A few weeks ago, I wrote about how neighbors living on the edges of undeveloped land are beginning to take down their fences. It’s far from universal, but it’s frequent enough now that I find myself noticing it, dwelling on it.

It's the act of removing imagined differences and barriers that keep our souls from being fed. I know why they take down their fences. I’ve been doing that around the farm for 12 years now, opening up our land and our hearts to anyone who will come - take down their fences, step out of their routines, and arrive.

Right now, as you read, imagine taking down all the fences you have built in your mind, in your heart. What does that reveal to you? Let your spirit be wild for just a moment. I dare you to let it run as free as a deer in the open stretches of the planet we share, in the open space we hold for you on the farm.

Breaking down barriers is an act, not of defiance, but of love. We all share that kind of love. To combat the imagined barriers all around us, I like to allow my mind to move into the abstract, to create images of the way I want to see the world, to enter a place where life is. I think of love for a place imagined, for a person never before met, for a soul that sings back from the other side of the world. I free my spirit. Then, I ground myself with a walk out into the real world and the two worlds connect. I feel life surge under my fingertips as I touch the bark of a tree that grows a little bit at a time, or soak in through the balls of my feet as I step through the bed of a creek that flows only in spring. There is a distinct love that comes into being when we give ourselves permission to dissolve the walls between us and open our hearts to a living, breathing creation.

We cannot experience the creative flow of life, or become it, until there is no meaningful difference between us, the moment we live, and the world around us. We dare to use our bodies and minds in new ways. We breathe the wind, taste the first budding green of spring as it bursts forth. We immerse ourselves until, like fish who are so used to water that they don’t recognize it, we can no longer articulate the edges of our experience and we begin to see, to witness the totality of life, and to fly free.

Can we imagine a world unhindered by separation, where all life is held in deep reverence? I now know I can do it alone. But I believe, deeply, that we are meant to do it together.

Your Farmer-
Luke