“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…”

Greetings Dear Ones,

“Nothing is happening TO you; everything is happening FOR you,” say The Wise Ones, who apparently never had to reenter a kitchen to discover they had left a pan of eggs cooking and it is now on fire. I am trying to keep this maxim in mind as I navigate yet another week of coyote strikes, ants in my pants (literally), and attempts to plant fifty pounds of seed potatoes during black fly season in temperatures that force me to choose between wearing a personal sauna or having arms that look like lunch meat gone bad. With so much happening FOR me, I don’t mind boasting a little that I am going to be an amazing creature one day, ant bites on the nether regions not-withstanding... The ants came in on a load of cedar logs that I hauled in my vehicle. I need them (the logs, not the ants) to extend the cattle pasture so I don’t have to mow anything while my mower gets an overhaul at the local tractor repair center. Because, who needs a working mower when one has perfectly good, hungry cattle? And I am tired of using hand shears to clip buckets of grass for them as treats.

Apparently, in the Living of my Joy and fostering the growth of my soul, I could not make enough Spiritual Progress with simple things like forgetting all the passwords to my bank accounts. That’s for beginners. Try the Zen of focusing on highway traffic while being swarmed by ants! Yep! So accelerated is my Divine growth that it even required a full bottle of Kombucha to explode into my keyboard before starting this very blog. It’s all happening FOR me… (and for YOU, dear ones)! Lucky, Lucky us…

It’s no easy task, even in the best of weather, to pursue Happiness in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. For one thing, not everyone is free and hardly any of them are happy.

“Why can’t we go outside?” plead the incarcerated chickens. “We don’t think it’s fair to punish us, since we aren’t the ones who got eaten!”

“Relax,” I tell them. “Have some frozen corn on the cob. This is for your own good. It’s not done TO you; it’s done FOR you. Trust me.”

“We don’t want corn. We want grass and ticks!” they plead.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “There is a coyote nearby raising a den of pups and I don’t want you to be the next chicken dinner! We’ve lost too many of you already.” I gaze forlornly at the empty spaces on the roosting poles. I miss the plucky little rooster the most. He was a Bantam form of Mickey Rooney in a feathered tuxedo, who took himself and the protection of his ladies very seriously, though he was always very respectful of me, after he and I came to a little agreement two years ago that if he attacked me again, I was going to swing him around by his feet until he changed his mind.

“We demand our freedom!” pine the chickens.

“Freedom means the constant threat of death,” say I.

“Isn’t that what Freedom ALWAYS means?” they ask. “Freedom means the highest risks, the highest rewards, and all the bugs you can stomach.”

And so it is.

The lambs too are royally pissed off. Their pursed lips and perturbed looks are tragically comical—ridiculous expressions for those who only want to bounce and play and run imaginary Sheeple chases around and over piles of rocks. This coyote is a terrible problem. It goes at these chickens like a black Friday shopper trying to get the last Nintendo Switch. It is huge—larger than a German Shepherd, and unphased by my efforts to scare it away from the chicken coop at 4:am when I am awakened by commotion. I shout from the back door of the house and it saunters to the edge of the woods, folds its arms, and stares at me with belligerent contempt. This is an all out battle between the haves and have-nots and I am determined to defend “my” property. The coyote, eyeing me warily from the edge of the Dark Forest, is momentarily inconvenienced and shrewdly content to wait until I am out of site. I go inside feeling like that mother whose child’s visiting friend is just waiting for me to leave the kitchen so he can steal cookies. This animal hunts in the middle of the day, at dusk, at dawn… No time is safe, especially when my back is turned. (I’m mostly talking about the coyote here, though I suppose such could be said of the child’s friend too.) It has taken to leaving a dump right by the front door for the dog to find (ok, definitely only talking about the coyote now)—a calling card of sorts—that says “no place is safe.”

“You are too small and delicious,” I tell the lambs, grabbing one, squeezing it tight and burying my face in the heavenly scent of his baby soft wool. “Stay right here in this nice, safe pen and climb your mothers instead of rocks. You’ll be ok. I’ll babysit you in the big field when I get home. You can’t be out alone.”

I leave them bawling with regret. (I mean the lambs are bawling…though I too have a throat tight with sorrow.)

I think about sad lambs and suicidal chickens and what Freedom requires as I go to work on Memorial Day. I meant to take the day off, really I did. But the on-line calendar booking feature embedded in my website has no idea which days are holidays and accepted seven appointments before I even realized it was happening. People had booked these appointments weeks ago and it was going to be a nightmare to try to reschedule everyone. So I went to an otherwise empty building and worked.

