Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

When the Actor Christine Decker  stood up to speak to the audience during the intermission of a play we were attending that she had just directed at the Old Castle Theater in Bennington, Vt., I sat up.

Christine had acted in a short version of a play I wrote that was performed at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, N.Y., several years ago.

She played the wife of the farmer struggling to deal with the collapse of their dairy farm, a story that was all too prescient and is not all too familiar.

I was knocked out by Christine’s remarkable understanding of my character and her respect for what I wrote. Her presentation of the character was stronger than my own creation of her.

It was a thrilling collaboration for me, a kind of mind-blower.

I thought then that I could learn from a person like this.

I have hardly seen Christine since that play, and I didn’t know she was offering classes at the Old Castle, or even that she was working there, until she told me.

Instantly, I surprised myself – and shocked Maria – by whispering to her, “I’m going to take that class if she’d let me…”

I went right home and sent her an e-mail asking if she would let me in the class. She wrote back and got it completely. It would be an honor she wrote, she was sure the class would help me with my writing.

Since I have no wish to be an actor, this was what I wanted to hear

And so she did let me in  and I am taking the class.

People have asked me why I’m taking the class, and the truth is, I don’t know, I can’t really say. I have no desire to be an actor or be on the stage, as much as I love audiences and applause.

I guess I’ll find out soon, the first class is tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. Maria wants to pay for the class – the  fee is $200 – as a Christmas gift.

Two things come to mine today, I have this feeling it will be an important day. I admit to being nervous, this out of my comfort zone, for the bulk of my life I’ve worked alone in dark and quiet rooms.

I am not the collaborative type, I’ve regretted it every time I’ve done it.

Maybe it’s time to open up a crack or two and let something else in.

One thing driving me is the idea of the inner creation, a process that exists inside of me all the time, every day. It isn’t that I need lessons to spark creation, life itself is the spark of creation for me, and for Maria as well. I am a bundle of need: for love, for support, for information, for protection, and for my creativity.

The desire to receive for the self alone dominated my early life and has recently been transformed into a desire to receive for the purpose of sharing.

Joseph Campbell said the joy of aging is that we finally have learned something about life, and even learned how to laugh, and  the responsibility of aging is to pass along what we have learned in the hope it will be useful to others.

For me, this is the true path to eternal life.

What I know can live on and on, long after I’m gone. That’s not a morbid thought for me, but a joyous one.

I call it the Mysticism of Aging. I know our culture denigrates the elderly, sees them only through the prism of decline, deterioration,  sickness and death. The  young know nothing about us, really, and how could they and why should they?

Growing older is something one has to feel to understand. It is mystical.

It is not, for me, a period of decline and pain and misery.

I have felt some of those things, and have no illusions about where I am heading, or what the outcome will be. I see it all the time.

For me, this idea of inner creation is a way of understanding not just the creation of the universe, but the process of self-creation and rebirth in which  I participate every minute of my life. So does my wife and partner in creativity.

I see this as a rich period for me, not a bleak one. I reject old talk in all of its creepy forms.

The real death in my mind comes when I stop thinking, learning, changing, loving or growing. When I begin the downsizing of my soul, enabled in this shallow idea of our culture that the task of aging is to disappear and then die.

It’s too small a window for me, the inner creation that fuels my life would just wither and die, and I’m not ready to wither and die.

Christine has the magic inside of her, she is just one of those passionate people on fire with her creativity, she is excited to be living in the world. She wants to share what she knows. I want to learn what she knows.

I guess I’m taking the class because I have this very strong feeling that she has something to teach me that I need to know.

I’ll share the experience, of course.

First off, I want to thank all of you for your generous and immediate response to my call for help in assisting the Mansion residents, most of whom were evacuated from the Mansion hurriedly last week on New Year’s Day after water poured into the building due to structural and other problems.

A few of the residents were able to say in a separate wing, some went home with families or friends, the bulk were transferred to other assisted care facilities, especially to the Danforth Adult Care Center in Hoosick Falls, N.Y.

They were understandably traumatized and bewildered by the move. This has been a wrenching few days for them, but the Mansion staff and contractors are working to get them back “home” as they now call the Mansion.

You have sent over $1,000 in a very short time. Some of this money has gone to flowers, stuffed animals, clothes and books. We are hosting a Homecoming Celebration as soon as the residents get home, hopefully by Wednesday. I think that will cost between $300 and $500, we’re looking for a band to play some music.

I am not sure what the other needs of the residents are, there was some damage to a few rooms, I really don’t know if any of them will need new clothes. If so, I’m ready to jump in.

If there is any money left over, I’ll put it in the Mansion Fund, and use it, as we have been using it, to support the residents and their needs.

I want you to know how much your help meant to these people, bewildered and frightened. The flowers brightened their rooms, the stuffed animals gave even the “tough” men something to hold and be with, and today I’m bringing a box of cookies to the Danforth right after lunch. I think one of the best things Red and I can do is just show up.

I had the means and opportunity to move quickly, to restore some semblance of order to their lives, and to represent continuity and stability.

The Mansion staff, as always, is loving and committed.

The residents often thank me for “showing up,” it is a sad reality that they have very few visitors from the outside.

I’ll know more about what’s happening later in the day.

Meet Alex Boggess, a 17-year-old senior at the Albany Academies, a prestigious private school in Albany, N.Y. (the school where Sakler Moo, a former member of the soccer team we sponsored, now goes, thanks to you).

Alex and I met Friday in Clifton Park, N.Y., and agreed to partner up to help get a gifted refugee girl from Myanmar a full scholarship to the Academy this September.

I’ve been canvassing school teachers in the Albany area, and our nominee is Eh K’Pru Shee Wah from Myanmar.  She is 15. I’m grateful to her teacher for nominating her.

I’m going to meet her next week to talk with her and take her picture. We believe this first scholarship should go to a woman.

I hope to expand this idea to two other private schools as well – they are also very interested in becoming more diverse.

Alex, a soft-spoken creative – he loves photography and is very good at it, chose as his senior honors project photographs of the refugee population and raising funds to give a refugee child a full scholarship at the Academy.

Alex and I realized  recently we are working on the same project.  We have decided to work together. Alex has access to the Academy community of families and alumnae – a strong source of money – and I have the Army of Good and a wide national audience on my blog.

All told, a full scholarship would amount to roughly $30,000.

My plan is that the school pay the bulk of the scholarship and Alex and I raise the rest.

We talked about a gofundmepage – if that is feasible – as one option to reach a wider audience, and we plan on meeting with school officials and fund-raisers to talk about how much money is available and how much we will need to raise.

I have a feeling we can put this together, having a partner on the inside is just what I needed, and having someone on the outside is just what Alex might need.

The school community seems very supportive of this idea.

And Alex has been taking beautiful photographs of the refugee families for more than a year. He understands the refugee drama well.

I was much impressed with Alex, he is serious and ethical and drawn to applying to schools like the Rhode Island School of Design and New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology, both are famous launching pads for creative careers.

These schools all seem eager to be more diverse, we’ll see just how committed they are. The officials I have been talking with seem very sincere.  I will push hard for a full scholarship, the refugee families have very little money.

Alex and I will be working alone, none of the non-profit groups I contacted wanted to participate. I’m fine working alone, that is what seems to work best for  me, but I am happy to have found a partner like Alex.

He’s serious and bright.

My idea is to find one or two refugee children each year and get them into schools offering full scholarships. I think it the most effective way for me and the Army Of Good to help refugee families.

Writing big checks isn’t always the best way, and these are mostly families  who, through no fault of their own, need everything.

In his honor project report, Alex wrote “I have grown to love my refugee friends and I also love photography and the Albany Academies. Through this project, I will merge these passions into an  honors project at school.”

By the end of our lunch, Alex and I had our cell phones out and were showing photos to one another and talking lenses and movies. We both loved the new Spiderman film.

Happy to  be working with you,  Alex, let’s do some good.

I confess to loving new chapters in my life. There are sometimes so many in my life it makes me dizzy.

One is our restoration of our bedroom, a Maria’ inspired project involving days of scraping spraying and mopping up. Maria was sick yesterday, she actually lay down for a few hours.

The other is acting class.

Maria woke up like a tornado this morning, feeling fine and full of energy, we sent the afternoon tearing wallpaper off of the bedroom walls. Our farmhouse is about 200 years old, the wallpaper is dug in pretty well. Maria is on the case, I am the happy scrapper, so far, much fun.

Tomorrow, another chapter begins.

I am beginning the first of eight acting classes being taught by Actor Christine Decker, a remarkably gift person who played the role of a struggling dairy farmer wife – inspired by Carol Gulley – in a short play I wrote about a dairy farm going under. It was sadly too prescient.

Christine is a powerful and charismatic presence. I am eager to see if this kind of class opens me up in some way or hopefully, helps my writing. Christine thinks it might.

I’m going to bring Red, he always lightens up any group. The class costs $200, is two  hours each week,  and will last eight weeks. Maria is paying for it as a Christmas gift for me.

I am not certain, to be frank, why I am taking the class. I have no wish to act or perform or be in a play – Christine is the Education Director at the Old Castle Theater in Bennington, Vt., a place of rising energy in the local theater.

