Wasted Days

Three days have now passed and nary a thing has been accomplished here. Ironically silence seems to be the primary cause. The house has largely been left to me over the past several days which means it has been very still and very quiet. Apparently this means my motivation to get anything done left with the family as well.

Going in to this three day weekend there were plans to rent a tiller and till the garden, till in some compost and black cow. Plans existed to get some of the decluttering list done. The closet office was going to get straightened up with some of the equipment possibly being moved or eliminated. How have those plans fared? They haven’t.

On Thursday I leave for a three day solo trip in the Ocala National Forest. I am afraid that all this sitting around is going to ruin the solitude I will experience on that trip. One must get motivated.

I spent the larger part of yesterday thinking about church and what seems to be wrong. I ordered a book off of Amazon about that. I spent some time looking at the history of the church, looking at the Orthodox church and making comparisons and so on. It was a contemplative day mostly. It helped me to put my finger on some things that had been bothering me and opened up an avenue or two to pursue. I will probably pick that thread up on my trip.

I was talking with my wife about how during the week I envision all the things I want to do with my time when the weekend comes, often making lists and so on, but I always end up shooting myself in the foot. I always end up staying up too late on Friday night which means I get a late start on Saturday morning and I usually start slow when I do get going. The relaxed pace evaporates any sense of urgency and motivation and I typically spend the day reading, or studying, or wandering around and just relaxing. Basically, nothing gets done. It has been the case over the past several weeks.

Some of this seems to stem from working hard and running so much during the week that when the weekend comes it is nice to just hit the brakes and completely stop, unwind, and rejuvenate. Physiologically I feel pretty balanced, except for the to-do list that remains.

In the end it probably boils down to being one part laziness and one part perpetual planning. For crying out loud, I didn’t even get my seeds ordered yet.

I will end the three day weekend saying how next weekend I just need to go to bed at the normal time and get up like I’m going to work and just get a shower and get ready and start working on my list. The next Friday will come and I will find some reason to stay awake, or to hit the snooze button over and over, or not to set the alarm at all, or to sit in the recliner and suck in input from the computer or TV, or any of a number of different things.

What is in order I think is one part epiphany followed by one part metanoia. Look it up.

Living in a manner where you are self-dependent and off grid does not abide harmoniously with lazy, contemplative, wasted days. There is work to be done.

At least now I know what to bring to prayer today.

God Bless

The Medicine of Silence and Fresh Air

Days like today have the power to make a horrible week fade away. Make that horrible weeks. The weather is cool enough here to open the windows and let the air flow.

As I did I was keenly aware of a mental process that, upon reflection, seemed a bit…well, sad. A small breeze floated through the kitchen while I was making breakfast and a fragrance hit me and I seemed to catch the mental processing of it. It hit my brain and recollection was called up to help process it. It was fresh air. For some reason, for ever so brief a second, my brain had to be reminded of what the fresh air smell was.

Not only that but there was prior to that no longing or fond remembrance of it. I was indifferent until it came in the window. It struck me as a bit odd and unfortunate. Something free, healthy, and so pleasant was somewhat unimportant until that point.

Right now the A/C is off, the television is off, the windows are open, and all you hear outside are birds and lizards and the rustling of sycamore and elm leaves. It is simply outstanding. It is slow, quiet, peaceful, and calming. It is rejuvenating. In my opinion days like today are just vital to good health, low stress, and peace of mind.

My first solo, mult-night hiking trip is coming up in two weeks so I imagine I will be getting more of this but it is nice to sit here comfortably and enjoy it.

These days, these experiences, I allow to be lifelines to our dreams, lifelines to where we want to end up. Today is a lifeline in that we can envision ourselves living in a quiet country world where the silence is common and the pace is far less hurried, and the fresh air is familiar. We envision looking out our back porch now and see the gardens or some wild animals or beautiful woods. It’s dreaming, good and necessary dreaming. Days like today are our Mr. Sandman.

Happy New Year

I have never been one to get all aflutter over a new year, it has always been just another day to me. It seems customary for people to have new years resolutions and honestly I have not made any. Since my last post I have been in an odd state of uncertainty and pondering vague floating ideas. Perhaps it is part of the process I discovered in the last post, at this point I don’t know.

