Saturday, 17. October 2009, 14:08:55
autism, Equine Assited Therapy, Siddhartha, psychotherapy
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“Just as a tree should be indigenous to its native area, we as Christians need to be indigenous to the center of the will of God for our lives. We can stray outside of our region, and maybe seem to be ok for a while. But I have found...and this is a lesson hard learned...that you will never flourish unless you stand where God puts you. Sin brings pleasure for a season...but woe to you when the season is over and winter arrives!” DLB
No, I didn’t say I was giving up my faith in my journal yesterday. If Buddhism had worked for me then I would have remained a Buddhist. After twenty years of practice I found that the simple act of surrendering to Christ was the act I needed. Maybe that was the point of Buddhism as well, one simply “surrenders” to the life one has. Somewhere though, in the mind-bending intellectual exercises of Buddhism, something gets lost, at least I got lost. It simply put me too much in my head. Buddhism is much like psychology in that way. One does simply have to find a place where one belongs and prosper there. One also has to get out of one’s head and simply live.
The other day I was asked to do some respite care. Four years ago a young man who was under the care of a friend at the agency I worked at found out I was looking for a house. He found this one for me and delivered the message through my friend and co-worker. My colleague moved on and is no longer this man’s therapist but he and I have remained acquaintances. He is in his forties now and autistic and mildly “retarded” whatever that means. His parents have asked me to watch over him while they go to Panama. It is an honor to do so. This autistic young man was the unexpected angel who led me to my home, I will never forget his generosity of spirit. That this gentleman, a retired minister, would trust me with his son is a personal validation in spite of the chaos and criticism of some in my profession here. His trust affirms for me that I have stayed true to my course, that I am trustworthy and professional.
Living here in Carlsbad has been a mixed bag. I have found friendship unexpected as well as frustration and pain.
Kathryn is beginning to find this small farm, this “finca” as they say in Spanish, home as well. It has been a year (yes, today is our anniversary) and this weekend we will finally have her house cleared out enough to turn over to the rental agent. We meet the rental agent’s cleaning crew today to find out what needs to be done to get the house finally ready. It has been a tough year for both of us. Being older and blending lives while trying desperately to hold on to old habits has been maddening for both of us. Add to that the drama and turmoil around us of those in the mental health field here and I wasn’t sure we would make it. I am still struggling with Kathryn’s “football-itis.” I have always struggled with spectator sports and find the commercialism of TV team sports irritating. I am sure I will make my peace with that as I have made my peace with cabinets that now seem over full. It has taken time but is coming together.
I have given long thought to what I should do next. I have mixed feelings about the equine assisted therapy. The man who has asked me to watch over his son became quiet interested when I told him what I was thinking and said that this town badly needed such a program. He knows, as we all do, that the mental health center here in town has failed the town badly.
For me, doing Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy is a fuzzy thing. Is it really “therapy” or is it teaching people “horse training?” I know it is more than horse training but I will have to really change how I see what I do in order to do it.
I badly want to step away form the role of “therapist.” I am tired of people’s pain and broken-ness, tired of the stories piled upon stories of hurt. There has to be more for people, I know that. I know too that people are tired of the jargon and the platitudes of psychotherapy. I know too that the best therapy is doing something, being engaged in life. We all need life experiences of accomplishment, things that bring us joy. This joy can and should come from a lot of things - Boy Scouts, participating in sports - the list is long. I know too that active joy is missing from many lives. I know too that an hour of “therapy” per week - the therapy of sitting in an office - can serve a purpose but it does not move people to the joy of mastery - any more than sitting in church for an hour a week. Yet, I am as bad as the therapists I rail about. I am trained in analytical office work. To me therapy has always looked like the guy sitting in an office in his tweed jacket, surrounded by books and in the quiet sanctum of the office he helps people explore their depths.
I tend to think that what I would really be doing is nothing more than teaching people ground work with horses. I think I may as well be a horse trainer or riding instructor. Yet, I know it would be more.
I know from my dreams that I have been spiritually moved on from the hermitage in the forest. Spiritually I have crossed the desert and know that the role of therapist, of seeker leads to more. I think often about the Herman Hesse book Siddhartha and how at the need of things Siddhartha becomes a ferryman on the river, carrying others to the shore, knowing that the place of his arrival is right where he is. I know that the same place comes from being a horseman, my ferry can be the work with horses. The value of doing it from the journey of being a therapist would simply be that even if I am no more than a riding instructor - a horse-ground-work-training-instructor - the insurance companies and colleagues and whoever will provide a source of referrals of people who might never try this route. Anyway, I am still thinking about what to do, the steps to take. I know that I would have to engage in a national horsemanship program of some sort to improve my own horse skills. Finding one that is not a “cult” like Parelli could be tough.
Finally, the quote above is form a blog out of Cody, Wyoming, called, “At Home in Wyoming.” She writes about how during an unexpected cold snap the green leaves of the non native trees fell all at once. I have seen such a thing once as well, it is something to see. She also makes the very good point that we must in some why find out place, our native place in the land and in our souls and there we will find home. Home is where work is not work but life itself. Home is where we all want to be - just like Dorothy. I have more to say about Dorothy and home, but today I need to get moving and There is tomorrow as long as we have breath to give . . .
In His Service
Friday, 16. October 2009, 20:37:13
Islam, deserts, Kung Fu, Chiristianity
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The sky has returned to the thin egg shell of robins’ egg blue that covered the desert all summer. Though the days are warm again, the chill of this morning’s air makes it almost too hard not to connect with feelings. In the dizzying bright coolness of a new day I feel autumn and that is not such a bad feeling if one feeling is all the heat of the day, lieing on this land like a suffocating blanket, allows.
With a kiss I draw Movie from the back field. A change has come to her as well. Last year when my soul was soaked by the energy of the shame and the violence of the people surrounding me, which in turn expressed itself through me as the energy of pain and anger; Movie barely tolerated me. Now she is, as is my soul, more open, coming easily when I call her with kisses. I lean on the fence in the morning light and watch her swaying, swaggering walk, a belly full of hay, hoping for more. Her movement is like the morning exercise of some wise fat Taoist master full of the meaning of life.
I thought of my years of Buddhist practice while I watched Movie sway across the field. I was reminded of moving meditations learned in the practice of Gung Fu, Tai Chi and Qigong. I learned a style of Qigong called Wild Goose Heart. In the cool morning, as I watched Movie dance across the field, I thought about the differences I felt then as I focused too hard some days on my own enlightenment - my head feeling like it would explode at times because of the analytic chores of Buddhist Scripture, and then other days my soul soaring like a wild goose as I sat in meditation, or walked in meditation through woods and field, freed from life as text. I realize now the chore of those scriptures was as much about making me realize that life cannot be lived as text, that one cannot catch the wild goose in the net of the mind. Peace, enlightenment, joy has to come to one who is freed like the wild goose is free. Life not as ruled by text but as spirit freed from text.
