Spirit Hill Farm
What happens when you take an over-caffeinated under-sexed stressed-out phone junkie and put her in close proximity to the divine?
It’s like watching a car accident about to happen and then, at the last moment, a magical hand reaches down and changes everything.
Spirit Hill Farm and its owner, Carolyn, was that hand. I’m, duh, the junkie.
I’ve been reading about Spirit Hill, trying to figure it out, this place that pulls me, this place where I now live. Pam Cordano told me about the last time she was at the Camino del Santiago and, the day before she was set to start the pilgrimage with the group she was leading, she stepped onto the path, and as she walked a bit with the others who’d been walking for lord knows how long, she felt pulled. The Camino was claiming her the way a river would, the way desire would, the way love would.
That’s what happened to me the day I crested the hill in my car and saw the main house of Spirit Hill Farm for the first time: the vineyard, the roof of the guest house. I was pulled. Hooked. It’s one thing for a person to claim you. It’s something else when a place claims you. For one thing, the place doesn’t give you reasons. It doesn’t tell you how funny you are, how pretty, how good you smell. A place hooks you and then there you are, hooked, with only yourself as counsel.
Carolyn had told me ahead of time that, for her, Spirit Hill felt like a thin place. I nodded, like, cool, so nice for you, and then I got arrived at Spirit Hill and got totally thinned. I wrote about this in an earlier post (The Thin Place, A Swarm of Stars, and Your Question).
A thin place is about energy. It’s a place where the division between this world and the sacred/eternal world is thin. Take it or leave it, but I believe Spirit Hill is a thin place primarily because I can not live here without changing in ways that feel like a return home, but to a home that has been made holy. I don’t know how else to say it. It’s like my body stays the same, but there has been a heart transplant, and this new heart beats more slowly, and that slow changes everything. My brain. My sense of well-being. My inability to tolerate the noise of the false, the cheap, the unhealthy.
My excessive screen time habit, for example. Spirit Hill Farm doesn’t understand excessive screen time. Yesterday was windy. Really windy. Forty miles per hour windy, and at one point I sat outside and watched the fat robins hold on to the rising and falling branches high, high in a tree I wish I could name, but for now let’s call it a Big Tree. The robins were surfing! They were so easy, so themselves. They were not googling how to surf a tree. They were just surfing!
I feel like I’m coming undone. What do you do if you don’t check in with Facebook?
I guess you check in with what’s in front of you. You might even remember to breathe. You feel.
I’ve begun to notice what happens when I go on social media. I barely breathe. I do this funny freeze thing. It’s like I get to not exist while I scroll, scroll, scroll, my brain telling me Look how alive you are! Look at all these people you’re engaging with! Look at all these cool images! Weeeee!!
Compared to all this frozen excitement, real life can seem so flat! How can I get dopamine and adrenaline hits if I’m just outside, watching the birds?
I’m finding that it’s about letting go, letting go, letting go, but, holy cow, this feeling business can be so much work! I’ve gotten used to life being like a mouthful of Poprocks. My expectations are high. I want explosions! Action! Bright colors!
And then, at night, I want to sleep, but I can’t because my whole body has become Poprocks. The inside of my head has become my phone. I scroll my thoughts. I click. I expand images with pretend fingers and make things larger—all in my noggin!! Who needs sleep when you can pretend you are engaging with the world on the phone all night long?!
I’m learning to tolerate the flesh and bone life that the child lives, or the child who hasn’t yet been given an iPhone or iPad has.
Remember when you sat on your heels and really looked at the grass?
It’s wild.
Birds. Wind. Trees.
Breathe.
Repeat.
Want to visit? You can stay at Spirit Hill Farm, too!
