Be Here Now
In the afternoon I went out to the old horse barn with the Book of Proverbs and indeed the whole Bible, and I was wandering around in the hayloft, where there is a big gap in the roof. One of the rotting floorboards gave way under me and I nearly fell through. Afterwards I sat and looked out at the hills and the grey clouds and couldn’t read anything. When the flies got too bad, I wandered across the bare pasture and sat over by the enclosure wall, perched on the edge of a ruined bathtub that has been placed there for horses to drink out of. A pipe comes through the wall and plenty of water flows into the bathtub from the spring somewhere in the woods, and I couldn’t read there either. I just listened to the clean water flowing and looked at the wreckage of the horse barn on top of the bare knoll in front of me and remained drugged with happiness and prayer.
Presently the two mares and the two colts came over to see me and to take a drink. The colts looked like children with their big grave eyes, very humble, very stupid, and they were tamer than I expected. They came over and nudged me with their soft muzzles and I talked to them a bit.
Later on I saw other interesting things—for instance a dead possum in a trap and a gold butter-and-egg butterfly wavering on the dead possum’s back. There are many Rhode Island Reds over in the southwest corner of the enclosure. When I was on retreat for ordination to the priesthood, I galloped to be at work on the roosts we were building for them then.
August 30, 1949, V.363
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