Mithra Katalunga, the college student living alone this summer in the magical garden at Blue Star Equiculture that he and the big work horses have conceived, nurtured and planted, is reading Thoughts In Solitude by Thomas Merton, the Trappist author and spiritualist who has meant so much to me. Mithra reads at night, in the twilight between work and sleep.
Merton is a good companion for him, as he was for me. I believe Merton is largely responsible for my move to the country, my embrace of solitude, my struggle to find a spiritual life.
Mithra, who is 24, is far ahead of me spiritually when I was his age, and far ahead of me now. I visited him again at Blue Star in Palmer, Mass., today, I believe we were both very happy to see one another. We have made a connection.
His garden has grown and blossomed behind imagination, it is beautiful and varied and beautifully tended, he walked among the plants and vegetables and flowers today with much love and pride. Mithra, who is from Sri Lanka, tended his gardens as a child with elephants.
Like so many people who come from the real world of real animals, he is baffled by the idea that it is cruel for animals and people to work together. He expects animals to always be a part of his every day life. They big horses have plowed every inch of his garden.
Mithra is returning to Sri Lanka when he graduates from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst next Spring. He says is going home to start a soil revolution in Sri Lanka, to share what he has learned at Blue Star and help the people in his country understand soil conservation and maintenance and think differently about their relationship with the earth. I’m sending him Pope Francis’s new encyclical Laudato Si, about climate change and it’s impact on the poor and the Third World.
“A soil revolution,” Mithra says. “A new love of the earth.”
Mithra was drying out his tent and clothes, he was soaked last night by a heavy rainstorm. His loves his garden, he is preparing himself to return to school soon and live a different kind of life. He took Maria and I on a beautiful tour through his garden, you can hardly see the end of it, he picked some wonderful tomatoes for us to eat.
We talked about the Thomas Merton book and he showed me a passage he had underlined, one I had read and loved myself. I feel a powerful connection to Mithra, he is a pure spirit, full of love and openness and generosity.
“The Good Man comes from God,” Merton wrote, ” and returns to him. He starts with the gift of being and with the capacities God has given to him. Her reaches the age of reason and begins to make choices. The character of his choices is already to a great extend influenced by what has happened to him in the first years of his life, and by the temperament with which he is born. It will continue to be influenced by him, by the events of the world in which he lives, by the character of his society. Nevertheless it remains fundamentally free.”
Mithra is a good man, he has reached the age of reason and has began to make the choices that that will shape the rest of his life. While his peers lose themselves in tablets and cell phones and drown in distraction and debt and worry and acquisition and greed, he has chosen a different path, a different kind of life. A life of service to people and to the earth.
He spent the summer under the stars in a small orange tent, wedded to solitude the the earth. He has a cell phone he rarely turns out, and the clothes on his back, and a plank of wood he uses to keep a detailed history of his garden. He has a friend, a woman who has helped him in the garden this summer, and she is leaving Blue Star for California. I asked him if he was sad about her going, and he said he will miss her, but no, she is not a possession to mourn, their time together is a cause for celebration and gratitude. It would be easy to complain of the heat and rain and bugs – most people would – but he does not ever feel sorry for himself or speak poorly of his life.
Mithra is eternally grateful to Blue Star, he says. The horses have given him meaning and strength, the farm has given him a chance he might not ever have had anywhere else. “This is one of the things I am so grateful to Pamela (a founder and co-director of the farm), he says, Blue Star gives people chances. Mithra recited gave a list of people Blue Star has helped, lives the farm has changed. There is a spirit about the place, he says, that is powerful and good.
Mithra’s garden is a sacred place, I feel a sense of worship there. In return for the beautiful quote he gave me, I will send him one from “Laudato Si,” he and Pope Francis would much love and appreciate one another. Mithra is the hope and future of the world. “I have to teach change,” he said, “young people are open to change, older people are often not.” But sometimes they are, I corrected him, the old and the young both need a chance.
The young, I know, cannot comprehend the old, and perhaps rightfully blame them for what they have done to the world. But we can change. I have been given a chance also.
“Many things have to change course,” wrote Pope Francis, “but it is we human beings above all who need to change. We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging, and of a future to be shared with anyone. This basic awareness would enable the development of new convictions, attitudes and forms of life. A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal.”
Mithra is on the long path, he is helping us to change, to understand our mutual belong, our shared future. He learned this at Blue Star, he says, and was given the chance there to live this change, because this is the message of Blue Star, the point, why this small farm is so important to the world, why it is the future, the new way.
Our harsh world runs and hides and quarrels and argues and kills, but there, the shared future is a daily practice, not a dream. People and animals setting out on the long path of rebirth, harmony and renewal. People do not hurt one another there, they support and help one another. Nobody there has ever posted a cruel message on Facebook, or would think of it. I am grateful to know Mithra and am proud to count him as my friend. He says he wants to spend some time on my farm, we will be grateful to have him here.
Mithra is a good man already. He has reached the age of reason and has begun with the gift of being. He is embracing the capacities that have been given to him. He has built a sacred garden and is going to start a revolution.