Maria and I saw a play at Old Castle recently that she directed, and she sat in the front row to watch. I love her energy and commitment to her work. I just feel there is something important to learn from someone like that, no matter how it is applied in my life.

I’ll be taking photos and sharing the experience of course. Wish me luck.

The idea of courage has a long and rich history in the civilized world, some of the greatest philosophers and thinkers have tried to define it for centuries.

In my own life, I’ve worked hard to understand who I am, and what it means to have the courage to be me. I’ve spent a lot of my life in fear and delusion.

I wanted to share some of that trip with you, and to see where I am landing. I am eager to write about it.

Plato said that courage is related to that element of the soul which is called thymos (the spirited, courageous element), he thought the idea related to guardians.

Aristotle believed the idea of courage was related to one’s motive for withstanding pain and death courageously, he thought it was noble to do so and base not to do so.

In the Middle ages, the idea of courage was revised,  courage was considered a characteristic of nobility. The knight is a person who represents courage as a soldier and as a nobleman.

Thomas Aquinas, the great Christian philosopher (the 12th century) saw two meanings for courage: strength of mind and virtue. He wrote that courage was strength of mind capable of conquering whatever threatens the highest good.

It was interesting to see that all these ideas about courage came from older men, theologians, not women or anyone outside of Western or Middle-Eastern Civilization that I know of.

It is often about conquering and enduring. But not often about ordinary life.

As women rise in voice and power in our society, I would bet these definitions of courage might change, and be more relevant to many of us. I think they already are.

Perfect courage, wrote Aquinas, was a gift of the Divine. The Hebrews  defined courage as the strength of the soul to win victory in ultimate danger, like the martyrs of the Old Testament.

Courage, then,  was often about physical and psychological strength in the face of danger.

I’ve thought a lot about courage in recent years and what it means to me, whose life was dominated by withering panic attacks for year. I’m fascinated how ideas about courage have evolved, and how they relate to my life.

I never once thought of myself was courageous, I couldn’t imagine how that would be possible for someone who felt so much fear.

But, and over time, I learned that courage was not just about physical bravery, it was very often about overcoming fear, rather than not having any. Those were the most courageous people in my life.

I am not a soldier or a martyr or a devout believer, my experience with courage has to do with living my life in a meaningful way and overcoming fear and confusion. I am not challenged by war, torture or painful illness.

I am drawn to the Stoic idea of courage as a moral choice, the “courage to be.” I found my meaning in a book by Paul Tillich, the spiritual philosopher, the book is called “The Courage To Be.” I am finding the courage to live up to myself, to do good in the way I define it and experience it.

I liked this idea very much, that courage was about being who we are, not how strong we are.

Courage, Tillich wrote, “is the affirmation of one’s essential being, which in spite of desires and anxieties,” creates and includes hope and joy.

Real joy, he writes, is the happiness of a soul which rises above almost every circumstances that life presents. Courage is the strength to be faithful to one’s own true being, despite fears about death or money or disappointment.

I asked a friend how she defined courage, and she said courage was the willingness of people to overcome poverty and hardship and persecution. I said I wondered if she wasn’t confusing suffering with courage.

Is everyone who suffers in our world courageous? Or just trying to survive?

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza (16th century) believed courage was not simply about sacrifice or a willingness to die, but the courage to have an ethical foundation for life.

It is, he wrote, the expression of the essential act of being, namely self-affirmation. The right of the individual to be an individual.

For me, this is my revelation and truth about courage, it is about having the courage to be me, even when many others might prefer me to be someone else. Even if life often scares the hell out of me.

It is about a willingness to seek a moral foundation for my decisions,  to have the strength to overcome self-doubt and severe challenges to understand me, to be me.

To find hope and joy in the world even when I fail, or err, or stumble, even when I faced death.

The big idea for me is that courage means I can – and do – always find hope and joy in life, even when it is frightening, disappointing and painful.

I hear people speaking poorly of life all of the time, because it usually brings so much death,  difficulty and challenge.  Life is hard, I am told, terrifying.

I think courage is the ability to see beyond that. Pain is part of life.

I saw a lot of true courage in my hospice therapy work. I saw men and women experience this hope and joy  and laughter even down to their last breath.  Death did not negate hope for them, it affirmed it.

There is, I think,  a difference between suffering and courage.

The courageous, in my mind, always strive to accept and act according to their true nature, even when it is unpopular or difficult or painful.

I don’t really know how courageous I am, to be honest. I think that ultimately, it isn’t for me to judge that. It is just too self-serving for me to try.

But the idea of self-affirmation is inspiring to me, it gives me both joy and hope.

“Therefore,” writes Tillich, “to act unconditionally out of virtue is the same as to act under the guidance of reason, to affirm one’s essential being or true nature.”