Let me talk a bit about what has been floating around and perhaps a resolution list will come of it.

1. New Career

I cannot get out of my current career fast enough, at this time it is a necessary “evil”. Given the job market and current alternatives I am very thankful that I have my job and can pay my bills and provide for my family. However, I do not believe it is my final resting place. I got into this industry roughly 10 years ago because I thought that’s where the money was. That no longer is a primary motivating factor for me so the draw to it has waned.

For 10 years I have watched the rapid acceleration of technology and the pushed adoption of new trinkets and toys and software and features and upgrades and required retraining and I am quite honestly nearly becoming a Luddite because of it all. I definitely think there are benefits to technology and there are a place for them but the frenzied pursuit of leisure and entertainment and placing ten thousand light speed options at your fingertips for doing so I believe is detrimental. We are quickly becoming the fat people that float around with screens plastered to their faces in the movie Wall-E.

I have pondered what I should try to get into and what the timing and feasibility is. Recently the thought occurred to me that I might try to get into solar installation with an eye toward contracting. I figured if I am planning on living on it myself why not save money by installing and maintaining my own. If I believe in the independence it provides and plan to share that aspect of our lives with others, why not be able to help them achieve it themselves.

There’s another side that has been driving me. If we as Christians are to exercise dominion while we are here then in many ways we are doing a poor job. Environmental issues have been taken over by the greenies that worship the Earth. We’re getting whipped in the stewardship category. The only motivations you hear for making this shift are greenie reasons like being one with the Earth and anthropocentric global warming and so on. Not one voice for Christian stewardship, not one word for Christian independence from the world. That is unfortunate.

I believe this whole sphere of human interaction and marketplace ideals needs to be recovered by the Christian mind. Personally I have exercised a disengaging aversion to this field due to what I believe now were largely political reasons. Too often environmental stewardship and self sufficient and frugal living ideals and concern for Creation have been liberal ideals, and I’m no liberal. What would happen if my friends heard that I was championing “liberal issues”. Oh my, curse the day. That is precisely where we have failed. God created the heavens and earth and all that is in it, which means there is no realm in this existence that is not His. There is nothing that is not bound to and founded in His truth. We should not allow the truth of God’s dominion to be subverted by political worldviews.

With that mindset I have considered venturing vocationally into the field of sustainable living and sustainable energy, to set up an outpost in enemy territory if you will, and try to start taking back this sphere of ideas for the Lord.

The big question is where to start. I think that is where I am stuck at the moment.

2. Websites

Partly related to the topic above I have been toying with the idea of a couple of websites. One is for all things nature, the other frugality, the other for our “farm”. One or more of these will be integral to disseminating our ideas and motivations.

3. Home

My wife and I are both at a point where we are just tired of all the junk and orgy of toys and things and books and plastic containers and papers and the thousand other nick nacks that have invaded our home. We are in a throw away mood.

This is good in that it seems to be the manifestation of a paradigm shift. The problem we are having right now is a shortage of time and being overwhelmed. A common thread in our house is where do we start? We have spent 5 or so years accumulating and hoarding and grasping and acquiring that it can seem daunting to try and undo it.

4. Organization

This is a top to bottom thing. As you can tell by some other posts it has not been a physical or intellectual practice that has experienced much regularity. It is highly frustrating. I am the type that likes to fit things into a routine or consistent unattended process, and to have uncertainties or unforeseen changes or surprises occur is nothing less than a festering aggravation for me. I think I am very mechanical, almost exhibiting assembly line tendencies in some facets of my life. I want to look at the problem, twist and turn a few dials, let the machine go, and move on to something else.

Unfortunately life does not always work that way, and planning and good intentions do not equal autonomous implementation, no matter how bad I want it to. Neither does staring at collections of things shaking my head.

5. Focus

There is just so much to do and it is all at a starting point, it is all vast and daunting.

6. Faith

I have really been wrestling with this one and I imagine my wife has too although she would be the last to say it. I do not mean in any way that it is a wrestling of belief vs. unbelief, by no means. I mean wrestling with what we believe, with what we see as a reality in the church and in ourselves. I will not lie, I have dealt with great frustrations with the reality of my own faith and how I live, and how I hear it should be.