I know my Christian friends panic when my thoughts return to the Buddhism I learned and practiced for so many years. They panic because they, as good friends, fear for my soul, fear that I will be lost and burn in hell. I have no such fear. Last night I watched one of Kathryn’s programs with her - a gay Hispanic woman is confronted by her father verbally throwing Biblical scripture against homosexuality at her, convinced, and trying to convince her, she was going to hell. She, with even greater power threw back the Beatitudes. Powerful stuff the Beatitudes. I wondered as I watched this exchange what Christian faith would be like if we threw away the Old Testament and the Acts and the Epistles and only had left the good news that Jesus taught. In my heart I know it would look like the deeper regions of Buddhist and Taoist Practice I explored, practices of tolerance and peace and oneness with life, not finding heaven out there somewhere but finding both heaven and hell in the human heart and opting for the peace of Heaven.
I can easily understand why so many think that Jesus must have studied in Tibet before he came to Galilee to teach. The Beatitudes are “the core” of Buddhist life practice and seem like an anomaly preached in the context of the legalism of the Judaism of Jesus’ day - or the legalism of fundamental Judaism, Christianity or Islam today. (I doubt if Jesus studied in the east, though it is historical fact that there were Buddhists teachers in the area of Judea and had been for two hundred years. We forget that the Hellenic world that followed the death of Alexander was as cosmopolitan as America is today. For those doubting such a connection I have added a link to provide some historical information. (http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/history/hellenistic.htm)
The Buddhism I practiced was a Buddhism infused with the teachings of what came to be called the Beatitudes. They are very much two religions walking similar paths. It is a shame that one, the Christian, is not tolerant of the other, the Buddhist. When one moves deeply into Buddhism one soon discovers the Beatitudes of Jesus and the teaching of the Siddhartha Gautama are the much the same. One eventually discovers that Buddhists believe that what Christian call Christ is in all of us, all too often a flame unlit.
Christianity, no more so than Judaism or Islam, at least the fundamental versions which rely too heavily on the Old Testament or upon textual Scripture, is not tolerant in the main of views other than its own. These three faith walks are like three old men walking on the same road side by side refusing to acknowledge the existence of the other or of any other travelers on the road. They trap the soul, the spirit, through the regulation of the conduct of life like out of control traffic cops until life’s journey becomes an angry bitter feud about how one should walk the path. Chinese Confucianism is like that as well and I find it interesting in the “East” the two paths - the path of social behavior and the path of spiritual awakening - diverged into two parallel roads. I suspect there was good reason for that. It surely does not seem to work to create a spirit filled and tolerant life in the West when we take the legalistic ethics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and try to apply them to the spirit filled life. I have found that when one simply lives the the spirit filled life it creates good behavior the way that Chrysanthemums create flowers, it simply happens and one cannot force it.
These thoughts came to me in a moment then were gone, like geese soaring across this brilliant dry sky and I was left with the knowledge that life in the chill of the morning air was more than enough.
As Movie finished her dancing Tai Chi walk across the field I heard dogs barking, sounding in the distance like geese. From the front of the property the morning traffic rushed past farms, strung like pearls along the lane. Each car sounded like the soughing of a sea wave rolling in a syncopated rhythm onto a beach. All of this in a moment reminded me that each moment is its own enlightenment into heaven or hell. The choice is up to us.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.Mary Oliver In His Service -
Whatever we choose to call Him as you live there and in doing so, respecting whatever path He calls each of us to walk upon to Him.
Thursday, 15. October 2009, 13:12:07
god, apocolyptic, relationship, sacred
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I have been gone from here a while, Still writing but have gotten side tracked into life. Most jouranls I have emailed to a few freinds. Today I am posting a recent one and over the next few weeks will post some of the better ones I have written since I last posted. New post is below."Landscape is a sacrament to be read as text." Seamus Heaney
My wife Kathryn and I watched a documentary on the Bison of Yellowstone the other day. I, being a romantic, watched it for the scenery, she, a naturalist and romantic in her own right, watched it for the information. Both of us were appalled at the way the State Wildlife Department of Montana destroys the bison which wander out of Yellowstone Park. The expressed reason is a fear of brucellosis even though there has never been a proven case of brucellosis given to cattle from bison. The narrator spoke about how the elk also have brucellosis yet they are not exterminated when they leave the park, simply driven to where they can be hunted. He pointed out that Elk are “game" animals. I guess game animal means legal entertainment for orange vested yahoos. Hunters are not allowed to hunt bison as game animals so they, yahoos that some hunters are, see no value in free roaming Bison.
A lack of understanding the nature of animals and landscape is not just an attitude of orange vested yahoo hunters though. Last summer a farmer/rancher from Iowa came to the Living Desert Zoo. His wife said that he commented as he crossed the "emptiness" of the LLano Estacado that he could not get over how much we waste the land in the west. When Kathryn told me what he said, I thought, "How can we waste the land other than by lying waste to it?" The only waste is in not appreciating it for what it is. Upon reflection, I realized I too am wasteful on the land, to the land, of the land. I, too, want my little empire, my postage stamp sized New Mexico farm that requires acres of scarce water to grow grass just for my horse. Scarce water to nurture the forty pine trees along the border of the property, trees which properly do not belong in this desert basin. Apparently, I am of two minds about land and the landscape, and two hearts as well. One mind and heart is like the farmer/rancher and the hunters of Montana, the other mind and heart a conservationist and at times a preservationist.
I try at time to blame this dichotomy upon genetics, half white and half American Indian. I wish I could in good conscience rationalize that the reason I am of two minds and two hearts about the land and the landscape is because my personal landscape is of two genetic patterns, but that would be a lie. I know that Native Americans in general were no better at interacting with the land than whites. Visit the buffalo falls of Eastern New Mexico, count the bones in the Clovis Black Water Draw and you can see how efficiently indigenous peoples wiped out entire herds, entire species. Where is the Giant Ground Sloth now? Where is the Wooly Mammoth?
Ten thousand years ago it was an issue of numbers- in fewer numbers indigenous peoples could not over awe the landscape. The landscape forced them to cooperate with it. The Maya are proof of the point that in numbers we can over whelm a land and a landscape. As the Mayan number grew and their demands upon the land increased, the the Maya collapsed from over use of resources. As a culture they first engaged in warfare for control of resources and later they simply collapsed and returned to a gathering style of subsistence or they moved away. Now one is sure.- We are about to do the same planet wide only we really, regardless of what the science fiction authors want us to believe, have no where else to go.
In my heart I know that the real issue of two hearts and minds for myself and most others is the one differences between the spiritual and the religious heart of man. The spiritual heart is about connected-ness and relationship, true connected-ness and true relationship in a manner that the ego - the I - begins to fade away. Religion on the other hand is really about fear and control, about placating an “almighty super hero” over all. A super-hero who looks an awfully lot like us and who, like us, is just as likely to destroy us because we know we are nothing more than chattel of the super-hero, to do with as he pleases. We, in turn, wanting to not be on the bottom of the chattel pile turn land and landscape into our chattel telling ourselves we are simply doing the bidding of our particular super -hero.
The religious heart of us forgets that The word “religion” in its original Latin context meant to call back - to recall. The intention was to recall our connection to a lost time and place, a golden age, Eden or Heaven or a dozen other named places, to the age before we, in our hubris, became separate and fearful and controlling of the very landscape that shaped us.
As I come to a deeper understanding of this broken-ness and ensuing spiritual barrenness in organized religion, I have more and more difficulty participating in “religion”and structured religious practice. I have more and more desire to really be "at one" - to have an "at-one-ment" with the landscape that forms me. That desire for atonement drives my desire to withdraw into a simpler, less consumer-based life, to, in the words of Thoreau, "simplify . . . simplify."
We live in a culture however in which “simplify” is not the word that shapes us. Consume is the word that shapes us. We are driven to consume and extract, especially here in this desert. We build golf courses and soft ball diamonds and rarely, if ever, see the landscape except from a car moving to take us quickly to another less formidable landscape, a more controlled landscape. Most of us living here don't commit the error of slaughtering bison as useless, we slaughter the very desert itself as useless.
We fear our landscape. We fear our landscape because we know it is bigger than us and if not lived in properly will eventually destroy us and so we try to make it small, subservient. Maybe, too, there is a fear that if we come to terms with this land and landscape, see our place in it, stop trying to control it, we would come to truly value ourselves more. That peace, that coming to terms, that “good self esteem” would make us very hard to control, as hard to control as a lion in the freedom of the Guadalupe Mountains. Maybe that is what we fear in the landscape, the freedom to be real. The realness to be free.
We fear our natural desert landscape because we see it as violent and tragic. We want to avoid the violent and tragic, not understanding our own undercurrent of predatory violence and tragedy on the landscape. All too often we blame the other guy, the orange vested yahoo. Like beavers on a northern river we all alter this desert landscape to meet our needs. Unlike beavers, when we do, we seldom improve it for a greater good of all creatures and more often leave behind hard caliche roads which will last millennia. This fear of desert landscape and the need to avoid its seeming violence and tragedy is a clue to a personal broken-ness in our lives.
Freud refers to this particular human broken-ness as the "death instinct." Modern psychology calls this death instinct "a drive," "a force that is not essential to the life of an organism" (which in fact makes it very unlike a true instinct). This “will to death” tends to "denature" us in the landscape, separate us for the land and each other. We don’t speak or write about the death instinct much in the psychotherapy world anymore, choosing instead to focus on the “positive” instead of the darkness within us. Yet, as a therapist I know this darkness is there and manifests itself constantly in our actions and thoughts. We all too often focus upon apocalyptic visions of our end, or in trying to make our particular Eden remake the landscape in our own image and thus bring the larger the landscape to its own apocalypse.
This apocalyptic way of thinking and living in relation to the landscape is counter intuitive and on a deep level, if we choose to go deep at all, we know it.. We know and we resent that the landscape will out live us all. We know something is wrong with us and so create an idyllic image of landscape to welcome us and if we cannot have that idyllic image in life we project it into death. It becomes a landscape in which racoons are merely cute and not the death dealing hunters they can be. A landscape where the lion lies with the lamb. Deeply in our soul we have become so separate from landscape that even when we say we love it, we hate it. We feel alienated from land and the landscape. In that alienation we blame our pain of spiritual loneliness and broken-ness on the land for not being easier to live upon, to live in. We are all too often at war with the land because we are all to often at war within ourselves and with each other.
So what is the answer? Is there an answer?
We have to come to understand that landscape is no Bambi experience. In the Yellowstone documentary an elder bison died three days after he was wounded in a fight with a younger bull over the dominance of the herd. After he was wounded the older male left the herd, infection set in the wound and the old male bison died alone trying to swim the Yellowstone River. Life is harsh and dangerous.
We have to give up in large part of our religious formulas as we approach the land. WE have to give up the effort to pretend that in the golden age of Eden or Heaven or whatever we call it, that all the harshness of living and dying does not exist. We need to get out of our religious buildings that urban landscape that is either womb like or courtroom like, that urban landscape that is not at all like the natural landscape of the real Earth. In doing so we also need to avoid the formulas and dogmas of the “nature” religions, exemplified by the witch covens, where groups gather and sing and dance around trees. These dogmas are really not much better. Witchcraft, like any "religion" is all about magic. Witchcraft is only more obvious and honest in the desire to control nature in some way, to pretend that the danger and the suffering and the tragedy is not there. Nor can we hide behind the dogmas of scientism and technology. These too are about power and control of forces which are not fully understood, where speculation becomes the dogmatic laws of nature or of physics. Taking the larger view, scientism and technology are not any different than Church based or nature based dogmatic religion, they simple change the court room and the forests for th laboratory. Whether it is a Catholic mass, a witch's coven, a Lakota Sun Dance or Convention of astronomers and physicists is all about the false sense of control and magic that comes from applied definitions.
Instead we need to understand that landscape in and of itself is a sacrament to be read, a text that tells us who we are, where we are, how we are. What we do in our landscape and how we live within that landscape speaks the real truth. When we begin to understand that our landscape shapes us, forms us, that we, as a part of it shape and form it as well, we can begin to understand the real meaning of a spiritual life and our deepest longings in life, a need to be a part of and connected. In the sacramental text of landscape we can then see ourselves in the larger picture. The landscape becomes a mirror and we in turn reflect back what we see in how we interact with it, live with it.
We are not separate from landscape though we want to believe that we are, forgetting that even the urban is landscape and shapes us. It is a hubris of mankind that somehow we are separate. It is a hubris that is core of the all religious traditions, theological and secular alike, a tradition which puts the sky god or the test tube god over all and in doing so sees all as chattel, mere property. It is a hubris which makes god in man’s image - like Zeus, like Allah, like Yahweh, like Oppenheimer a the Trinity test, the day in which man saw himself “become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” We must in our very soul give up seeing Man as the surveyor's rod and landscape as property measured and defined by our odd geometry. As all the "Good Books "- man is given dominion over the earth, from the Bible to the Biology book. God in each instance created ultimately in the image of man’s hubris and in that hubris, defining his relationship to landscape through his will to power and failing that his will to death.
I am coming to a place of understanding that I know I cannot separate myself from landscape. The dew on the grass creates my mood. The wind on the prairie creates my desires. I see God in everything and everything in God. Landscape and my relationship with it becomes sacramental. I know too I don’t fully live as I should on and with the land. I know it is alive and vital and full of power. It will be here long after I am gone, long after you are gone. I also know that we all too often act as though the landscape and all that is in it is simply for our amusement and pleasure. I do that too far too often.
In the words of John Donne’s Meditation XVII we come to understand that:
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
In John Donne's time this was not true beyond the church. We no longer have that luxury, our numbers are too large and now we are the dominant force in the landscape of the Earth. Now, when we send to know for whom the bell tolls; we know it tolls for thee and me, for all mankind and all life as we know it on earth, until when we are finally gone the Earth creates new landscapes.
