As Above, So Below

Today is one of those perfectly September Saturdays – sunny, a little chilly this morning but the sun warmed things up nicely, blue sky, leaves not yet beginning to change (for the most part that happens in October here). Yesterday with the remnants of the hurricane passing it was so murky all day that when I told the children is was time to start the evening animal chores, they said, “Already? It has been morning all day!”

We took the morning to get some of the harvest processed, to clean, to organize. The wood cook stove had been collecting a lot of canned goods, with more in boxes beside of it, and all that got boxed and put somewhere else. Much of the hard corn is damp enough to be in danger of mold and calls us to husk, to shell, to make it easier for it to dry. We also separate out the ears of corn that will be next year’s seed corn. We have a neat sport of the bloody butcher corn that is white so we are going to play with propagating that too.

We took some beef ribs from the freezer, from the calf we killed in July, and have them in a slow oven cooking in a sauce of honey, mustard, onion & garlic powder, a little vinegar, a little oil. Had some green shelly beans of various and sundry kinds, not enough of all together to make a canner full, so those are cooking as a side. Another side will be mustard greens.

So it came time for a break. I went to brush the horse Duke. Junior the cat came too and sat on Duke’s rump while I brushed other parts. The donkey is always with the horse and bellows like an airhorn when we take the horse out to work. Soon the goats and the cow came too. I love the smells of the animals. It is peace to me.

Husband went to his garden. It is peace to him. We look at his crop of corn, our bread from the sweat of his face, grown in manure, full of life to sustain our lives, and yes, we are proud. Yes, we have done something right. We have played the game of “Heads I win, tails I win some other way.” We do not live in a compartmentalized, dualistic, right or wrong, win or lose, heaven or hell world; spiritually or physically.

As we live spiritually, so we live physically. And as we live physically, so we live spiritually. Why we are here (this place, this way of life, these circumstances, everything) is also how we are here. And how we are here is why.

Ages ago I came across a book titled, I Never Knew I Had a Choice. It sucked as a book but the title idea stayed with me, perhaps because I had seen at 20 years old that I had had way more choices than I had been aware of until it was too late. Except it wasn’t too late of course. Because it is never too late. There are always more choices, more possibilities, more opportunities available to us than we think of. No matter how many we think of, there is another. And another.

Tonight, after supper now, above there is a crescent moon low in the southern western sky, smiling at us, blessing us as we further stack the cosmic deck in our favor. And the stars above are reflected by the glow worms below.