Honestly I think we both have wrestled with where we attend church. Personally it is becoming a larger issue for me as time goes by.

I am getting tired of intellectual laziness, puffery, and compromise. I have sat in bible studies where you hear wild off topic musings and a melting pot of doctrines and personal opinions with no association to scripture. The people partaking in the studies can often be made to say or believe anything you want them to believe so long as it is in a study guide. There is also the despicable practice of running from one paltry study to another, forget application, let’s just check studies off our list and talk about how convicted we were by it. It’s a shame. There is no growth in this, at least no good growth.

Never do you see a determined focus on fundamentals, study methods, scripture memorization, or doctrine. It is all inch deep ear tickling with no accountability and implementation. Personally I cannot deal with it anymore, I need meat.

I will say on the positive side that the more I research Calvinism and the Reformed faith the more I am drawn to it. What it systematizes from Scripture tracks more closely with what I have witnessed to be reality in my own life, particularly total depravity. Arminianism and semi-Pelagianism fall flat on their faces here with me.

I am afraid that the topical content division, if there even is one, in many churches today tends towards leading believers down a self-centered road with self-improvement being the pinnacle. There is 95% of how God loves you no matter what and is waiting on you and just wants you to turn to Him and can forgive you of everything, and then there’s 5% of God hated Esau. It is definitely an unhealthy balance that reaps what it sows, Christians that are so focused on themselves and how much God forgives and loves them and never on what God demands. The result is we become self-absorbed and self-pitying spiritual consumers obsessed with our own spiritual “struggles” (excused disobedience) but it’s okay because God is just waiting on us and just waiting to forgive us of everything we do, no matter what.

There may be a change of venue this year, we shall see.

7. Time and Priorities

Good old time. Never enough of it. There is so much to do and so much impatience. It is frustrating, as I quoted Sue Jamison before and I paraphrase now, I wish we could just get there. Let me try to analogize it.

Think of when you were a kid and were together with friends and they decided on engaging in some mischief that you knew was wrong. At that point your philosophies or ideals forked and went in different directions. You knew that if you stayed with those friends who were going to walk down this forked path that it would go against what you believed or wanted and that it may not bode well for you. Hopefully at this point you extracted yourself from the group and went your way.

Your new mindset did not coincide or agree with the proposed direction or beliefs of the group and the best remedy was separation.

This is where I am now and it causes uneasiness to have to sit in it. There are so many things to do and so little time to do them and there are so many sources of distraction. I have found the day to day rat race along with the amenities of leisure to be a huge disruptor to my focus and intentions.

Venturing daily into a thoroughly worldly workplace and marketplace with its vulgarities and corruptions and temptations is extremely taxing and often only leaves enough energy at the end of the day for venting and decompression, plus getting the family and ourselves ready for the next day.

I will need to figure out how to manage this while leaving family time and some leisure in there as well. Hey, maybe we turn off the stupid TV more often.

So perhaps there we have it. I would say it all could fall under the categories of:

Faith
Home
Vocation

Pretty standard I would say. It does make me tired thinking about it though. Maybe I should add a nap in there.

Pondering it a little more I think I can come up with five areas of focus for this year:

1. Reduce

Reduce clutter, possessions, debt, dependence. Get rid of unnecessary accumulated things. Pay down our debt load in order to reduce our income needs and expand our vocational options. Reduce our dependence on grocery stores for food. Reduce or eliminate luxuries and services that are not essential (maybe that’s next year).

2. Produce

Get on the road to really producing food this year. Just focus on producing it, not necessarily canning or preserving it or selling it or anything like that. Just produce it. The more we grow the less we buy. Refocus our diets to subsist as much as possible on what we grow. Get away from junk food and processed food.

3. Vocation

Make headway on training for the new vocation. Don’t be a perpetual planner or dreamer, get it done. Make one thing the focus this year, maybe solar installation training. Have my wife get her business administration and entrepreneurial mind in gear for the contracting side. Focus on getting trained.

4. Faith

Tighten up, find a doctrine, find a home. Learn to study the Bible, get rid of the fluffy checkout line Christian books and be serious in my study. Find a home that preaches and practices what I believe to be true. Be patient, be deliberate, be constant.

