Earth, Hearth, Home

      Wu wei is the Chinese Taoist term for the advice I was given. The doing of not doing.

     “If you have the time get into the woods with your dog or horse . . . just sit with them . . . for days. Don’t be looking for some answer. Turn off your brain as much as possible.”

     So goes the advice of another therapist, advice I would if someone were asking me. So often we know the answer but forget the doing and seldom can do what we know it is the thing to do.

     I discovered this therapist’s blog the other day while surfing the web looking for information about equine facilitated therapy. His blog speaks about how his twenty years of work turned him upside down – “so abused by the system with 16 hr days, 10 on w/e, 24/7 on call, no vacations for a good 15 years I am wondering if I can undo the damage . . . ”

     I commonly hear this refrain when I am in touch with others in the profession. I suspect it is more than just psychotherapists who sing this song.

     In this time of re learning wu wei I think of often Colorado, the place I fell in love with the west as a boy. I miss the Collegiate peaks – the snow blowing off of the tops of the mountains, the tall pines, the willows and the cottonwoods along the banks of the streams that carry the melted snow from the sky to the valley below. How was it the woman who is recovering form cancer said – “be as the Mountain and the storms and everything passes.”

     Picture a small place on a flowing river – not an expensive place. A small place with a few acres and horse corrals made of lodge pole pines. Corrals full of shaggy horses. A round-pen made of lodge poles as well. And children, and warriors home from the wars, coming to learn by being with horses and in the being with horses learning to have peace again. Surrounding this small place of peace are mountains, high, soaring real mountains with snow capped peaks. The wind tailing snow off the tops and filling all our spirits with peace.

     Wind Horse Ranch.

     Beyond the mountains, my other lasting impression of Colorado is of the houses in Aurora, big houses, five thousand square foot houses with no curtains – houses all lined up like –

1. Little boxes on the hillside,                                                3.  And they all play on the golf-course,

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,                                         And drink their Martini dry,

Little boxes, little boxes,                                                        And they all have pretty children

Little boxes, all the same.                                                       And the children go to school.

There’s a green one and a pink one                                     And the children go to summer camp

And a blue one and a yellow one                                         And then to the university,

And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky                            And they all get put in boxes

And they all look just the same.                                           And they all come out the same.

2. And the people in the houses                                    4.  And the boys go into business,

All go to the university,                                                         And marry, and raise a family,

And they all get put in boxes,                                              And they all get put in boxes,

Little boxes, all the same.                                                      Little boxes, all the same.

And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers                          There’s a green one and a pink one

And business executives,                                                       And a blue one and a yellow one

And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky                           And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky

And they all look just the same.                                          And they all look just the same.

Houses born of the business of business as people crowd into cities.

Calvin Coolidge said the business of America is business. I think “business” is just another word for illness, a consumptive illness like tuberculosis. “Busy ness” by any measure is just busy, busy looking out and taking control – an over doing.

Wu wei – the doing of not doing – the polar opposite thinking of bus-i-ness.

We are all busy and burned out on the drive behind making a great deal of money then consuming and making more and consuming more. The business of life should not be business it should be being – loving, living, laughing.

In this enforced wu wei am returning to my grandfather’s socialist roots. I need to – not a life of consumption but a life of community. Consumerism for its own sake – capitalism for its own sake – there is no wisdom there.

That is why the mayor of this town is a fool and so unwise.

I think, too, some days, about the idea of blooming where you are planted. Then more welcomed advice comes from a friend who knows me all too well-

‘”Start small – Find a small place in the mountains where there is a market for “Equine Facilitated Therapy” (need to do some homework here) somewhere where Kathryn can do her work while you do yours, (there’s BOUND to be some places to choose from) sell the houses, use the money to move and get malpractice insurance. Get busy. Kathryn would probably love it as well, as soon as she got over the shock. 🙂 I do know for a fact that living with a poor, HAPPY man is much easier (and more fun) than living with a well to do UNHAPPY man. Figure out the worse case scenario and whether or not you could live with it, should it happen. Always keep in mind, however, that I am NOT AN EXPERT and, according to my Mother, ‘fear nothing.'”

It is no longer fear that drives me but uncertainty. And tiredness. And the fact I now have friends here. I have been an expert and find that experts are in the end pretty useless so I am glad my friend is not an expert, just a friend.

I miss winter and “the ways in which winter frees our imagination and invigorates our feet, mind and soul -” the emptiness of winter that ” frees us from the fear that our ‘democracy of gratification’ has irreparably altered,” us. Twenty three years ago I left winter behind and have missed it ever since. I know that winter is a luxury of youth and hard, hard, hard. Without winter though I got fat and lazy and find that my parts don’t work as well. In winter I used to run eight miles a day – in perpetual summer I barely walk – nothing draws me out – I look forward to colder days when I am more inclined to sleep well and play with the dogs and the horse. I miss the starkness forests too and the rustle of leaves, dry in the cold air. Winter always invigorates. Summer oppresses.

Picture a boy, twelve – his step-father and a young beagle. The man and boy carry shotguns and walk over brown fields of harvested corn and wheat, pastures last cutting of hay left standing as graze for the wintering horses and cows. Along the margins, woods. Bare naked trunks, dark gray, a woven impenetrable wall of crooked iron bars. The man and boy walk quietly. The beagle bays as it pursues long-eared rabbits circling for the shelter of the woods. A cold day of blue gray clouds. In the distance farm houses and barns. A day like an Andrew Wyeth painting.

And later, the boy cold and happy falls asleep in the warmth of the car on the way home, the man aware of this moment wishing it would last and not knowing how to keep the gap bridged, knowing that all other times the boy is simply afraid of him. The man hates it, hurts from it. Maybe I want days like that again.

I feel that it was after I left winter behind that I lost that. It was in summer, the heavy sweltering heat of summer I lost myself in the stories of others. I told my fellow psychologist that I know within ten minutes of my clients arrival what the stories would be. He replied

“Actually, you knew the story within the first 30 seconds more often than not.” That is more the truth.

I traded the forests of my youth for these stories and was left cheated in the bargain. It was a long time discovering that one should never trade a life for a story, not even for a million stories.

In my life I have been:  

          a medical technician doing alterative service from war only to find another kind of war in a trauma center.

          a phlebotomist drawing blood until one day I saw it turn green in the tubes in my hand.

          an art historian looking for peace in the life of the mind and finding only competition and battles between people of such certainty they were uncertain and could only tear each other down.

           a public school teacher teaching English and EH/SED and found the joy of children as they excitedly discovered the power of the Red Pony to express their own lives.

          a therapist listening to stories not as good as the Red Pony, stories that tore me down.

          a part time deputy sheriff,

          a part time fireman and

          a part time leader of search and rescue.

The most rewarding of all these was the riding with a partner in a car, patrolling the night or standing on the fire line of a wild fire with men of common desires or the seeing the faces of children finding the Red Pony.

No, the reality is, the truth is, that the most rewarding was the boy and his dad and a beagle coming in from the cold – the dad not drunk for once and the boy feeling safe enough for once to fall asleep and the Dad wise enough to gently wake the boy when they got home. Wu wei, the doing of not doing.  

That late December day is what I really am looking for – the ability to turn off my brain and just be – to live in natural action – as planets revolve around the sun, or as trees grow. To “do”, but without “doing”. Thus knowing when (and how) to act, doing the natural thing instead of the un-natural. “If you have the time get into the woods with your dog or horse . . . just sit with them . . . for days. Don’t be looking for some answer. Turn off your brain as much as possible.”

Simply be . . . In His Service