A Guest At My Own Party

You may not want to watch this video.

Scroll down to watch the video, or read this essay to understand why we are sharing this video like this.

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Last year, I was invited to do something I never thought I would do: keynote the What Good Shall I Do Conference in Fredericksburg, Texas.

It is not that I cannot speak, although sometimes it seems like I shouldn’t. No. That is not it.

It is not that I have not keynoted conferences before (I recently presented at the USDA’s annual conference in downtown Washington D.C. on the nature of kincentric rewilding and how it may effect the work of the federal farm system and this year’s farm bill). No. That is not it.

I have a little following and do not own any pretty clothes. Yes, that is it. When I arrived, I was surrounded by the opposite. Everyone in attendance looked wonderful, put together, and was filming themselves to share with their followers where they were and what they were doing. I was just happy to be there, regardless of who knew.

But here is the rub, the comedic part of this story. It is not that I was asked but that those who asked did not know who I was. The night previous to the conference, our hosts organized a large meal and gathering for the speakers (Joel Salatin, Judith Schwartz, and myself). When I arrived (to my party,) I was asked if I was lost. I was asked if I was in the wrong place. I was asked if I needed directions to where I was going.

“I sure hope not,” I returned, trying not to laugh. I sure hope so. I ate my meal in the darkest corner of the porch, alone, watching the Texas sun set. I shared a short but wonderful conversation with someone in the fashion business about how Morgan andI are homeschooling our three children. Then, I left early. The attention and evening rays of light were focused on Joel Salatin anyways and of course.

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A new speech 

I had written a speech to deliver to the audience. I had spent many months crafting its particulars, caring for its words, their meaning, their nuanced emotion. I dreamed the moment. I saw it when I closed my eyes—Fredericksburg’s fancy folks, the cloud-spat tent above us, its lights, the haywain stage, the roughage at our feet. I was to be the conference closer, the last hurrah, the final word.

But, after that night, that lone meal in the corner of that back porch, a guest at my own party, I decided the speech would not do. I decided that I would walk atop the stage, open my heart, put down my prepared words, and say what came out. I wrote down three words in a journal (which you can see in my hand the whole time): וְר֣וּחַ and אֱלֹהִ֔ים and מְרַחֶ֖פֶת. Or, “(fem)-breath” of “god” was “hovering.” The words come from Genesis 1:2 when nothing and everything was already something but not yet.

The dreams of ripples, the creative energy of divine breath hovered once over these waters. I hoped, in the minutes leading up to my speech as I crumpled my hard-won and well-written speech into a ball and then into a waste bin, that this breath would return, would animate the world around us, igniting the water’s great flame again, in us, together—energy rippling outward.

I am not sure that I did what I should have done. I am not sure what I should have done was what I did or even could do. I am not sure I want to share this video with you. I have sat on it for over a year, keeping it alone in the dark corner of my porch.

In the speech, I falter to find words. I stumble. I pace back and forth. I look down because when I look up I see your face, starring back into mine and I am embarrassed. You see, from the vastness of the heavens to the unformed floors under the infinite duff of the deep woods, humanity shines an intimacy assembled from a quick smile, a turning glance. But, on our worst days, a human smile can lift us up. On the coldest days, a smile provides great warmth. This is not because we are anything special, with these two eyes and a nose perched atop stretched and splitting lips, this divinely bland and bipedal creation, but because it is especially us: me, looking back on me without my judgements, my fears, my hidden truths reflecting back.

It is a dangerous thing, walking out your front door, as the story goes.¹ And it is a dangerous thing to see yourself in another’s eyes. “How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?” writes another storyteller.² So I looked down at my feet, unready to meet myself, for this speech was about finding our faces.

I am entirely sure that I should have talked about soil health, the wonderful greatness of the regenerative agriculture movement, the idea that organizations like Force of Nature (the conference hosts) are saving the world one industrial box of meat at a time, that the climate and its water cycles are important. I am entirely sure that I would have received a standing ovation for praising the audience for who they were: Earth’s saviors clad in smocked linen. That is what the other speakers did: they inspired. That is not what I did: I hovered like bad breath.

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As I see it, it is at the iron gates of the colosseum to the red-stained, marble halls of American Empire, to the incineration chambers of fascist racism, to the Spanish inquisition or the burnt streets of Salem, that we have no choice but to abandon the hope that civilization and its regeneration is the underwriter and patron saint of progress and morality.

The climate has its water cycles but please, can we talk about the log in our own eyes?

Life today is perilous. As we climbed the ladder of progress, we kicked out the rungs below us. There is no going back, in the fullest sense, without jumping off the ladder entirely—there is no nice way about it. We can attempt to regenerate Earth but only if we get to know ourselves first. To meet the gods face to face we need faces. We can look back to the Pleistocene to construct best-selling and social media attuned books that speak to the masses from our air-conditioned writing desks, but we cannot actually go back to the Pleistocene without deeper change—the jumping off the ladder kind. The listening kind. Attention and its gifts.

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To this day, in this moment, I am not entirely sure what I said made any sense. I am not sure that I conveyed the contents of my heart, my soul rapping against its cage of bones, well or adequately.

Force of Nature has shared the video and audio of every speech but mine. We gave them a year to release it. They never did. They yelled at me for hours after the conference, expressing their disappointment with my words. Maybe that is our answer, I did not do what I should have done. Or maybe that is our answer, I did do what I was called to do. We’ll see.

We have thought about releasing this video (which we filmed privately in the audience) for a year. We decided to release it here, within this community of souls, this wonderful cacophony of minds dreaming the same dream: grandchildren bouncing and laughing and giggling on our knees, happy to see us, happy with the lineage they were gifted.

All we ask is that, in watching this video, you converse with us.

Please enjoy this 16 minute snippet of the full, 1 hour speech, provided to Members of The Wildland Chronicles. For $2/mo., you can join us!