5. Mindset

Vanquish our consumer mindset and become savers and producers. Find ways to skip the money step. Become a couple with a focus on the future, on freedom and independence.

Perfect, I guess those are our resolutions. Happy New Year to all of you!

The Cycle Becomes Linear – Repetition Revealed As Drive

A realization hit me today. Today was one of those slow, idyllic days where everyone was relaxed and perhaps there was enough time or room in there to dream a little bit. So I did. Along with that came what I have mentioned two posts back about the cycle I seemed to go through and how it seemed I was heading into it again.

So I started to wonder about this cycle again, wonder why I go round and round with it when I know how it’s going to end up. What causes me to pick it all back up again and yearn for the end result that I dream about?

That is when I started to realize that perhaps we weren’t talking about a cycle at all. Maybe what I was experiencing was something more akin to drive, or motivation, or a deep seated determination. Hmmm, interesting. That puts a new spit shine on things. I have never been one to really believe in a cyclical view of history or actions, coming from a Christian worldview I have always had a more linear approach to things.

So boys and girls what I think we have here is simply a case of linear determination and adversity, plain and simple. What I first envisioned as a cycle of discontent that lead to engagement which lead to frustration and then to simplicity and back now seems to look more like a deep, primal drive for an end result that just meets what should be expected adversity and resistance along the way. This is good because it helps me to see a few things:

1. Simplicity as an end result – The previous end of my cycles always ended up back at this point, simplicity for the sake of itself and as a solution. In the new perspective this becomes an issue, a band aid of sorts. If the deep seated desire can only be satisfied by the result it seeks then this solution leaves that desire unanswered. The manifestation of this is obvious now, it typically resulted in me picking back up plans and doing more projects and so on. Discontent would eventually bubble up because the desire was still there, it was just momentarily penned up by resolve, so to speak.

So what do I learn about this aspect? Simplicity is part of the process and part of the end result but is not THE end result itself. I cannot settle for just that, it will never work.

2. Adversity – All plans meet with adversity. While I was previously looking at adverse conditions as a brick wall that caused me to turn back and return to the starting point, I now must look at them simply as obstacles that require ingenuity, and determination.

3. Planning & Patience – I will be honest, I still need to figure this part out. This is where I always run in to trouble. Discontent with work or other areas of our current way of life have historically fueled my impatience and desire to just “get there”, as Sue Jamison said if Off the Grid. The inability to just “get there” in turn would fuel frustration, and frustration would fuel a sense of futility and doubt, which repetitively spelled D-O-O-M.

I need to figure out how to manage or throttle that whole process so that it does not keep becoming the reef that sinks the ship. Once that is managed I believe the rest will go a bit smoother.

The more I think about it the more it becomes obvious. Plans to “just do a garden”, or pick back up books of ideas that spurred motivation are now revealed as that gnawing desire for independence.

An interesting question for another day is where that desire comes from. I am no longer fiercely political, having lost faith in the character of the majority of people that represent us. While I still hold, and likely always will, to a muddled pool (my own) of conservative and independent beliefs, I can’t see that being the motivation. I take little part in following or engaging in the arena at this present time, but I do recognize the inescapable need to do so if I am to adhere to the philosophy inherent in the title of this blog.

Could it be from my worldview, which is Christian? I would like to say it was entirely Christian but having little faith in my ability to maintain a thorough and faithful Christian lifestyle I would say it’s largely Christian and somewhat worldly. Does the desire come from being “of the world and not in it” ? A perfect description of that is found here. Is it a desire to break free of the world that drives it? Not to abandon the world mind you, but in a sense to break free and set up an outpost from which to battle on my terms.

I do not know the answer to that just yet and perhaps it is one that will provide fuel to the fire but as it is it seems I have a little work to do and I think at least now we may be operating from a functional foundation, at last.

Sodbusting

One of the things that manages to survive the constant transition between one set of ideals and the other is my desire for a garden.

From a budgetary perspective it makes sense no matter what we are doing. From a health standpoint it just seems to make more sense to have good healthy food, and far more fruits and vegetables than what we are eating now.

Up to this point I had tinkered with raised beds of various format, 4 x 8 beds and 4 x 4 beds. It was most likely my fault but I was never too impressed. They seemed a bit constrained, restricted even. Unless I was a master biointensive gardener I could not count on a very high yield with a low bed count.

Along with this was the fact that there was an additional outlay for materials, which in my experience only served to really delay ever planting a garden. Waiting to have the money to put together more beds and finding the time to build them and THEN digging and prepping the beds meant that my garden activities were slowing to a halt.

I had loosely committed to taking a more traditional approach to the garden plot but just hadn’t go around to any action. This week was an internal battle between hiking, while it’s still “cold”, and taking care of chores around the home that really needed to get done. I floated some feelers out during the week and even as late as Friday night in an effort to let hiking win the epic battle but in the end, the homefront won.

After running some other errands I returned home and work got underway. I roughly plotted out a section that was around 20 x 20. It contained the area where my first three raised beds were so there should be some good soil in those spots. It was largely covered with bahia grass and some Johnson grass I believe it’s called.

The rest of my day was spent breaking up the ground with a shovel (400 sq. ft. of it) and then raking out the pulling out the grass and weeds with a 4 pronged rake. It may not have been back breaking but it was back pulling at least.

After breaking up the ground I did a little raking to get ready for the digging. I plan to double dig the plot but I’m not sure if that will be smart.

So for now the plot is at least ready for further work. I plan to have it done in time to plant something for the spring. I may start looking for some heirloom seeds between now and then and look at a transplanting schedule as well.

Up till now I have fiddled with a lot of theory and very little practice and figured its probably best to just jump back in and learn through trial by fire. Grow and amend, grow and amend.

Until next time.

Cyclical Bitopic Amnesia And Compulsion Disorder

OK, I made that name up, let’s talk about what it means…

First, let’s take inventory. I was going to post once a week, do all these things and keep this thing active, blah blah blah because that’s what they tell you to do to get traffic and be successful and some more blah blah blah. Umm, didn’t happen. Probably wont happen, oh well. At least right now

I had partially devised a complicated plan to achieve all these wonderful things and it just wasn’t working, it never worked. I have come to a point where what makes me a little more settled is the thought of simplicity. Reducing all the things I am trying to do, reducing all the clutter, reducing all the lists and plans and everything else is becoming more attractive. With a 6 month old and a 4 year old, complexity is not a good bedfellow. And it’s stressful.

I was going to become a theologian, small scale organic farmer, survival guru and instructor, master naturalist and bonified woodsman. Oh, and I was going to maintain my IT job (notice I didn’t say career), and give appropriate attention to my wife and two daughters and the church. Riiiiight. One of the hard pills I am having to swallow is that I cannot make a seismic and drastic shift in what I do and how we live all at once and right now. Maybe not at all. Every rerun of Survivorman (he’s returning by the way) and Good Neighbors I watch makes me want to do it all even more. Every edition of Acres magazine has the same effect.

Usually what happens is I get stressed out, things fall behind or remain undone, the unpredictability of life springs up, so on and so forth. I also at times would take off the rose colored glasses and wonder about the feasibility of it all. We, as many others, are heavy laden with an obese mortgage and what might as well be two more kids, Visa and Mastercard, they cost as much anyways. How can I transition careers and roll the dice and start over when we’re in no position to do so.

Other times I would consider our temporary temporal nature and wonder if what I was engaging in was the best use of time. Come judgment day how much weight would an organic garden and survival instruction and a Linux OS matter? Often tending to the soul and sanctification is what fell behind.

It is at this point that I would decide to focus on the things that had eternal importance. Studying the Word of God, taking care of the family and providing, and leaving all else to God’s will in my prayers. That is where I am now. I have been here before. Enter the cyclic amnesia.

What normally happens is I will go for a while content and then will become highly discontent at work and wonder about the eternal importance of that choice. I will tire of living life on someone elses terms and hours and goals and so forth. I will wonder if I am teaching my children to just be sheep and dutifully fall in line with the world. I will look at my 40 hour week of drudgery and wonder why I am spending my life that way. At this point I will start to think about the things we could do for the Kingdom if we were on our own terms, the freedom we would have in our vocation, limited only by our creativity and our ability to find niches in the market. And it is here that I will return to the former paradigm.

