We were in Maine for a few days, returned just in time to watch the the rains bring destruction and sorrow to our neighbors. When things cleared Vermonters did what Vermonters do: get out the rubber boots and gloves and get to work. We helped at the Weston Playhouse for a while, trying to find some humor in the plates and costumes, chairs, tables, books, everything caked in mud. Hauling load after load out of the basement, now filled with mud and water. The roads to there washed away, bridges, gone, pavement buckled.
Water is no joke.
It’s been a strange summer, cloaked here in wildfire smoke, low hanging clouds and humidity. The ants are thriving, plant life loving every minute, though a lot of the strawberries in the garden rotted on the ground.
Just so much rain.
We went up to Bangor to see Chris Stapleton. All week leading up to the trip I had been thinking of a song called Freedom, a beautiful, soulful song by someone whose name I couldn’t recall. I kept meaning to search for it but never did.
It turned out that he was the warm-up act at the concert.
Allen Stone, Freedom.
The mystical, intuitive, always present. No coincidences.
Stapleton was great, but it was a full two hours before he took the stage, which is too long when the venue is filled with beer-swilling cowboys and girls. He sang all the songs you love, but there was one small moment when he veered from the known and sang the opening lines to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird.
For me a pattern was forming.
Signs, happenings … seem to be moving me toward new ideas.
I am deeply curious about artificial intelligence and its applications in our lives and what it means for the coming years. I am working to figure out what humans today are needing in terms of spiritual sustenance. I am watching with curiosity as old institutions fade and die, leaving room for new things to emerge. I want to be a part of creating the new thing. It seems this has been the storyline for this particular incarnation for me: pushing, questioning, challenging, never being content with the we do it this way because we have always done it this way mentality. I am drawn to the mavericks, the creators, the funny ones, the ones who get that life is about dynamic creation. We are here to co-create with the Creator something new and better.
In a few weeks I’m heading across the country, returning to a beloved narrative: I have traversed this country many times, been to every state but Hawaii. My thoughts flow easily when I’m in motion. Thank you to my friend, Reid Rolls, photographer extraordinaire and gorgeous human, for helping me figure out a new camera idea.
I am rooting myself in the familiar while imagining flight in new directions. Watching as my kids stretch themselves into new spaces, packing this little house all up, hauling, jettisoning, lighten the load. Hesse said it best: Be ready bravely and without remorse to find new light that old ties cannot give. In all beginnings dwells a magic force for guarding us and helping us to live.
The suffering will not end. More terrible things will happen. But beauty will remain, too. There will always be kindness, there will always be peach pie.
Why are we here? What are we supposed to do while we’re here? What matters? How do we find peace? Stay creative and productive? How do we use the energy we have in our days here on this planet?
I read the obituaries like a research scientist, looking for the ones who really lived. This is my inspiration.
I wonder all the time … is there a moment when we die when we get to look back over the whole thing, see the entire story of how we lived? And if so, what will I regret the most? How much time have I wasted doing things that don’t matter? Did I limit myself in fear or laziness?And God please forbid, please, did I take it all too seriously?
Coming soon … dispatches from the road.
If you wish to help our neighbors regroup and rebuild, please donate to the Stratton Community Foundation. They’re miraculous.
xomo
Wait, you're leaving VT?
Live well, be kind,enjoy the Peach pies made with fresh peachs sliced by hand.
ps Hawaii is overated,been twice, will only again go to visit family.