My grandmother, Kathleen Miller, was born on a family farm in a tiny town in western Maryland called Accident. She would share stories about wandering the hills of those green and magical lands as one of eight children. She lived on a farm in a different world, a world where all food was still just “organic” food, in a time before the great and deadly dawn of chemical agriculture.
My vague understanding of the Miller family was that it was originally a Mennonite family who fled Europe seeking greater religious freedom and the ability to live their lives in the ways that they felt called to.
The Millers were among the earlier settlers who arrived in Pennsylvania and then dispersed into the mountains, cultivating land and living in small communities. Deeply committed to pacifism, many of these religious people preserved their culture and traditions, despite the slow onslaught of industry and technology, and the agrochemical revolution that has largely destroyed our food systems.
The irony of this has not been lost on me, as the world continues to move into ever deepening degrees of biomedical fascism and surveillance. Those who prefer to remain an integral part of nature’s ways and web are increasingly being exiled, shamed and prosecuted for their differing perspectives and beliefs. No doubt, we are living in a cusp time, where there is a true split occurring. This bifurcation, as many call it, directly divides those who will continue to choose to live in the older ways, interconnected and interrelated with nature, from those who are now very quickly merging with the artificial world, injecting themselves with gene altering serums, eating synthetic and genetically modified food, drinking chemical filled water, using pharmaceutical drugs on a daily basis, and merging with the technological world.
This is the moment we now face.
But many years ago, my grandmother’s wandering heart and quiet love of adventure brought her to the city as a young woman to study art and dressmaking. Eventually she became a nurse and was shipped off to Europe and Asia in WW11. It was in the army that she met my grandfather - a notable surgeon from John’s Hopkins, John Smith. I never knew him, he died an early death after gambling away his fortune.
When I was young every summer we woulld make the winding drive up into the Appalachian mountains for the Miller’s family reunion. Large feasts were spread, fires were built, songs were sung, stories were told.
We would revel in the flowery veil.
It was a different life - one which I had very little concept of growing up in the city, but one that I felt a deep appreciation for on some most primal and intuitive level.
The larger draw in my life, much like my grandmother’s, was always towards the creation of beauty and art. For this reason, the city held a special allure for each of us, and at least part of our unique and interwoven destinies has lied in the creation of art within culture, away from the ancient rolling Appalachia, in the concrete forests of the city.
The irony in my choice to become an artist is that my very deepest inspiration has always been found within the grandeur of the natural world - it’s mystical beauty and splendor that shines a light into the deepest secrets of life and spirit. And so as I lived in the concrete jungles of New York for the bulk of my adult life - the greatest call of my own spirit has always been heard in the mystical realms of the natural world - it’s forests and deserts, rolling hills and ocean dunes. For me - the wisdom path lay in these earthly dances.
And so it has been.
But more recently my own winding journey has taken me into the blue ridge mountains of western North Carolina, along old Appalachia - those ancient mountains that once housed my grandmother and her family, and on up the lineage.
It was no accident that we fell into a community here that is purchasing food from an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania named Amos Miller.
Amos Miller is involved in the battle of a lifetime with the United States government for the right to make and sell raw dairy and meat in the old ways - the ways that his family and culture have done for hundreds of years, without the chemicals and synthetics that are now commonplace in all of our conventional foods. These are the ways that my own grandmother also knew. These are the ways of her Miller clan. Perhaps we even spring from the same family tree, Amos and I?
The tree of my own grandmother.
In December 2022 Amos Miller’s farm was raided by armed federal agents. He was Initially ordered to pay over 300,000 in fines - a fee that would close down his 30 year old family farm completely. But through ongoing court battles this fine has now been reduced to 55,000, to be paid over the next 6 months. The battle for clean food will continue far into his future. This, no doubt is the hill that he chooses to die on.
To understand the gravity of this - one must come to understand on a spiritual level what the preservation of culture, nature, spirit and a way of life is truly all about.
One must come to understand that we are all in this war now - whether we know we are, or not. For the human body is the battleground.
It is the beginning, middle and end of the war, and everything in between.
Amos Miller knows this, I have no doubt.
He has been fighting this fight far longer than I have. He knows what it is that’s at stake.
For each and every one of us is making the choice every single day who we align ourselves with by what we choose to take into our sacred bodies.
Every single day - we are choosing the ways of our human ancestors - the old ways - or the ways of the human machine - the new way.
Every single day we are listening to one, or the other, and each of us will be pulled more completely into the directions that we are moving into now.
No, I don’t believe in accidents.
I believe in synchronicities.
I believe in great circles and miraculous healings.
I believe in the flowery veil.
I believe in a wild dancing heart found in the the wisdom of the trees.
I believe in my grandmother’s tender hands touching mine, now but a memory in her long absence.
I believe in life beyond life, and the hymns of the ocean.
I believe in Amos Miller and his great battle, which is our great battle now - which is the battle for the human race.
And beyond this, beyond the tears and the violence that ring out every day, I still believe in grace, and the power of the human spirit found in every aching heart.
The old ways are returning to us, and I think my grandmother would be proud.
Blessed Turning in the wheels of time.
The Flowery Veil
Wonderful piece... Indeed Grandmother must be very proud. How many great grandchildren is she watching over, the next generation ....who will be carrying on the old ways?