One spring evening I was sitting out on the deck of the farmhouse, plopped in a metal clam back chair. The busy day was over and everyone was gone. Running the Longbranch Café in town, I often see two or three hundred people a day, and when I come home at night, I savor the stillness of the farm. It’s the perfect antidote to all that daytime activity. As I sat there in my nightgown enjoying the breeze coming over the hill, the moist air like velvet on my skin, I felt an energy begin to pulse through me. Starting at the top of my head, moving through my core and passing out of my womb, it was the gentle rhythm of the land and the season. As I relaxed, the sensation intensified until I felt as if the entire farm were moving through me. It was the closest experience to birth I have ever had. I have never had a child, but I have had a farm.
At the beautiful age of 82, Geneva Basler said she felt called by God to entrust the Sufi community with the land that her family had farmed organically for three generations. We named the Basler Farm “Dayempur,” which means “Ancient, Eternal Place.” After living all over the world, returning to Southern Illinois in 1995 was a homecoming to the place that sheltered me as a child, when simple, noble people took my family in, no questions asked, and gave us roots. Now Dayempur Farm embraces my spiritual family, and once again, my family is sheltered in the welcoming arms of Southern Illinois. I imagine Geneva would be happy to see how we’ve turned her vegetable patch into a medicinal herb garden. She’d like the bee colonies over in the orchard. She’d marvel at the two-acre vegetable plot. She might even appreciate what we’ve done to the house - stripping it back to its original wood and painting it buttercream yellow. But most importantly, she’d be happy to know we’ve continued to farm organically. She made us promise to “never poison the land.” That was an easy promise to make. The Basler Farm is now Dayempur Farm and somehow, miraculously, I’m the momma of the place. |
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