November 1 – big farm doings, if you’re a sheep. After a pent up 11+ months of his own company, the ram is with the ewes. He showed no indecision. Instincts – not habits, instincts – are miraculous. They know their work. Grace following, five months from now we’ll be up all night with the farm’s future staggering and glistening in the frosty moonlight, amniotic funk on everything.
It’s the same grace that has brought you and I together over these years, the same mysterium that has rumbled through my plans over the course of this year.
Many of you have written asking in one way or another what the heck gives with me, medically speaking.
Ultimately, I know the answer. So do you. That’s what makes it ultimate. We make raucous declarations of carrying on until the wheels fall off. When they begin to loosen, grace seems scarce, mercy scarcer. And they do loosen.
The preliminaries are unnerving, but not impossible.
The answer as to what gives ‘in the meantime’ is the more interesting part. This is where you find out what you believe in. So yes, sometimes to my amazement and sometimes to my disappointment, I’m finding out.
I’ve been served some almost indecipherable papers lately, things I’ve never seen,. Sometimes they seem like allegations, sometimes threats, sometimes odes and elegies. They’re hard to read, but they have my attention. As has become my way, I’m keen to translate the scrawl, in case there’s merit there for some of you. That habit is as yet unbroken, and I’m blessedly still in touch with whatever bids me rise in that way. That means that my work continues. I’m lucky like that. I don’t know how many times I might appear as my 3D self in your town over the course of the next year or so, but the brain trust here has something like plans. Books are underway. Mr. Hoskins (now a grandfather) and I are in the studio sometimes.. Grief/Mystery is alive. Something of an archive – usually a sign that the horses are heading for the stalls – has begun to take shape. There are a Jesus lot of interviews, for example. A couple of film crews have been here this fall. So, there’ll be things to thumb through.
Irish friends I know are fond of two epithets (skads of them, really, but I’m fond of the oracular brevity of these two):
“Good luck.” Which genuinely serves you well. And,
“Should we be spared …” Also precious, and a beautiful qualifier.
Until the weather changes, I’m spared, and in luck.
Thank you for asking.
And bless you for being out there.
Stephen Jenkinson
Founder of Orphan Wisdom