“It was not my intention to be engaging in commerce on a national holiday that honors our veterans,” I explain to the first customer as she shuffles in the door with a dress over her arm. As luck would have it, she happens to be a disabled veteran.

“It’s fine! Personally, I’m so glad you are open on Veteran’s Day,” she says. “I have this wedding to go to this weekend and I just found the dress and no one else could do it on such short notice.” She has driven a long way to get here and on the way has enjoyed discovering more of the scenic beauty of this country she was willing to die for. She is not originally from New England and finds it charming. (I notice her arms are free of black fly bites.)

“Well, I guess I’m glad I get to thank you in person for your service on Veteran’s Day,” I say, feeling lame.

“Let’s thank each other,” she says generously.

Not much has been asked of me in the service of my country and I know it. As we strategize about how to accommodate her unique needs and challenges, painful results of dedication and sacrifice, I am grateful that my own moral courage need only extend far enough to be able to open a pair of pants seams that I know are filled with years of rotting leg dandruff. Aside from voting, showing up for jury duty, and abiding by the laws (mostly) of the land, and eating red-white-and-blue cupcakes on the Fourth of July, not much is required of civilian citizens in this “Home of the Brave.” We are mostly free to sit on the couch, flattening our bum fluff, pursuing whatever Happiness we choose, whether it is in the form of bargain seed potatoes from Facebook marketplace, or the right to watch Nascar 24/7.

So what gets in the way of this “Happiness?” Why aren’t all Americans “happy?” Well, honestly, I’m beginning to think our collective unhappiness is actually rooted in the belief that we should be happy—at all times, at any cost. If we live here, in America, purely for the pursuit of Happiness, then sadness becomes our failure. When difficulties become framed as the opposite of Success, we reject half of the entire ebb and flow of what is Life and to be Whole-Hearted. My life in the shop and on the farm teaches me that loss and sorrow can be intensely beautiful and grace-filled at their core, in ways that surface glee and the shallow dopamine hits of finding bargain farm equipment on E-bay cannot sustain. I told a Dear One who expressed regret at the loss of my sheep and her twins, “I’d rather weep at the grave of a beloved sheep than wander through a glitzy cocktail party not knowing what to say or whom to talk to…” Life, in all its gritty Mystery, seems more Complete down here where I can see the dirt. A full life, a big dream, a whole-hearted Vocation requires a lot of work and sacrifice, the commitment of inspired daily actions, and occasionally, tiny, savage, unexpected bites to the bum.

As Humans, we try to organize our lives around uncertainty. This means having rules—rules for how we treat each other, how we protect what we earn or love or create, and how we drive. Some are the Laws of Nature—such as how long it is possible to apply heat to a raw egg before it explodes and begins to smoke. Some are the laws of Man—which means one cannot plow straight through the next five cars with out-of-state-plates in Memorial Day traffic just because a bunch of ants have found one’s butt crack!

It’s so easy to confuse Rights with Responsibilities. We think we have an inalienable right to Happiness—as if Pleasure had no other side to balance it. What is food without hunger? What is water without thirst? Rather than divide experiences into negative and positive, we can see things as part of a whole. When we look at a rainbow, we wish to see ALL of the colors, not just our particular favorite.

“Um…Excuse me,” interrupts a little lamb, “Is there such a thing as a totally green rainbow?”

“Yes, Love,” says her mother, “look down the valley at that field below—every shade of green in the whole world is growing right there, on top of the earth. Now use your mouth for chewing, not talking.”

Emotional diversity, not the presence of “happiness” alone is the real indicator of Well-being (Beings who are Well). The more variations of emotions we are ready, willing, and able to feel—the less we need to engage in potentially destructive behaviours around the ones we seek to avoid. In such cases, our “safety” can come at a terrible price—such as all the –isms that inevitably lead one to a dreary church basement, a circle of metal chairs, and luke-warm coffee where The Grateful meet to help one take the first of 12-steps to sobriety. (I’m still waiting for the twelve-step program for those of us who numb out by knitting fourteen pairs of slippers in less than a month. Don’t kid yourself, ANYTHING can be an –ism.) Barricading ourselves from our feelings comes at incredible costs. Any veteran will tell you that living in a state of siege is not really living, for either side.

Let us forgo the pursuit of Happiness and pursue Wholeness—in the work of our heads, hearts, and hands. May we Mend and help others with their Mending! Creatorship is a form of Leadership. We create and hold hard boundaries (fences, laws, chicken coops) to keep those we love both safe AND free, recognizing we allow some peril for a price. We pledge our sacred honor to defending those we serve and serving those we defend, even as we dance—with ants in our pants.

I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy