Refocus

Update: 2017-10-23

Description

The Road Runner at Grace Farms is eye-balling me.

He was there before me, and he is intent on not letting me forget it.

The bird presents himself to me every time I arrive. The colors of his plumage are much more subtle than I realized.

I know Road Runners differently because I focused on this Road Runner.

Comments

In Channel

The word Grace can mean so many things but idea of un-merited favor is my favorite. I live a life absent so many problems and full of so many blessings. My strengths and weaknesses are so closely bound to each other, that they often work simultaneously for me and against me. The divine is gentle with me. And I find enormous Grace in my everyday existence when I simply stop to notice.

Grace in the Morning Rain

2019-03-1200:03:20

For years, it’s been my habit to do a podcast near my birthday to mark the moment. Well, it’s been 6 months since my last birthday and so I realize I will soon be staring another one in the face soon. It is certainly a feature of aging that time is measured in different increments as we get older. 5 minutes seemed a reasonable length of time when I was 4, and now I measure time in decades. There will come a time when this annual podcast is full of wisdom, great instruction on living a full life and hilarious wit. But now is not that time.

47, 48

2019-03-1200:03:00

Some dirty rotten scoundrel stole my Trailer at Grace Farms. I doubt the thief realized that it was my trailer. To the thief, it was “A” Trailer or “The Trailer.” Be that as it may I am taking it personally.

Monsoon Season

2018-07-3100:03:341

Every wave seems to make it a point to let me know how powerless I am to stop it. But this doesn’t bother me. I go over or under their power without any fear. I don’t sit still easily. I prefer motion to rest. And I must like to worry – Because I do it all the time. I have a relentlessness to me that is endearing if I am solving your problem And irritating if I am trying to get you to answer my question. The ocean keeps me quiet by forcing me to hold my breath. I have been taught by some that A man should know if limitations And told by others “I am large, I contain multitudes.” You sit wherever you please. I don’t have any advice today.

Not Small

2018-06-1700:02:382

I am staring at the Kale. And the Kale is staring back. When it was a seed – small and full of potential – it needed me to coax it from it’s confining shell out to a wide-open world of possibility. Now, it’s life is largely its own. Sun and water feed it and it grows nearly perceptibly in front of my eyes. Always reaching towards the sun I assist nowadays, but mostly does the work without me.

On Kale and Daughters

2018-05-3000:03:352

If you are wondering if you are ready for the big adventure ahead. Let me report form the edges of competence It’s a dangerous ledge with risks of may even be fatal. But, let me be an example I have survived all the consequences of my mistakes – serious as some have been. Let the voice in your head keep you humbly honest And believe me when I tell you: None of us are hitting mark all the time. Attend to the details of your desires and try your best to be a good example.

For Example

2018-05-1800:02:561

I am crying. Two seconds ago, I was a middle-aged man planning his day over an Americano. Then, I get a text from my cousin. I am not crying quiet – dignified-like. My nose is running and I am thanking god the bill is already paid. On the way to the car, I compose myself. The week is chock-full of the type of news you carry in your belly. In what appears to be a moment of calm, I call my boss. I report to him that I won’t really be myself today. And then As if to prove the point I start to cry again.

My Last Card

2018-04-0900:03:452

I am standing in front of a steaming pile. It’s taller than I am, and so I get to work. I am raking and shoveling the mulch delivered to Grace Farms with the discipline of an army ant. It’s about 6:30 AM – my morning farm shift – As I shovel deeper into the pile of chipped trees, the heat is obvious. The tree was upright, then it wasn’t. The tree was alive, then it wasn’t. And again – it is one thing becoming another. The morning shifts are short, the responsibilities of day have no pause button for my messy farm project.

Chicken Eggs

2018-03-2200:03:171

The desert winter can be harsh. There are times when it I so wicked one is compelled to put their socks on. Since I am a tough guy, I am going without socks this morning. Out into the garage I step to retrieve the almond milk for this morning’s Americano, and I am stabbed with a razor sharp ice pick straight to my bone. Ok – perhaps that over states the moment I stepped on a scorpion who met the assault with a sting on the bottom of my middle toe. A scorpion sting is some sort of poison that is basically a cross between Cobra venom and Agent Orange. And for weeks I can trace the nerve that leads from my big toe to somewhere just below my ass. Because that little bastard lit up that neural pathway like so much napalm.

House Marks

2018-02-2100:04:011

It is an hour after Thanksgiving dinner. Family traditions throttle the pace of any high holiday – national or religious. I am currently throttling my 13 year-old nephew on the nearest basketball court in a post-turkey dinner game of HORSE. In my family, you won every contest against an adult until you were a certain age. The victories may have been assured, but every adult made in feel authentic. They would wince under the weight of the child’s crushing strategic genius on a game board, cry tears of frustration as the little one dribbles a soccer ball mercilessly or yet another goal, and howl under the pain of the kid’s wrestling I can still remember thinking: I am clearly a genius! I am an unstoppable force of nature in mind and body - the worlds of both Checkers, soccer and wrestling never witnessed such brilliance until the beginning of my reign. And so we launch you out into the world with the notion you are unstoppable. This Golden Era of your Life lasts until you are about 4 and half – maybe 5. Then – and perhaps it is the lingering influence of the Catholic Church or the immigrant experience or simply a desire not to raise spoiled brats – The Adults in the family crush the kids in every possible contest that occurs.

DM's Triumph

2017-11-2600:04:461

I am 20 and playing lead guitar. I am by far the worst musician in the band. They likely would have been a house-hold name if they had not been saddled with me. We played together for a year, and thank god You Tube had not been invented - my children would not survive the embarrassment. BUT There was this one gig. We were wedged between two head banging acts - but the crowd had a few friendly faces And out there. for one night we rocked the house. And I was a rock-n-roller Or at least that was my experience of it. 27 years later I am on Grace Farms. We are throwing a party - a dinner - an event. I am - by far – the least important person in the execution of I safely report to you: we rocked the house. Seriously. It was awesome.

Rockin' The House

2017-11-1800:03:021

The Road Runner at Grace Farms is eye-balling me. He was there before me, and he is intent on not letting me forget it. The bird presents himself to me every time I arrive. The colors of his plumage are much more subtle than I realized. I know Road Runners differently because I focused on this Road Runner.

Refocus

2017-10-2300:03:192

“Don’t talk to Pete. He is a dipshit.” In another era of my professional life, I read this love-note on an e-mail from a disgruntled client to her boss. I am unsure whether I was copied intentionally – but I am sure it gave her a certain amount of pleasure that I got to read what she thought of me. At that time of my life, I was part of an international sales-force of a company that did business on 5 continents. And a month before I am called a dipshit – I was celebrated as the highest performing sales-person Among hundreds of sales people around the globe. In fact, they give me a bunch of money and big, fat prize for being so great. The Divine likes to remind me: The distance between hero and dipshit is the length of time it takes to read a two-sentence e-mail.

Heroic Dips***

2017-10-2200:02:541

Somewhere in the mid- 1960’s he is in the 10th grade and doing a handstand on the top rails of the Empire State Buildings observation deck. Some volunteer parent looking after the high school kids take one look and faint dead-away. An unfortunate gust of wind sends him tumbling like a fall leaf. But it didn’t and the story lives on in family infamy.

The Unlikely Is Not The Imposible

2017-10-1700:03:351

"Ya ought to be ashamed of yourself!" This is my first voicemail of the day. When I worked for a giant company and held a position of authority and influence I liked the money - Everyone likes the money. But next on the list was this: Everyone returned my calls.

Leave A Message

2017-10-0700:03:191

It goes without saying: I do not know what I am doing. I killed all the tilapia in my aquaponics farm because I misunderstood how to keep them healthy. 30 chickens on the farm died because I built a substandard chicken coop that some average coyote easily penetrated. I am not a famer Yet I farm. There are people in my life that want me to focus. To do one thing and do that thing with excellence. But I have lived with the keen awareness of my death since I was 12. I don’t fear it. When I go, I want to be satisfied with my courage to have done my best and to have seen what was possible with my life. There are seasons of plenty in our lives. Seasons where your actions align with just the right needs of the moment and your imagination blooms in the world vibrantly. I am not in one of these seasons.

The Gospel of Doubt

2017-09-2600:04:191

I am in no danger of becoming an expert. In Anything. She is calling me because she wants me to be safe. I want to pick-up to tell her I am safe. However, I am standing on a ladder In a bee suit – which If I knocked on your door wearing this bee suit You would think I was there to clean the Ebola virus out of your carpets. I am wearing leather gloves – giant ones. They look like I should be handling glowing red bars to be smashed on some anvil And my hands are roughly the size of the average 3 grade girl Which makes my ability to do anything but the most blunt work Basically impossible. I have been getting reliable texts from the man who is my mentor when it comes to beekeeping. But the phone is ringing persistently in the pocket of my bee suit from my future wife. Competing with the phone is the sound of the biggest bee swarm I had ever had my face nose deep in. I can say this with confidence Because it was the first bee swarm I ever tried to rescue

Bee Careful

2017-09-2200:04:46

Somewhere in the development of the human species we learned to use tools. There is a great scene in the move 2001: A Space Odyssey that imagines the moment when our primordial ancestors learned to use a hammer. In my development as a farmer on Grace Farms, I have somehow regressed to just before the point in time when human beings learned to use tools. In trying to authentically develop a place where food can be grown, my enthusiasm for avoiding contamination of any kind created a sort of blindness to my own stupidity in how I am accomplishing simple tasks. A good friend of mine – who works with me on the farm – illustrated this by showing how a project that had taken me 9 hours could be completed in 30 minutes. What felt virtuous just minutes before his tutorial on using tools – immediately became evidence of my stubborn habit of taking the long, hard way to learning my lessons.

46, 47

2017-09-1700:05:01

In our desert, water occasionally falls from the sky sufficiently to create Flash Floods and awaken the seeds of future tumbleweeds and voracious milk weeds. Let me do my best to avoid the farming – garden cliché of discussing the spiritual virtues acquired by weeding their growing soil. Don’t trust anyone who writes about how pulling weeds freed their minds. I am walking along the fence line of my tiny farm looking like the world’s ugliest cheerleader holding two massive pom-poms of freshly pulled weeds

In The Weeds

2017-09-0200:03:551

My mom says I am smart, but that I am not clever. I am sure I am not smart enough to know what she means – but I have thought about her description often over the years. My thinking is not elegant. I don’t come to conclusions with deft – deductive – Sherlock Holms-ian clarity. I have go over and under and around and through ideas And then I need to feel the idea in practice. I am a reader – I enjoy learning – but I only learn lessons after feeling the consequences of screwing something up or the pleasure of bringing something beautiful into the world.

Clever or Not You're Ready

2017-08-2700:03:271

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