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