Ideas start to blossom, editions of Acres magazine come back out, Survivorman comes on, and though it pains me to admit that I read it even only occasionally, I see off grid homes and awesome gardens in a magazine that goes by the name M.E. News (I refuse to spell out the name, figure it out). I start to realize that we are talking about a big paradigm shift and this is not something to pursue haphazardly so I start laying out goals and creating lists, and doing all these things. Cyclical.

So I tend to go back and forth between eschewing the whole complicated idea and choosing to focus on a few small things to committing to struggle if I have to in order to chart a new path for us because we just do not like the one we are on. Round and round, round and round.

That’s inventory. That is the struggle that has been going on, that should explain the lack of posts. All the options at times look attractive to me and at times they all stink. I honestly do not know which way to go. So essentially Cyclical Bitopic Amnesia and Compulsion Disorder means I go back and forth between two paradigms and forget why I left the other paradigm behind and discontent with factors affiliated with the current paradigm compel me to return to the previous one, and then the process repeats itself. A cycle between two ideas that is driven by forgetfulness, and perhaps idealism.

That all explained I have returned to simplicity mode.

Gardening is still a go
Reduction of clutter and junk, go.
Growing in my faith, go
Family, go

That’s the foundation at the moment. I will still tinker with survival stuff, some hiking and camping when possible and feasible. I will try to swallow the vocational discontent as much as possible.

As a sidenote I have let the domain mapping on this domain and wonderfulwild.com expire, they will go back to their WordPress names. The mapping was a 12 dollar renewal, and the domains are coming up for renewal on the 28th, that has to be around 50 bucks or so for the two of them. Basically I don’t have 75 bucks to throw at blog sites that I am not keeping up right now. Maybe I’ll wrap it all in to redeemerfarm.com one day, who knows.

Survival Revival for the Backwoods Bushman

Since roughly Sunday I have been toying with the idea of getting back into survival and possibly survival instruction.

Probably arising from a combination of discontent with current employ and realizing that God gives us a passion for things for a reason, has created each of us uniquely for a reason, I started further embracing the fact that I love being out on hikes in the woods alone. My heart worships God the most when it’s just me and His creation.

Partly out of wanting to feel as comfortable and as much at home as I can out there, especially while alone, and being able to return with honor and help any in need, I started tinkering again with the thought of starting up survival training again.

I think I am just a mostly simple backwoods bushman at heart.

We will need to add this to our plan but that’s relatively simple, we just need to plot it out.

Byron Kerns, whom I had my first survival training with, is doing week long instructor classes and some 3 day training courses I am looking at. There is also a school in Georgia taught by Jimmy Culpepper that I have looked at but these are mostly day longs. One other is Wilderness Awareness, it looks pretty interesting and they have a self-led at home course you can buy and it is a little different from survival training.

I will probably get into one, two, or possibly all of these options over the next couple years. The idea is to be able to start up doing it at first with friends over a weekend, then possibly as a ministry at church, and then with very small groups for a fee and just grow it from there while I work.

I will keep you updated as that plan develops.

Passage of the Week – Matthew 5:43-48

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Planning Round One Complete

Ok, Ok, so we were a little late in getting the plan up but we have finally done it, at least somewhat, but a good somewhat. You can access it by going to the box.net widget at the bottom right or by clicking here.

We realized with this planning phase that when you are starting with nothing there is a whole lot left to do and sometimes time frames set up with the best intentions are not always feasible. We have a two page to do list right now so we were not able to get the plan fully functioning and available like we would have liked.

That being said we finally started to flesh it out and it is in the form of something we can share with you guys.

Cordwood Building

This form of building has been rolling around in my head lately. We had sort of settled on doing something along the lines of a log cabin originally but my dad has one and they can be alot of work and I’m just not sure about it.

I moved on to building a stone home after reading the story of the Nearing’s and the Good Life. The problem with that is we are surrounded largely by the sugar sands of former groves in Florida. Not a lot of field stones to be had, definitely not a homes worth. Buying that much stone, as they sell it by the ton, would probably be prohibitively expensive.

So that brings us to cordwood building. I caught on to this after reading Rob Roy’s book Mortgage Free. I have added a cordwood book of his to my Amazon list and will get it the next chance I get.

If you have heard of it before let me know, let me know what you think about it.