"Beatitude Farmers"
An important theme of my writing has long been of the unification of resistance and contemplation: but I feel a compelling need to be more exact, yet more spiritually expansive, if possible. We have to delve deeper into the essential spirituality that undergirds both resistance and contemplation, but with the very relevance of "truth" under attack, and multiple world religions caught in the maelstrom of violence and the rhetoric that supports it, how can we begin with an appeal to "truth"? When "alternative facts" are intentionally cultivated in opposition to integrity, honesty, and "truth", truth itself becomes a casualty of the Right / Left "war".
The 1930's, which last saw the rise of "alternative facts" and fascism, also experienced the Great Depression and the beginning of the Catholic Worker Movement by Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. I have looked upon the Catholic Worker as a renewal of the original Franciscan spiritual vision as lived by Saints Francis and Clare and followers. Francis was a special version of "hobo" -- or "Beatitude Farmer" -- in his wanderings and lifestyle and teachings with the common folk. Peter Maurin was exactly so in the 20th century. This idea of a "Beatitude Farmer" is the track of thought / spirituality that I follow...
Is there an essential American spirituality that corresponds to the idea of "Beatitude Farmer"? I would propose there is: the Jeffersonian vision of a nation of farmers, self-reliant, while also sharing in the commons of a local community of artisans wherein the pursuit of happiness had the genuine possibility of taking root. Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and the Transcendentalists of the 19th century, while often overlooked by 21st century religious capitalists, nevertheless provide a core element to our essential American spirituality: expansive and inclusive in the natural, rooted in Wild Nature, and settled in a daily-ness of contemplative appreciation for art, philosophy, gardening, walking, poetry, and simple loving in the moment.
Contrasting the Transcendentalist with the 21st century religious capitalist and consumer, and we get a vivid presentation of opposites and the dissatisfaction that gave rise to the "counter-cultural movements" of both the "Beats" and the "Hippies". "Dharma Bums", the Fellowship of the Ring, all-things Hesse, and backpacks and hitchhiking the highways of America freed many of us to realize our responsibility to oppose war, racism, job-ism, normal-ism, and sexism, which are all glued to the wide hips of a "Plunderful Capitalism"... Besides the somewhat obvious "cultural resisters" though, there has been a consistent "back to the land" movement in every generation: I remember how in my own youth and small circle, multiple copies of Helen and Scott Nearing's "Maple Sugar Book" went from one hand to another...
Fascism is the logical culmination of a "Plunderful Capitalism". Fascism is the unleashing of "alternative facts": a denigration of honesty and the importance of reason. And most pernicious of all, fascism is the cold-hearted rejection of our Planet, the Web of Life, and of the precarious condition of our human species and survival (or not). Climate change is nothing if not a new opportunity for the rich to get richer as our Planet dissolves into general chaos, a crush of economic migrants and climate refugees on a constant move to anywhere, and the reactive violence and oppression that necessarily supports the few at the expense of the many. In fascism, the corporate state wins and the Unholy Trinity (Privilege, Profits, and Power) takes its presumed place -- at the Right Hand of God...
Resistance and contemplation... There are probably many ways of cultivating a spirit of both resistance and contemplation, but I want to zero in on a "root source": the Beatitudes of Yeshua. Here's my version, from my book "Resplendent In Rags":
"Beautiful are you who have embraced the poverty of your hearts...
you are, even now, Welcomed Home!
Beautiful are you who cry for the suffering of others...
you will know the Bliss of an always Opened Door!
Beautiful are you who practice everyday kindness...
you will yet create Paradise upon this Earth!
Beautiful are you who awaken every morning with a passion for justice...
you will be like the first who discovered Fire!
Beautiful are you who become a living mercy for everyone you meet...
you will receive more than you ever give!
Beautiful are you who remember there is Only One Love...
you will kiss face to face!
Beautiful are you who build peace with your lives...
you will be known as the Lovers of Love!
Beautiful are you who suffer the truth for the cause of the Good, the Kind, and the Beautiful...
you will know the Bliss of Endless Possibilities!"