As a student, I studied the anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "Theory of Reciprocity in Biological Evolution" and came to understand the nature of the landscape through a simple question, "Which came first, the horse or the grassy plain?" The answer is that they evolved together, they are not two separate things. When one comes to know that all creatures are of the same landscape evolving together, that we are truly one landscape joined together as one do we have any hope for real communion and real peace. If we do not understand our landscape and how to live with it because we are a part of it, we individually and as a species are doomed. We must in our deepest spiritual nature understand landscape must be cared for as we would want to be cared for, caring not as we care about ourselves but as we wish we were cared about. Only then is there hope for our survival.
The sacred, the sacramental landscape is manifest in our landscape wherever it is - city, mountain, desert or sea, it will tell us who and what we are if we simply learn to read it. If we are willing to see "landscape" as our self and to stop seeing landscape as something we can manipulate simply to our own end, then we too become sacred and sacramental in our living.
Landscape is nothing more, nothing less than us in co - union with all that we see, all that we live with, it is all that we are. When we understand that co -union, have that co-union we are no longer separate from landscape and no longer separate form ourselves or each other. At that moment we stop seeing life as a mechanism, a clock to be taken apart by dogma in any form, religious or scientific. We stop believing that landscape and life are understandable in their parts alone. In that moment of communion we understand the reciprocal impact of all things. In that moment of communion we stop putting the spiritual life and the bio-geological life in separate boxes. Then and only then, will we stop being merely religious or merely scientific and will see the boxes of our categories not as the answer to our hubris but the ultimate expression of our hubris. In that moment of true understanding, we understand that the religious and the scientific are simply some tools with which we read the sacramental nature of our place in landscape. Those tools are not the landscape itself.
In that moment of real co-union we are in "His(or Her) Service" because in the end we are at one in a living sacramental landscape.
Nature includes all of the universe and man is not only a part of nature, he is in it up to his neck. -- N.J. Berrill (Science writer) Sojourner is a psychotherapist who has lived and traveled in various landscapes: scientific and spiritual, physical and mental, eastern woodland to southern shore, sane to insane, from Buddhist to Christian to cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown.
He currently lives in the Chihuahua Desert with his wife, Kathryn, Interpretive Ranger for the Living Desert State Park and Zoological Garden. Will is currently on sabbatical from his work as a psychotherapist and his role as priest and healer in the religion of secular humanism.
He is relearning to connect with the land, its power, its creativity and it sacramental nature by spending time with his dogs, his horse, his pines, his wife, the desert and the Guadeloupe mountains. For now he wishes to remain, cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown.
Tuesday, 16. October 2007, 11:58:48
Well it's Saturday night
You're all dressed up in blue
I've been watching you awhile
Maybe you've been watching me too
And so somebody ran out
Left somebody's heart in a mess
Well if you're looking for love
Honey I'm tougher than the rest
Some girls they want a handsome Dan
Or some good-lookin' Joe
On their arm some girls want a sweet-talkin' Romeo
But around here baby
I've learned you get what you can get
So if you're looking for love
Honey I'm tougher than the rest
Oh your road is dark
And it's a thin, thin line
But I want you to know
I'd walk it for you anytime
And all your other boyfriends
They couldn't pass the test
So if you're looking for love
Honey I'm tougher than the rest
Well it ain't no secret
I've been around a time or two
Well I don't know but maybe
You've been around too
Well there's another dance
All you gotta do is say yes
And if you're looking for love
Honey I'm tougher than the rest
And if you're ready for love
Honey I'm tougher than the rest
Chris Ledoux
I decided I should leave her
Before I hurt her more than she loved me.
Garth Brooks
I have lived in a few places in the United States and have traveled more, even to Europe and the Mediterranean. Like Dorothy said, there is no place like home. Odd how this over educated country boy would find a home in a desert in the heart of what was once the old west of fame, home of: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, John Chisum, Charlie Goodnight, John Wesley Hardin and others. It is a land of stories turned into legends. It is a beautiful country and tough. Everything here bites, sticks or stings. If you are not tough when you get here you become tough or you leave. It is not a land for sissies, this place of wide-open skies, mesquite, ocotillo, prickly pear and pecan trees. Too I find in my life that lyrics to country and western songs take on a new meaning, like the two above.
The first is from a song sung by Chris Ledoux in which he sings to a girl with a broken heart and lets her know that her “other boy friends” love was not tough enough to keep her. The other is from Garth Brooks’ “Wild Horses,” the story of a rodeo cowboy who cannot give up the life he leads for the girl he loves.
In this place I have come to understand that to love one has to be tough and that one cannot leave one’s heart life for love. Most people do leave their lives for love, they are desperate for love and create all sort of pictures of how it will look and chase that dream, or they give up themselves for approval from others and never pursue that dream. I have done the latter in my life; people suspected I was doing the former when I moved here. I knew I was not.
Love is hard and love is tough and love can only exist in the heart that knows itself and where home really is, not just physical home but the home of certainty and acceptance of self more than the acceptance of others. Odd how I found that when I surrendered to the greater love of God.
We do not put love and toughness together but to love someone requires us to be tough. The girl in the Garth Brooks song was asked to be tough enough to accept him for who he was, as is the girl in the Chris Ledoux song. In our own lives we are faced with betrayal, illnesses, an assortment of disappointments and our hearts stay true until we are hurt more than we can love. That point is about how tough we are.
But what is tough, how does one know and find it?
This is a land of idioms and some find there way in to the general language, “cowboy up” is such a term, and the phrase “get over yourself.” It really takes living among cowboys to fully appreciate what those phrases really mean
In this land of the cowboy, oil rigger and roustabout one has a choice; when the work gets hard, the body gets injured, “cowboy up”, in other words get up and do what you have to do. This idea fell into disfavor as the New Age and soft psychology prevailed in the 80’s and 90’s. If you are hurt you are to rest and if needed go on welfare. No one will say that directly but the undertone is there in life. Here, real “men” just “cowboy up.” Oh we have more than our fair share of welfare layabouts but in a small place like this they are thought of as the stuff you get on your shoes as you clean stalls. Somehow we are supposed to feel pity for them or guilt if we judge them but I am always thrown back to Paul’s rule, if you don’t work you don’t eat. To cowboy up means to face life’s challenges, accept them and try again.
Get over yourself is the key to this idea. We are all prone to self-pity and if we look at our hurts and angers they are usually based in self-pity – who oh, why oh, why oh, did that happen to my life oh? To cowboy up requires a lack of self-pity, a realization that life’s challenges just are and that usually they are because of choices we made. The cowboy way is not the self pitying or self-indulgent way. The cowboy way used to be the American way, to so much any more.
So what does this have to do with love and being tough enough? Well, in spite of what Paul says, love does fail if one goes into it with a person who does not know how to cowboy up, into it with person who has not been able to find the core of who they are. And when that love fails it hurts like hell, the only question is are we going to make it about our feeling sorry for ourselves or are we going to accept that we just were human and made a bad choice.
As most of my journal recipients know, love arrived and left on the same horse. Was it real, you bet – for both of us- but she was not ready to accept the life she thought she wanted, no blame there. She simply did not know herself as well as she thought when she asked for it. Did it look real, you bet but looking real is different than being real.
Real love is tough on the soul; it demands respect, truth, honor and surrender to the circumstances God puts before us. Although Paul is wrong that what we call love never fails, he is right in that real love never fails because real love is and never has to think of itself. It just is and come from the honorable and true heart. Sadly false love looks like real love and can trip us up.
I mentioned to friend that I love her, who she is, not the falling in love type. She asked why. That is like asking the sky why, or the wind why, some things just are. She was disappointed in love too and now thinks that she might be unlovable in some way. WE all go there, forgetting that it rains on the good and the wicked equally.
I love New Mexico. I can't say why, just do. I loved a German girl, don’t know why, just did. I love my horses, my farm my Lord, don’t know why just do. The horses kick, the land stings, the Lord does not let me in on His plans but none of those things hurt me more than I love them and so I just do.
To Cowboy up in love, to be tougher than the rest, requires that we have a deep, deep well of love in our hearts. The only source I know for that is the Lord, it is my source and since I feel in love with him I hear His call – cowboy up boys for the next go round. In this love I am always blessed cause I know and accept that stuff happens and life is now.
There may be a girl in my life or there may not but sure as hell when the call goes out I am not going to think about how much the last ride hurt, I'll go again even if I don’t make the 8 seconds. What else can we do? Sit in the stands and feel sorry that life passed us by?
In His Service, Always.
Monday, 17. September 2007, 02:37:12
Friday I got throw' ed and stomped.
The girlfriend now wants "space and time" cause she scared herself (and I think is scared of herself), that throw' ed me, then I broke up a fight at work, that stomped me and I ended in the ER with a messed up neck. So Friday and Saturday I felt sorry for myself, not what a cowboy should do.
Today I dropped feed and saw what I needed to do, focus on my farm and the horses.
Taking on a farm is a big responsibility, something larger than one's self and I think the Lord gave me a farm to keep me honest. So I did what any right thinking cowboy would do, took the muscle relaxants and doubled up on the pain killers and went out and went to work. Wormed Joker, who is thankfully getting some weight on, put the two aggressive ones in the corral so he could eat in peace and started picking up manure. Taking a break now but will go back as soon as the head stops spinning, more manure to pick and horses to lunge, except Joker, he needs to lay around and gain some more weight.
The other two pick on him because he has lost one eye, he is easy to bully. I am sure even horses loose their confidence. He really needs a friend and me being me will always take the side of the oppressed.
My cousin/brother Steve was a cowboy though he never held that title. After his motorcycle accident in which every bone in his body was broken, he, on is hands and knees laid a floor. People around him raised hell. Having been a "psychologist" for too many years and on the inside of all that "miss the point" new age self esteem crap, I raised a bit of hell with him too, then I just helped him. It is easy to forget that self esteem lies in the doing, the risk taking. Together we built an addition to his house while he was out of work for two years. He persevered and did what he needed to do. That is the key to life, do what you need to do and do the right thing, move through and beyond the pain and embrace the day, Carpe Diem!
In Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp, Gene Hackman as Wyatt's father, pays a young Wyatt's bail. Wyatt is in jail for horse theft after a year's self destructive and self indulgent drunk over the death of his wife. Gene tells Wyatt that life is about loss. He is right. That is part of the Buddha's first noble truth, life is suffering. Do we retreat in to a self absorbed "enlightenment" , do we surrender to the negative self talk that wants to defeat us or do we keep living the real life.
Life is about loss and pain and it is not that we have losses and pain but it is what we do with it, how we face it. I lost some mobility Friday. It felt like I lost the girl and the jury is still out on that but I do know that we have to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and our past, get up and do the work before us.We do the right thing. Live life in our hearts and not in our heads. Know that in spite of all our unworthiness that the Lord loves us and wants to prosper us.
Who among us has not had things which hold us back? I can focus on that I was abandoned as a kid or I can look at it the other way - my grandparents found me and loved me. A much better view. We all have a tendency to focus on the negative and life's failings far too much. I am sure that Joker focuses on his disability. He and I will work on that in the weeks to come. I think he has potential, just as Movie has potential. They will come to trust as I trust me to take care of them. We can only be trusted if we are trust worthy and believe in the Lord's ability to bring us good if we stay focused on His plans in our life.
Fear in life is the killer of the Lord's gifts. Jesus says of Satan "he comes to lie, steal and destroy." I agree and his tool is fear. I felt the old fear of abandonment Friday and the fear of pain and immobility. I forgot for a second that where the Lord is fear has to leave, so I prayed for strength and guidance, the Lord showed me three great horses and a job to do today.
I write this because there is a lesson in this for all of us. We don't always get the girl (or the girl get the guy) but we do get what is in front of us if we are willing to take the risk and to hurt a bit in the process. We have to rise to the occasion, not dwell on a past, which only has the power over us we give it, or the future which is just an imagination.
All that is left is to rise in faith and take the task before us.
The prayer in the garden has much been on my mind of late. Isn't that what that prayer was really about, accepting what lies ahead and having the faith to face the density and plan the lord lays before us.
I love to know outcomes but what fun is that. The adventure is to take a risk and embrace life and all that is offered. So now, having rested and got this out of my system I am back at work. There are real things before me which need my attention - the horses are real, the farm is real, my love for the girl is real and that is before me. The pain in my neck is real but I get to chose if that stops me from everything else. I lost two days, Satan stole enough of my time.
So what does a cowboy do when throw'ed and stomped?
He gets up and says, lets have another go at it. He never gives up to fear.
In His Service
Monday, 17. September 2007, 02:35:19
(Part of me thinks that this should be private to Peggy, another part knows that this answer is for all of us. We all have those we love that we have lost. I do not know if this even begins to touch the pain all share in loss, I do however hope and trust that in addition to Peggy that someone out there finds the healing that I speak to her about in their own life. Peggy asked why Lisa died so young, as did Lisa's brother)
Dear Peggy,
You wrote me with basically one question. Why?
As a servant of the Lord, as a counselor, as a healer I guess I should know the answer but I really don't, except in the depths of my faith in a wordless place where I am simply in the Lord.
This was the same question Jesus was asked about Lazarus. Why? His answer, He could only cry and bring Lazarus back as a demonstration of faith and hope. I think He cried due not only to the loss, but the lack of faith in those around him. I have heard it said it was only the latter but I am sure He was in pain. You see, Jesus was also on this great journey called a life and as full of the Father as He was, He was fully a man with man's fears and doubts. Otherwise His story is a fairy tale and we can never really join Him. We can, however, join Him because He joined us.
I do know that we do not know and that is the issue of faith. The real issue is not that our loved ones go home, it is that they leave us alone. We like their company, we love their joy, especially when, like Lisa, they are happy and bright and gay and good. We miss that when it is gone. I miss knowing that Lisa is in the world, maybe not like you do Peggy, but I have those I am close to who are gone too, so I am familiar with that pain, as we all are.
Yet, even in my faith I struggle at times with faith. I think sometimes after a too long a bout with the History Channel or the Discovery Channel that my faith is nothing more than a continuation of ancient Egyptian obsession with the after life. In my heart, once I get out of my head I know that is not true. That is the key, getting out of my head.
