is so  important. All kinds of people are drawn to it and are willing to surrender themselves to it, and to the idea of loving the animals and treating people with love and dignity. That we don’t have to hate people to love animals, we can love both and treat all living things with dignity and compassion. That is a cause to live for in our increasingly fragmented and intense world. Mithra has a Facebook page, but he is rarely on it. He will be sleeping out in the Blue Star Garden tonight, in the rain and chill,  helping to keep the Blue Star Rising. I imagine he will be out there for a long awhile, people tend to hang around there once they find it.

So I’m going to see Mithra. I have some questions to ask  him, I want to talk to him in his garden. I want to take his portrait. I don’t know if my back will survive sleeping out in that garden all night, but I don’t really need to be Mithra. I just want to get to know him, his story cries out to be told.

The Blue Star prophesy calls for great change, for a better way, for a wiser understanding of the animals and a compassionate understanding of the people who love them and live with them. Blue Star is the idea that has come, the place we need to go, a model and an inspiration. The idea that needs to grow and prosper.

When Paul took his life nearly two months ago, it seemed that the idea of Blue Star might be in peril. There was great shock and pain and dismay. There still is, but there is also great  hope and energy and commitment. Out of darkness, light, out of death, life.

Blue Star is rising, Pamela and the young people at the farm are all strong and focused on her beautiful mission, her great heart beats very strongly, her voice is loud and clear.

Mithra is an angel, and he and other angels and spirits have appeared out of the fog of loss and grief to make a stand for themselves, for the animals of the world, for the future of the earth itself. We will either learn to live in harmony or we shall perish together.

We are, in fact,  at a crossroads, and Mithra’s garden is right at the epicenter.   It is the next way, the better way. He has made his choice. I am making mine, I am standing with Blue Star, I am eager to spend a night with him. My camera is eager to come.

You can, if you wish, find a number of ways to support them here.

 

 

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