Greetings Friends and Neighbors,
Colostrum-thickened Calf Milk warms in a double-boiler on the stovetop. As South Wind builds to a frightening, frigid gale, I find a canvas tarp to wrap around the small pen—cobbled from three pallets, a metal gate, a rubber mat for a roof. I tuck the corners of the tarp and secure them down with pieces of firewood so they won’t blow—not unlike wrapping paper around a package. This package contains something precious, someone I want to protect from harm. Born the afternoon before last as a steady Westerly pulled Sun’s warmth from the Cow Barn, he is large and powerful, with a tremendous Life force. Greetings Trevor.
Before jumping into a story, I’d like to invite you to participate two upcoming events:
1. The annual NOFA-VT Winter Conference open tomorrow with an evening presentation with my friends Kristin and Mark Kimball from Essex Farm, a remarkable Farm just down the road from here. Towards the end of this three-week online event packed full of remarkable presenters, I will be speaking about the gift-based social and ecological experiment we called Brush Brook Community Farm. My presentation on Wednesday 3/2 at 6:30pm will be largely conversational, and I would be thrilled to have you join the circle that evening as a way of deepening that conversation. You can support NOFA-VT’s important work by registering for the Conference HERE.
2. I will host a 2nd cohort of the Hospicing Modernity Study Group, a 5-week dialogue with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s potent book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. There is no charge for joining the Group, which will be held Wednesday evenings 7-8:30pm on Zoom, March 23 - April 20. See the story below for a description. Reply to peasantryschool@gmail.com to request a spot, limited to a dozen people with five places already reserved.
STORY: Hearing a cry that can’t be un-heard.
How have we grown so accustomed to a life underwritten by the violent extraction of the lives of others? How do we normalize these ways of living so that we can carry on with our days, so that we can stay sane(?) and effective(?)—and safe(?) and healthy(?) and hopeful(?)—as we feast upon the last scraps of the world? Was it inevitable that it would turn out this way? Or were there turning points worth remembering, worth re-considering? Perhaps we stand at one of those forks in the road right now. How might we find the unpromising courage to turn toward one another, whispering, “I am complicit in the daily reproduction and dissemination of harm and I don’t know what to do. I need help”?
I was going to begin this week’s Letter with the heartwarming story of Tigger’s labor, the intimate sensory pleasure of pulling, in cadence with her contractions, on slick, warm Calf knuckles, the joy of seeing a nose after hours of uncertain laboring, the relief of the tongue’s twitch as it made contact with cold Air—the calf is alive!—of the wobbly miracle that was standing up, of the first bottle in the middle of a frigid night, of the insane will that Life seems to have to continue despite the odds and the indescribable privilege of being invited to pull in common rhythm with the Big Story for a few fleeting moments.
But alas, there are so many who have labored toward the possibility of Life continuing. Even some humans, humans who have labored to give birth to words, words that cry out in the night like a newborn Calf bawling for Milk. Calling their love of Life into the Winter dark. Words that can’t be un-heard. I was recently gifted words of this type from a book titled Columbus and other Cannibals, written in 1979 by Jack Forbes, a professor of Native American Studies of Powhatan-Renápe, Delaware-Lenápe, and non-Indian background. Forbes’ words reminded me that it wasn’t inevitable, not at all. That this isn’t inevitable. That this moment is nothing more than the cumulative consequence of all that has been said and done, including all that hasn’t been said and hasn’t been done. And I was reminded that it is my undeniable responsibility—as a son of the ascendency—to hold up the harrowing horrors alongside the shivering newborn beauties. To write and to speak the words aloud. Lest I continue to be complicit in the reproduction and dissemination of denial’s deadly silence. I listened carefully as the following words were cried into the night, from a chapter titled Consuming Another’s Life: The Wétiko Cannibal Psychosis:
Religion is, in reality, living. Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think—all of these things—twenty-four hours a day….
Our religion is what we are, what we do.
Thus New York City with its dirt, its slums, its crime, its violence, its greed, its wealthy elite, its tall buildings, its Mafia, its crooked leadership, and its art galleries—all of New York City—is the white society’s “church.” In the way the federal center for experimentation with animals on Staten Island is a church, the Pentagon and CIA complexes near Washington, D.C., are churches, etc. Many people often pretend that they can escape from the consequences of their own acts, but Native philosophy teaches differently. We create our own reality.
Over the past month, I’ve been blessed to spend one evening a week travelling in a caravan of sorrows, accompanied by a beautiful cohort of heartbroken travelling companions. We gather weekly by video-conference to dance with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. The author was born and raised in Brazil, and, like Jack Forbes, comes from mixed indigenous and settler heritage, affording her a unique vantage point from which she surveys a landscape of cultural and ecological unravelling. She’s done something quite remarkable with this book, drawing deep insights from her many years of teaching—she currently teaches at the University of British Columbia—and working with an international group known as the Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures collective.
When I sent out the invitation back in January, I called the gathering a Hospicing Modernity Study Group. But how do you choose a name for something, for someone, who hasn’t been born yet? Perhaps by naming first what has to die in order to clear the way for the rumored arrival of new Life. This is precisely the invitation extended by the author—to approach midwifery by way of learning first to sit faithfully at the bedside of the dying. She invites us to observe the ways in which Modernity—and its story of winners—is dying within us. The story just doesn’t seem to hold water any longer. And we tire of applying band-aids to a sinking ship. Machado describes:
Modernity dying, not on our terms, can also be considered a rite of passage for humanity. Different people will experience the element of severance in different ways. For some it will be something external, like social or environmental collapse. For many, this first interruption will be internal and marked by disillusionments and disenchantments with a broken culture that can no longer offer direction, vitality, sanity, or hope.(p. 214)
Vanessa and Jack, thank you for laboring to bring words into the world, words that long after Life, words that cannot easily be un-heard. And thanks to you for reading this Letter. I’m not sure it was in your best interest, but you’ve done it anyway. Welcome to the caravan of sorrows.
With great care,
Adam Wilson
Words that can't be un-heard.
Welcome to this beautiful world Trevor, I wish you a joyful life with lots of fresh grass. You sound incredibly lucky to have been born on a wonderful farm with a lovely human to keep a watchful eye over you. Mooo!
Beautifully shared. It just eloquently brought into focus the intentions of our cultural mythos as well as questioning that and living in a way that is authentic and connected with all beings - and that is where our religion is expressed. Always love reading your newsletters Adam.