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!