David Axelrod, one of the commentators on cable news who seems genuinely thoughtful and insightful said this morning that it’s going to be a rough 27 days for the country. In 27 days, the election will finally be over and perhaps we can begin to move on from our long nightmare.

So I got this idea of offering Bedlam Farm as a garden, perhaps I already have. “Thank God for your blogs, yours and Maria’s,” wrote Jean, who lives on the top of a mountain in Montana. “I don’t always agree with you but I always feel good when I read your blogs and see your photos and videos.”

This was a good message to get, and it made me think I can be of some use over the next 27 days.

In Christian theology and mythology, both of which I love to read, Jesus is the fruit of eternal life, which was on the second forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When man ate the fruit of the first tree, he was expelled from the Garden. The Garden is a place of unity, of non-duality of male and female, good and evil (left and right.) God and human beings, living and loving together. You eat the duality, and you must leave the garden. The only tree of return to the garden is the tree of immortal life, where we and the Father are one.

For these rough 27 days, I humbly invite you to come here, to this blog, to our world when you have had enough, are fed up, or frightened about the anger and hurt roiling our wonderful country. If you are weary of hate and argument, consider this a coffee  house, a safe spot, a cafe, a place to rest, be spared arguments, polls or commentators.

I try to see Bedlam Farm as the garden, a place where men and women live in equality and harmony, a place of unity, of good, of people and animals  living together peacefully. There are very few arguments here. We are united as one.

I have always been inspired by the Garden story, when I close my eyes, I think of the sheep and the lambs and the donkeys and pony lying together on a hill, looking out to the wider world, the sun setting over the hills.

So you are invited to come here when the din becomes too awful.

Come and see Fate run in circles, watch Red do his therapy work, share in the life Maria and I are working to build together, every day, in the encouragement we hope to spark in others, in the coming of the lambs, in Maria’s trip to India, in the wilfulness of a pony,  as I begin my 30th book.

I will be mindful of my responsibility in this time to uplift and inspire, to offer warmth not cold, light, not darkness, thoughtfulness, not argument. It is the job of the artist to make sense in color and light of a disordered and confusing world. I’m on it.

We will all get through this, we will all be here in 28 days and I hope you will come back to this garden doing that time if you need to do so, or just want to, a place of unity,  hopefulness and inspiration. My camera and I will be here, so will Maria and her genius and this collection of wonderful creatures we live with. This is a time for the creative to get moving and do their thing.

I will have some good help over these 27 days in making sense of the world: the Thomas Merton, Joseph Campbell, Hannah Arendt, Hafiz, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, E.B. White,  H.L. Mencken,  Wendell Berry. Come around.

I think it will be a hard time for many people. It will not be the end of the world, or the Apocalypse. We have survived worse.

When it gets difficult for you and your friends out there, come here and be reminded that life is rich and good, for all of its travails. Back to the Garden, and the idea of community, common purpose, respect and dignity for all. That’s the metaphor for what I want my country to be.