Yesterday, I wrote about the experience of having to stretch out some payments for medication, about the spiritual experience of how having to wait for all of my medicines was connecting me to the real world in different ways. At Blue Star Equiculture, some of the very wonderful young people there got worried about me and put up a gofund me project to raise money for my medicines and my life.

I am profoundly touched by that, such love and sweetness frightens and confuses me, but i so appreciate it. But I thought about it, and I told them I can’t take that money, I don’t need it. I can get my medicines and I have everything I need. I am flattered to be considered as an elder in this very wonderful tribe.

I am learning about money and handling money differently, and we are dealing with the heavy costs of successfully keeping the first Bedlam Farm out of foreclosure. But I earn money, and I don’t need or want anyone’s help in getting through this experience, it is important to Maria and I that we handle it ourselves, for many reasons, and we are. I am understanding money in a different way, and appreciating that.

I was born poor and have often lived poor, but splitting medicine payments into chunks is not an act of poverty, it is an act of care and thought. Pope Francis and his encyclical are much on my mind these days, I want to live simply and meaningfully. I am changing.

I wasn’t meaning to suggest I need money help when I wrote about the medications, I was writing about the connections to people that I felt during this experience. We love ourselves when we love and understand the poor.

So hold up, save your money, I’m not taking any. Blue Star Equiculture needs money and is deserving of it, much more than me. Joshua Rockwood will need some money to get his farm ready for winter, so he and his animals are safe from the secret patrols of the animal police and their informers. And Joshua will need some help getting his horses back, they were taken from him for no provable reason.

While I think of it, there are some people at the pharmacy – at every pharmacy –  who could use some help getting their medicines. But one thing at a time.

In sharing my life, I work hard to be honest about the real experiences, the ups and downs.  This blog is the memoir of a life. I love my love, I am one of the lucky people of the earth. I am doing well, nobody needs to worry about me.

Sometimes this writing opens astonishing avenues of love and community. After my Open Heart surgery, a number of people raised money to send Maria and me to Disney World, a profoundly difficult thing for me (us) to accept, but a humbling affirmation. Still, it is not a comfortable thing for me to take money from other people. It is not something that I need.

When I think of the young people at Blue Star, fighting so valiantly and lovingly to move forward after the death of Paul Moshimer, and sending me so much love, I am beyond tears. I am so lucky to know these people, they are angels and warriors for a new way of living.

But I’m not taking any money from them, anyone with some to spare might consider joining the Blue Star herd.

Blue Star is the future, for animals, for people, for the true rights of animals. Check them out. But please don’t send them any money for me or my medicine, I will hug them and strangle them when I see them. I hope to earn their love.

It might be good to save a few dollars for Joshua Rockwood, I am pushing him to accept some help for his new water tanks and animal shelters.  If he doesn’t do it himself, I might just do it. Stay tuned. There are all kinds of wolves, and he needs to keep them at bay.

As for the wonderful young people at Blue Star, they are the future, not me, and the fact that they would think of me at a time of their own great need helps explain why. They honor me more than they know.