In other words, resistance and contemplation, pleasure and grace, will rise to the possibility of fruition as we cultivate a life of beatitude. This new consciousness has within it the seductive power of a general happiness -- that secret life that a plunderful, fascist, capitalism cannot provide. Haven't you been yearning for some sort of secret, some "mystic" key, with which you might unlock the door to your own sustainable happiness? Well, that key, that secret, does in fact exist: most certainly now as an "alternative fact"! The beatitudes offer a trail of clues, which if followed, like bread crumbs for ants or bears, will steadily lead to the Holy Wisdom which stood at the Creator's side as Sacred Evolution unfolded... What is the Word of this Wisdom? Shh... huddle close... the Word is Compassion -- in an expansive and abundant simplicity! Ha! What else could it be?
Eee-gads, fascism, the KKK, the Neo Nazis, plunderful capitalism, and the dreaming corporate state: they are each and all only about the isolation of the ego: isolated in psychic loneliness: grasping from its station of emptiness for some sort of confirmation that "I exist!" But that grasping for a permanent, exclusive, "I", independent of every Other, is the Great Illusion. "Things" appear to validate it: like trash- pornography, hatred, violence, nationalism, fundamentalism, sexism, racism, and our assorted phobias: each of these "apparent" validations is rooted in the idea that it is possible to be separate from others, from the Web of Life on this Planet, and even from the Divine Beloved... Separation is like looking through a little hole in a great big wooden fence -- and thinking that what one can see is everything... Becoming a "Beatitude Farmer" is how one can climb that same fence, sit at the top, and accurately survey the near and far distant countryside...
The resistance and contemplation, the pleasure and grace, of the "Beatitude Farmer" is the active cultivation of a compassionate stance in the world. Is there anything at all more radical, more revolutionary, than this cultivation and stance? The misery that fuels the fascist agenda always requires the demonization of "others": "Trumpism" demonizes the media, Democrats, women, immigrants, Muslims, and anyone else who will oppose him and his politics, economics, and spirituality of separation: "us" from "them". Whether or not they are conscious of what they are doing, and whether or not they succeed, neither depends upon him nor his supporters: but upon us, the ones who offer up our resistance and contemplation, our yearning, for pleasure and grace.
The "Beatitude Farmer" is about the work of spiritual emancipation and the cultivation of the "compassion view". If we are really climbing to the top of the fence of separation, our perspectives will of necessity change: from the isolated ego to becoming the Friend of Compassion and the Servant of this Precious Blue Planet. The American myth of freedom can only be realized if all of us are free, if all of us are equal, and if all of us learn to recognize our face in the faces of every "other", and welcome them all Home... Compassion is way, way, beyond "truth", or facts, or alternatives: compassion is the sacred force of our liberation: but you first, and you, and you: this is what compassion does: it re-orders relationships, every relationship, into a Holy Competition of "who can love more"... Another way of putting it is simply this, "Not two, not two": where you see division, put compassion and you will have your vision corrected: there is Only One... Happiness is quite possible, like satisfaction, like sacred pleasure, when it is about the "other"... you first, and you, and you, Welcome Home!
The spiritual practices of the "Beatitude Farmer" are the offspring of Transcendentalism and the core of our genuine American spirituality. Living a sacramental life on this Earth: a life of the small unities in which harmony, wholeness, pleasure, intention, and kindness are recognized for the incredible gifts they are to all of us: this is the work of the "Beatitude Farmer". The "fields" that we work and "plow", begin in our steady opening to awareness. And the eventual harvest we will gather is in the spiritual renewal of our community. Like the Transcendentalists of old, like the "Three Days of Peace and Music" that was Woodstock, and like the active faith practice of St. Francis, of St. Hildegard, of Celtic Spirituality, of Martin Luther King, Jr., and of Dorothy Day, we can live in everyday-contact within a calming rush of sacred moments... We can non-conform with our neighbors' fascist impulses, and at the same time, cultivate instead the veggies of plenitude and the New Creation of the Holy Here: in Compassion and Sacred Pleasure... There really is enough for everyone!
[As a meditation, slowly scroll through the photos collected below. Use the Contact Page to let me know how you are "Beatitude Farming"!]