We live in a culture obsessed with our intellectuals and our education, often acting like no people, no culture but us knows or knew anything until we got the GI bill and went to college. Our knowledge is full of hubris, the sin of pride and certainty, a total lack of humility. Yet I also know that millions have had and thousands have written about the experience I am going to share with you. I doubt if we are all wrong and the "scientists" are right.
So Peggy I want to tell you how my heart was humbled and got to where it is at today, and maybe the story can serve as a sign post for your healing.
There came a time, in my own hubris, that I went a bit crazy and a lot wild, making decisions out of my anger and frustration. I knew that I was sick of the pain in the world and I was tired of loosing everyone and everything I loved. I decided that I was sick of being a "nice guy" since I did always seem to finish last. I did not have the courage to kill myself, though I wanted to and I did not have the courage to face life either. So I ran and raged and went a little crazy and for a while made my own rules, motorcycle and all. Ultimately that caught up to me and I found myself standing in a place alone, my "friends" gone, my reputation ruined, my life empty. Standing in the dark, like Paul and Silas, I had no hymn to sing but this - "Lord I have really messed up, my way does not work and I surrender to you.", and I prayed Peter's prayer - "Help me Lord!"
He answered that prayer of desperation. First through a man I only knew as a coffee acquaintance. This man, in his faith, guided me in my surrender and held me up while I was alone and empty. The pain did not cease but I knew there was someone there in this world for me, a stranger who became my friend and though it took a long while and was hard on him he remained my friend as the Lord prepared me for the Great Gift.
One day as I sat in my home office trying to write on my computer I felt an explosion in my heart, not like a heart attack, I felt something being born and somehow I could see it as well. It was like being impregnated in my heart with a living thing and I could feel it begin to grow. I could feel me and I could feel this "fetus". I have had women tell me they had a similar experience when they became pregnant, only lower in the body. Later that day I told my friend and as we spoke he told me that one day I would discover that I loved Jesus, I was skeptical, loving a 2000 year old dead guy, yeah right. Each day that "thing" grew in my heart till a day came in which I could no longer tell where I ended and it began. I knew, how I knew I don't know, but I knew it was the Lord filling me because I kept my word and got out of His way. One morning not long after that while eating my breakfast I heard myself exclaim "I'll be damned, I have fallen in love with Jesus. And He is not dead." and that quiet still voice which is with me always now said, "No you are not damned, you are truly saved." Since that day I have had a deeper and deeper peace in my life . . . a peace that passes all understanding and a strength to become the man He wanted me to be. And the wounds healed, leaving only scars to make the journey.
I know this may seem a strange answer to the pain of your loss but I tell you truly it is not. My life was an open wound of loss, and from that day to this, though the healing has taken a while and there is more that the Lord wants to give me, I know that my surrender, my complete and abject surrender to Him has healed the pain of my life. Do I still cry, yes, but I no longer suffer in my tears alone and most days I cry more in joy than sorrow. You see, what sustains me, and what I saw in Lisa the last time we spoke is one in the same, our shared life in Christ. That is how she became my teacher instead of my student and she gave me more than I ever gave her, she was deeper and further in the journey in the Lord and in her selflessness showed me what real love looks like in this world. Her joy in her family came from the well spring I am now blessed to drink from.
We try so hard to struggle through alone when we don't have to. Lisa had given her pain to the Lord just as I gave my pain to Him. He does perfect us, He works on us and in the working He sustains us. All He asks is that we surrender to Him all our fears, all our sorrows, all our hopes and from the heart simply say is "Help me with this Lord."
Give it to him Peggy, in faith and hope and trust and do not take the surrender back. At first it will feel like you are dying but He will come to you and He will bring you beauty for your ashes.
Lisa is in the heart of the Lord, I could see that even in the beginning stages of the healing He brought to me. It is good to be in the heart of the Lord. I had not realized it till this week but I took for granted that Lisa is right here in this heart that I share with her and with many in the world because it is His heart. I took for granted the feeling of her not being gone, now I understand why - in the Lord, in His living in the heart we are all there - those who surrender. We understand and we are known and we know.
This may not be any comfort Peggy, but I do hope it is a sign post for you. I am your friend as well as Lisa's and I so do want you to find peace and healing. Lisa was desperate and in her sinking like a stone, like Peter, she found healing in her surrender. My desperation was different but I too have felt His hand pull me out of the sea as I cried for help and knew, really knew that there was nothing I could do but surrender. Take your pain to Him, surrender it completely and ask Him to heal you in His way. I am sure that when you do not only will your pain be healed but your questions answered.
This answer is not a text book answer, it is not a counselors answer, it is a friend's answer and in the answer the question "why" dies and peace is born.
You are in my heart and prayers.
In His Service, always, your friend,
Will
We are supposed to forgive everyone; everyone includes ourselves.
Denis Waitley
Wednesday, 12. September 2007, 13:43:53
Fall is fast approaching even in this warm place. The hummingbirds will be flying south to Mexico (yes the little things migrate) and in a few weeks I will be buried in Pecan leaves. The horses have settled down and now all three approach me. Movie remains her nervous self but we are back to our understanding.
I thought a lot yesterday about my note about Lisa and her life, and my work.
Think of two very distinct images.
One a man sitting alone under a tree, legs crossed, gaze turned up and inward, self contained, a smile touching his lips.
The other a man hanging on that tree, looking out his face twisted in pain, arms out stretched as if in an embrace to the world.
I have walked into to both images in my life. I badly wanted the first, my childhood was not the best. I literally fled in self destruction looking for that contemplative contentment and like Gautama, fleeing into the forests, could not find it there.
I think of Lisa embracing her pain, her concern for her children and I know that is really the image of enlightenment, the image of Christ. It is not in our self reflective withdrawal into our own stuff that we find peace, it is in the open armed embrace of life as it is, sometimes very painful, not just embracing our own pain, but stepping beyond it, to throw our arms open to embrace the pain of the world, and in that embrace the door opens to our peace.
Last year I learned what evil truly was by working for one of the most self serving men I have even known. I have realized thought that he was actually pretty lame at being self serving, he was too obvious. I think of him because I saw him in a parking lot yesterday, scurrying away from me as fast as he could, almost wetting his pants as he fled. I think of self serving in a much deeper way now though, he was just obvious. This morning I read a critique of Brittany Spears performance and the main critique was she was fat. I looked at the pictures and all I saw was a pretty young woman with a Marilyn Monroe figure in lingerie, looking very nice, not at all starved or bony. Although I am not a fan of hers by any means I was appalled at the comments in the media about her being fat and more so by the comments of the anonymous people on the Internet.
You see, in those comments I saw the real nature of self serving evil. It is not the obvious greed of a man like my former boss that will destroy us, it is our willingness to subtly trash others when they do not met our standards that will destroy us.
I have come to see the meditative figure of the Buddha as rather self indulgent. Oh yes I would love to have peace, I do love the peace I have, but if that peace is all about me what do I have?
In my youth I hated Good Friday, it seemed to me to beg the point, the real deal was the resurrection. I had Buddhaized Christ and missed the point entirely. It really is the cross, the willingness to open our arms and in our suffering embrace the world which is our salvation. I cannot, Like Jesus take on the sins of the world, I know I am not that big, I am not that important, but I can embrace my pain and help with yours.
That is the real key in life, a healthy willing ness to not enable, Jesus was not an en abler, a healthy willingness to say, let me help. Let me understand and allow me to walk with you.
Lisa,in my thoughts yesterday,brought that into focus again for me. A young woman not caught in self indulgence but in her pain a willingness to embrace her family. Now that is Christ alive in the world.
Brittany trying to make a come back, reportedly neglecting her children for fame, the masses criticizing her for not being skinny enough to look like a boy or a little girl, that is far from Christ.
I continue to struggle with the church and its historical teachings. You see I believe that Jesus was the Christ, he showed us how, but I believe that we each have the capacity to become the Christ when we surrender to the Spirit, surrender to the Father of us all and serve Him. I believe that in Lisa I saw Christ and did not fully understand or appreciate it.
Lisa had a lot of reasons to be bitter. I knew her story and saw her pain as a child. She told me once that I had stood up for her in school, fought for her. All I remember of that time is that I just did what was right for her. Like all my students and all my boys and all those in my life I believed in her, that is all, just a small thing because it is the right thing to do.
I follow Jesus because it seems to me the right thing to do. I look at the cross now and know that it really is not what is on the other side that matters, it is the embrace of the cross, the willingness to serve others in spite of our own pain. The willingness to understand others - that is the way of Jesus - the way of the cross.
We live in a culture of self indulgent avoidance, a product of pop psychology in which self esteem is not something to develop but something we are supposed to be born with. We we are not born with it. A baby is the most selfish creature on earth, vulnerable but selfish. It is through our trials and suffering that we, if we are lucky,reach Nirvana, not just by sitting under a tree and realizing that nothing matters but our own enlightenment.
I used to think that the teachings of Jesus were just and off shoot of the teachings of Buddha. Now I know better, they are completely different in substance. Will I condemn my Buddhist friends, of course not, I will embrace them too, they too are part of the world that is family.
I think now about a sad, middle aged man, running to his truck in a parking lot, acting like he is about to wet his pants because he saw me and I feel sad for him. had he just walked up to me I would have still offered him a hand of friendship and maybe in that friendship talked about his fears and how he hurts others and himself in his solutions. I would offer him Christ, not as a palative but as an experience that he could embrace.
How often do we all run away in our fears from the grace in the world. I know I do.
Lisa, my student, taught me more than I ever dreamed. I had avoided that pain until the other night when I received a note from her mom. It brought me back, made me look, helped me realize that Christ is in the world. In this case in the heart of a 33 year old woman who was my friend. Knowing that, I can now allow myself to grieve, you see though I now see Christ in her what I am grieving is that had I been away I could have told her. I am more understanding that when one of us dies, we are really grieving the loss of that part of Christ into the world.
I am a follower of Jesus. I joyfully follow Him and his out reached arms. I am not ashamed or embarrassed to say that. He has treated me well.
Tuesday, 11. September 2007, 03:45:58
Mat 26:36
Then comes Jesus with them to a place named Gethsemane, and says to his disciples,
Be seated here, while I go over there for prayer.
And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and became sad and very troubled.
Then says he to them, My soul is very sad, even to death: keep watch with me here.
And he went forward a little, and falling down on his face in prayer, he said,
O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup go from me; but let not my pleasure, but yours be done.
And he comes to the disciples, and sees that they are sleeping, and says to Peter,
What, were you not able to keep watch with me one hour? Keep watch with prayer, so that you may not be put to the test: the spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is feeble.
Again, a second time he went away, and said in prayer,
O my Father, if this may not go from me without my taking it, let your pleasure be done.
And he came again and saw them sleeping, for their eyes were tired. And he went away from them again, and a third time said the same prayer. Then he comes to the disciples; and says to them,
Go on sleeping now, and take your rest: for the hour is come, and the Son of man is given into the hands of evil men. Up, let us be going: see, he who gives me up is near.
I would like to propose a thought, maybe slightly heretical, Jesus did not know the end of the story. Oh he knew that he was about to die, and he know that he would be taking on the sins of man, but this passage hints that he did know of the resurrection to come.
I think this is an important point. We all want to know the end of the story before we set out on the journey. It is safer. It gives us a false sense of security. But Jesus, perfect man, model of all men, had to surrender in faith, not in knowledge of outcome, otherwise he would not be the perfect man. Man can never know the outcome except by faith.
We are fortunate. We know the outcome. Jesus stayed with the pain, died and was given new life on the other side. But his surrender was an act of faith, just as we have an act of faith.
A dear friend of mine died a while back, an old student, a young woman of 33. She was dear to me because I knew her in her troubles of 18 and I saw her in her faith as her body was ravaged by cancer. The Lord in her faith had given her the children and family she could not have and her last few months were blessed. She was an instrument of God's in moving me deeper into my faith.
It has taken me a while to deal with her death. I got a note from her mother, also a dear friend of mine and she still struggles with peace. It is hard to make peace with some things, especially when they seemingly make no sense.
It is outcomes that we try to control and Jesus' message to us is not about outcomes but about what we do.
As most of you know I love good westerns. Last night I was re watching Kevin Costner's "Wyatt Earp" and Doc Holiday delivers the line - "There are no hooks my friend, there is only what we do." This was in response to Doc telling Wyatt that he needed to let go of his common law wife Mattie and move on and he told Wyatt that there are some people who will never be happy in this life.
I think this must be so, but it is a shame. Joy is god's gift to us all. My friend Lisa, in her surrender to her Lord and to the life he gave her in the face of terminal cancer showed me that. The last time I spoke with Lisa was at her mother's wedding. She was ill and pale and told me that the end was near. Her greatest worry was about her step children. She told me she had joy but worried that especially her step son was not doing well. I was too close to her to offer counseling but I spoke to her of people I knew who were good.
Lisa, my student, a troubled you girl who told me once I saved her life, helped save me through her joy and surrender to her faith and to the life the Lord gave her in her last years, a life she told me she felt was a gift that she would never have, someone who loved her deeply and the gift of children which her body would not allow. Lisa in her faith and her acceptance of the gifts God laid before her became my teacher just as I had once been hers.
I still at times want to know outcomes. I have to believe that Jesus did not fully know the outcome, he could not have been fully man if he did. I need to believe this because I attempt to model my life on His. Yes He was aware, as we all are, of the life in the Father but like us it had to be an act of faith. The ultimate act of faith is to go on even in knowing that there is risk and suffering and that when we are in the joy the Lord gives us He is there. I admire Lisa, I saw her surrender to her joy even knowing that is was only a gift for a while. She is never far from my heart. She gave me more than she knew. She taught me to surrender to joy, even in the face of fear and uncertainty.
I write this so her mother and her husband know what she gave. I hope they too can find peace. I know Lisa found peace and joy in the gift of children and family, even if by our standards it was too short a joy.
Wednesday, 5. September 2007, 23:43:26
Late Monday afternoon, route 285, heading south a with two horses loaded in the trailer. The golden light of the late afternoon sun angled across the prairie. Mesas in the distance highlighted by the angle of the sun. The landscape becoming more intimate to me as I pull a ton of horses across this rolling landscape toward my farm in the south. I feel every long hill in a landscape that only seems flat because of the hundred mile view. The road a ribbon across a green grassland. Beautiful.
There is long green grass this year, good horse and cattle country. The prairie pinion close to Clines Corner gives way to cholla as I roll south. A landscape dotted with dark clumps of pine gives way to a landscape dotted with large dark cattle and herds of tawny antelope blending into the landscape.
I put in a Chris Ledoux CD for the company. Chris Ledoux gives way to the Eagles reunion CD.Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
You been out ridin' fences for so long now
Oh, you're a hard one
I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin' you
Can hurt you somehow
Don you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
Shell beat you if she's able
You know the queen of heats is always your best bet
Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you cant get
Desperado, oh, you aint gettin no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone
Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky wont snow and the sun wont shine
Its hard to tell the night time from the day
You're loosin' all your highs and lows
Aint it funny how the feeling goes away?
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin, but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you, before its too late.
This was the song I played on the day I was re baptized and returned to the faith of my fathers. I gave my new church family a tearful testimony and requested this song be played. At that moment it reflected a realization of the meaning of my life - a desperate man coming home.
An anthem of my lost youth in the drug infested 1970's, I little though what this song meant. It just seemed a cowboy song but as I age I hear it as a hymn, a deeply spiritual song, an emotional song describing how we all build our fences and are alone.
Trust in others comes hard when one has lived a life of betrayal, as the betrayed and betrayer. We all are both, there is no getting around that. We throw up fences, ride the high country and refuse to allow new hopes and new life into our life instead giving thought only to the pain we suffered at the self centeredness of others, and, if we are lucky, we give a thought to our own self- centeredness.
Lack of trust is self centered if you really think on it a while. Fear is always self centered.
Not long after that tearful testimony I awoke one day and discovered I loved Jesus. It really is a quiet love, a love of a man who somehow across time and space is as real to me as anyone ever has been. I had taken down my fences, opened my gates, stopped walkin' through the world all alone. Now I never feel alone and I still get tearful at His friendship, a friendship not really deserved. We speak of faith in the Lord but I think that must be mis-spoken. It is not that I have faith in Him that is the miracle, but that He has and kept faith in me and through all the twists and turns in my journey has trusted me enough to hang in there with me. Some use the phrase "accept Christ", I think he does not need my acceptance, I have needed his. So I opened the gate and have been better for it.
This prairie, this western life, this return to my heart, a country boy with too much schoolin' are a reflection for me of his love, his willingness to hang in with me and guide me home.
Desperado no longer fits my life. I listened, reflected and knew. There is nothing desperate about my life now, nothing to run from, nothing empty. It really is not this landscape though, it is knowing that I am accepted and loved and full, not just with the hopes of a woman or a job, but with the hopes and love of the very creator of the universe.
A desperado is a man afraid, a man looking over his shoulder. I no longer am afraid nor look over my shoulder. The past is the past and the future, well I know that the Lord will keep me good company and bring to my life those gifts he wants me to have.
Life is hard. Life is dangerous and we hope to make it otherwise. We come to believe that building fences, controlling what gets into out space will keep us safe, but it doesn't. We cannot keep out that fear, we can only close it in with us. It is the removal of fences which relieves the fear. How much of a desperado are you today? Who are you closing out only to discover that you are a prisoner of you own fears?
Driving across this prairie I am in a landscape of harsh beauty. It is a simple landscape at a glance but once one knows it intimately, it is not simple, it is fragile as are we.
I put Chris Ledoux back in the CD player, knowing his songs are more reflective of my life now, a life beneath western skies.
The Nashville friends think im strange to make my home out on the range
Think its nothin but a God forsaken land
Why don't you bring your guitar and family, move on down to Tennessee
Well, I just smile because they don't understand
But if they ever saw a sunrise on a mountain mornin?
Watched those cotton candy clouds roll by
They'd know why I live beneath these western skies
I got peace of mind and elbow room I love the smell of sage in bloom
Catch a rainbow on my fishin line
We got county fairs and rodeos, aint a better place for my kids to grow
Just turn em loose in the western summer time
And if you ever held your woman on a summers evening
While the prairie moon was blazin in her eyes
You'd know why I live beneath these western skies
You aint lived until you've watched those northern lights
Set around the campfire and hear the coyotes call at night
Makes you feel alright
So guess ill stay right where im at, wear my boots and my cowboy hat
But ill come and see ya once in a while
Ill bring my guitar and sing my songs, sorry if I don't stay too long
I love Tennessee but ya know its just not my style
I got'ta be where I can see those rocky mountains
Ride my horse and watch an eagle fly
I got'ta live my life and write my songs beneath these western skies
When I die you can bury me beneath these western skies, yippee'eye
Chris Ledoux
In His Service
Sunday, 26. August 2007, 21:35:19
Two journals in one day, I know a bit much but like the song says:
Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
“Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
I write because I am happy and I know He watches me.
Just finished with the irrigation, always brings me joy to see the water in the fields. Such a pretty sight. I discovered a gopher pocket today, lol. Actually I knew it was there but found out how deep it was. I had a palette covering it and it floated off, when I went to pull the palette back I sunk up to my chest in the hole, old manure floating around and my boots sucking off. I thought it was funny, came in shortly after and showered to avoid typhus, tetanus, cholera or a myriad other desert rural diseases.
I love this farm. I think I have said that in journals before. I love this farm because I listened to the Lord to find it and an interesting thing happened, in find the Lord, listening to Him I found myself. My self had nothing to do with all the plans and schemes I laid in life, it was simply surrendering to the simplicity of His love for me and listening to His Good Orderly Directions.
Over the years I have met many people through my practice of "counseling" who are struggling looking for themselves. Usually they are listening to friends, family, self help books and they look everywhere but the one place they should , deep in their heart.
I can honestly say that I have true joy in my life now. A place I love, fulfillment in work, people who love me and who I in turn love deeply, someone special in my life, my horse, my dog, my farm and My Lord. And all the rest comes because of my love for Him.
There are times I wish I had listened sooner but my Boss reminds me that we are all right where He wants us to be, doing what He wants us to do, in the way he wants us to do it. Had He wanted me here sooner my life crisis would have come sooner, by waiting I am become the man He wanted, with the understanding He wanted. So how do we find this "self" we all desire so much? Live each day but shift the focus from our selves to others, shift our fears to a realization that they are an illusion. Shift our heart to surrender to that Higher power which through the green fuse drives the flower.
Each day is a blessing now.
My field is full of water, My horse is cornered in her corral awaiting the ground to soak up the water. I found a large gopher pocket and hopefully the gopher drowned but that is unrealistic. I played in the mud and laughed with the Lord. And -
I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
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