I have to confess that I have a lot of anguish of soul over what I preach and how I live. This is especially so in the area of living a creation-careful life. Like everyone else alive in the US today, I’m a child of what could be called the Power Age of America. I obtained my driver’s license in 1958, the era of “muscle cars.” Though my first car was a gutless Studebaker, a hand-me-down oil burner we called the “Purple Turtle,” my college car was a huge DeSoto Firedome with a massive V8 engine.
Driving over-powered cars everywhere; horribly inefficient furnaces pumping out enough heat to keep our Michigan homes at 70 degrees all winter long; air conditioning to keep cars, homes, offices, and stores at 70 degrees all summer long; Florida orange juice every morning; chicken from North Carolina three times a week; beef from Colorado a few times more each week, lots of tomato soup from California; cereal from nearby Battle Creek made from corn, oats, and wheat from who knows where. Hot, glowing TV tubes burning for hours a day. Those are the comforts and conveniences I became accustomed to—and virtually all of us believe we are now entitled to. And it’s all come at a price—to God’s good creation and to our physical, emotional, and spiritual life.
Sure, we’ve changed our ways—some. But not nearly enough. Same with our children and grandchildren. We still love our power gadgets, our creature comforts, our conveniences. And some of us feel guilty about it—but do precious little to make the major lifestyle changes that will really change us and help us to make the difference we’d like to make.
So I daydream about bailing out of the whole power structure and living with the family on some sustainable farm where the grandkids—actually all of us—will not have time for much TV or toys because we are doing “the chores.” But how do you actually make something like that happen? That’s my struggle.
So I am watching several people these days and seeking to gain motivation, inspiration, and insight from them: My nephew Vaughn and his family doing homeschooling and living on a sort of mini-farm in Texas, the former emergency room doctor Matthew Sleeth and his family who gave up the up-scale life for a more creation sustainable life, and Joel Salatin, owner with his family of the creation-careful Polyface Farm in Virginia. These are all followers of Christ who have the same beliefs and convictions that I have, but are actually doing a lot more to live out those beliefs and convictions.
Do you want to struggle with me? Take a look at some of these links and surf around from each of these spots:
A story that includes Joel Salatin from Christianity Today. Here
Joel’s Polyface Farm: Here
A YouTube movie about Joel: Here
Dr. Matthew Sleeth’s story: Here
See you outdoors!
Dean
January 5th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I’m ready to move, whenever you are:)
Much Love Your Daughter-
n
January 5th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Thank you so much for this and for all of your reflections – esp. appreciated the John the Baptist/John Muir one. I would love more than anything to live on a sustainable farm but have not found a way to make that work with my education debt. I’m torn between opting out of the conventional social structure to follow my own principles or staying in enough to try to keep relationships where I can influence others. The latter is feeling increasingly futile, esp with the gap between what I know and what I do.
Peace.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Emphasis on the “mini” bit
I believe that our failures to follow Gods leading in areas of multi-generational family life; along with a blasphemous reliance on government.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
ooops… our failures… are part of what has led us to a failure in self-sufficiency.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Dean, thanks for the info. I’ve never heard of those before and enjoyed linking to their stories. Makes me want to buy a farm and try it.
But as great as their stories are, WOC is serving a much needed purpose: spreading the word about being caretakers of creation. My opinion (for what it’s worth) is that what you are doing provides the information which stimulates thinking and then motivation for all of us to be involved in diverse ways. There may be some reading this post who actually begin a farm, or get involved in their communities where they can to be of service in these areas.
So if you do struggle in making some kind of change, keep in mind that WOC is helping me and I suspect a lot of others to make a difference. My feeling is that WOC, being still in its infancy, will continue to catch on and make differences in many lives. Praise God!
January 6th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I don’t see why the website and small farm ideas should be at all seen as contradictory. One of the marvels of modern technology is that things like the internet are available even on the small farm.
And the experience of starting such a farm would make for marvelous blog posts. I can’t wait to read your first post on your grandkids first hog butchering!
PS. There are a lot more self-sufficiency links out there. We got some videos from lighthousefarm.com that we really liked.