Photography has helped me to see the world anew, this maple tree sits in our back yard as it has for generations, but when the setting sun over the hills across the street got low, I saw the tree for the first time, it was a radiant being.
I always liked Nelson Mandela’s response to being thought of a saint. He said he was not a saint, he was just a sinner who keeps on trying.
I am no saint either, and no one has ever thought of me in that way, or will, I suspect. But I also feel as if I am a sinner who keeps on trying. It is liberating for me. I make mistakes all of the time, I lose my temper, struggle with perspective, act out fear, feel regrets and jealousy at times. I can be impatient and intolerant. Some religions are tough on sinners, they can get a short trip to Hell if they do not repent.
The God I grew up hearing about was tough on sinners, he cut their tongues out and smote them with nasty angels and lightning bolts, plagues and mayhem.
I don’t belong to any religions like that, they seem cruel and sinful to me. I don’t know anyone without faults, I do not ever expect to be one and ever since I have accepted that about myself – there are some people out there who do not accept that, they are not forgiving of my shortcomings – I have felt liberated. I will always keep on trying, I understand I will not ever get there. That is who I am.
I have learned that if I don’t forgive myself, no one can forgive me, and I cannot forgive anyone else.
I think in all of the world, only the mockingbirds are free of sin.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy,” wrote Harper Lee in her great novel. “They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
I looked out at the pasture gate, and I took in the new landscape of part of my life. I believe it will change again, and soon. A year ago, the photo would have shown Simon at the gate and Red, Lenore, maybe Frieda sitting in front of it. Today, the landscape is different. A new pony, Chloe, Simon is gone, so are Frieda and Lenore. I love them and do not miss them much or mourn them, my life is full of things to love.
I think of them with gratitude from time to time, they are ghostly images flashing in my head. Life is a changing landscape, we change or freeze and grow brittle and bitter. Maria and I are opened up now, thinking hard about our lives, about how we wish to live. We are slowly shedding ourselves of the great monkey of money, we seek a creative life, a simpler and more spiritual life, a life more closely linked to nature and community.
Community, we believe, is the only real security, not money or houses or retirement funds. The new landscape is rich and beautiful, like the old one. I accept it, I embrace the change in my life, it is the very nature of life itself.
“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” –Albert Einstein
“God of love, show us our place in this world as channels of your love for all the creatures of the earth, for not one of them is forgotten in your sight, and care for this world in which we love, the poor and the earth are crying out.” – A Prayer For Our Earth.
I have seen the future of people and animals, it is Blue Star Equiculture. It is the new way forward, out of the more of maze and conflict and confusion that sometimes seems to hang over us like a cloud.
Last week, a woman messaged me to tell me of her emotionally disabled son, who she took some months ago to meet the horses of Blue Star Equiculture, the draft horse sanctuary in Palmer, Massachusetts. Richard is 13 years old and suffers from the isolation and loneliness that can afflict the disabled. Like many suffering people, he turned to the animals for comfort and support.
His mother was stunned by the reception he received there. Richard has languished in public institutions, warehoused and ignored, belittled and sometimes cruelly abused. Most often, depressed. At Blue Star, he was greeted warmly, brought to the horses, shown how to approach the and brush them. He was welcomed and listened to and spoken to by everyone he met there. He grew great strength and power, she said, in learning to care for the horses, in feeling the love one huge draft horse had for him.
He comes almost every week to care for them and see them.
Richard fell in love with the farm, walked through it’s gardens, learned the names of the people who work there, and it has changed his life. He comes regularly, is learning how to care for the horses, knows them by name, helps to grain them. His mother says the experience – the healing power of the horses, the spirit of the farm – has transformed him. I cannot tell you how wonderful they are there, she said.
I thought we were just going to see a horse, RIchard is transformed, he is reborn. I don’t know if it’s the horses, or the people – maybe both – but it has saved him, everyone sees it, he lives to go there and is always welcomed there.
I know how good they are there, I have seen it a score of times, felt it, lived it.
Is there any other such place as this, she asked? Not that I know of, I said.
This good and faithful mother said she was writing me because one of the people at Blue Star who greeted her son so warmly, took so much time with him, showed so much interest in him, was Pamela Moshimer Rickenbach, the director of Blue Star.
She said she knew that Pamela had only recently lost her beloved husband, yet she still had so much time and love and energy to give to her son. She had never known so selfless a person, she said.
She was writing me, she added, because she learned of Blue Star from the blog, she wanted me to know how much Pamela and the farm now meant to her.
I thought of this today. I’m going to see Pamela on Sunday, Maria and I are going down to Blue Star.
Pamela is struggling bravely with her grief and loss – Paul committed suicide a couple of months ago, he hung himself by a beautiful tree on the farm. When we talk, she sometimes confides in me, tells of the work she is determined to do, her plans, her admiration to the powerful army of wonderful people who have rallied around her.
She also tells me sometimes of the hateful and cruel messages she gets from the angry and disconnected people of the world – she got some today. I wanted to cry with her. This hurt is familiar. Hatred and rage are something all of us who dwell in the new world of technological disconnection and social media, or in the new world of animals, know and have experienced.
Pamela lives by the rules of love and openness, she is hurt by anger and abuse, it is difficult for her to comprehend it.
I tell her that she is vulnerable now, and in mourning, and she would do better to listen to the messages of Richard and his mother. In my time at Quaker Meeting, I learned to hold people in the light when they are in pain and need healing. It is hard for me to believe any decent human being would trouble or torment Pamela at this time, but anyone with a computer – knows how many profoundly unhappy and angry people there are in the world, they deserve as much compassion and sympathy as the poor and the earth itself.
When media and the digital world combine and become omnipresent in the lives of people, they can become objects of human disconnection, a way of talking to one another without knowing one another. They can be symptoms of social decline, the rupture of the bonds of decency, social cohesion and community. They can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously.
More than anyone, God told the prophets in the Kabbalah, it is the broken spirits of the world that need prayers.
Blue Star, for me, is the antidote to this, the way back. Pamela is it’s spirit.
I have learned to sometimes ask people who believe in a better world to celebrate the worth of each living thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we all journey towards the infinite light. People have asked this of me, and it has transformed me.
This is Pamela’s faith and practice, what Blue Star is all about. Pamela is a priest to me, a mystic a prophet. She ministers to all who come before her. Her message is always love, for animals, for people. She brings healing to our lives, to the lives of animals. In a just world, she would not know so much pain and anger. If you are so inclined, please hold her in the light, she is filled with goodness and love and is deserving of ours. She works every day of her life for justice, love and peace, she inspires me to do what is good.
I love you, Pamela, can’t wait to see you on Sunday, Maria too. You can help Blue Star here.
