Dominion

Dominion: noun, Control or the exercise of control; sovereignty.

(Here is the disclaimer: This entry will probably fall along the lines of a rant so if you are not in the mood, do not read past this line.)

Everyone knows how I feel about my animals. They are my additional children, fuzzy, feathered or reptilian. I care for them as I would want someone to care for my child and I believe that God ordained and commanded us to do so. In Genesis God gave man dominion over the earth. Yes, dominion implies some kind of entitlement and control or rule but dominion also confers responsibility. Allow me to follow this thought process through with some examples.

Good leaders rule with benevolence. They care for the people who are entrusted to them. They provide shelter, safety, food, comfort and security. Bad leaders abuse, use, coerce, rape, pillage, mistrust and mistreat their citizens.

Kings and queens have dominion over countries as do dictators, presidents, czars, etc. Some are good and benevolent some are wicked and cruel but all have a responsibility to the people over which they rule. Whether they choose to acknowledge that responsibility and do right by the people or whether they ignore it and serve their selfish goals instead, they were still mantled with that responsibility and will at some point be accountable for it.

If they choose to mistreat those people be it physically, fiscally, through spiritual or racial oppression, or if they mistreat those people based solely on their own ignorance or poverty, at some point they will be held accountable. Whether by the people themselves or from outside forces pushing in, or ultimately by God eventually something must give so that things may come back into balance.

In the Psalms David writes “For thou hast made him (mankind) a little lower than the angles, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; All sheep and oxen, yea and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea. (KJV)” This clearly does not state that God gave man the right to pillage the earth and take without recompense but instead He gave us “dominion”. There is that word again!

I believe pet owners and people in general are responsible to animals in the same way leaders are responsible to the people they rule. This is not a vegetarian/vegan rant, so do not get your knickers in a twist, this is instead a call to responsibility. If you want to eat an animal that is your choice but you have a responsibility to make sure that animal did not live a life of cruelty and abuse. The same goes for animals in the pet trade. They have no voices and we, as good stewards of this earth, have a responsibility to be their voice. To speak out for their health and welfare, to ensure they are provided with proper care, attention and nourishment and to report when those things are found lacking.

I would go a little further to say sometimes reporting is not enough. I know it clears our collective conscience to think we took that extra step and reported the witnessed abuse or neglect but animals are not legally children and, often times, even though a report may be followed up on by the appropriate official, there may be little to nothing they can do on the animal’s behalf. Especially if a less than thorough or less than honest party is involved and clears the animal as healthy when it is obviously not. The “buddy system” which is alive and flourishing in my beloved West Virginia is notorious for allowing atrocities based solely on the so-and-so-is-a-good-guy-give-him-a-break school of thought. Meanwhile animals languish in pain and fear without proper veterinary care or basic necessities.

Fred and I have recently run up against a desperate situation. We have rescued a very very sick parrot from what we deem a horrible environment and certainly an impending, slow, painful, lonely and frightened death. We have named her Trinity because she is our third and because we believed God intervened on her behalf when she most needed us and when I most needed her.

At this point Trinity’s health is so poor that we do not know if she will recover. She is very sick, she has a severe infection and she is undernourished, she has an enlarged liver and she has plucked her feathers to the point where some follicles may be permanently damaged and may not grow back. But she is beautiful, she has a kind and loving, gentle nature and she is safe now. I wish I could say the same for all the other animals suffering right now in the under regulated pet trade.

I by no means think that pets should be outlawed or that animals should be taken from good kind owners or even from breeders who love and nurture and cherish them but I do believe this industry should be HEAVILY monitored and regulated with independent veterinary assessments made a stringent requirement. Fred and I are going to get involved. We want to see change, we want to see animals treated with compassion and we want to see pet stores and breeders held to a high level of quality and accountability. If you want to get involved email me I will let you know what I learn as I learn it.

You have been given dominion, what will you do with it? I choose to use it gently and kindly. I am sure I have never and will never use it perfectly but I pray to use it wisely.

Also if you would like to help with the cost of Trinity’s mounting medical care please contact me. She deserves a second chance and so do all the others who will sleep tonight in uncertainty.

Much love and thanks for reading,

Autumn

Neglect , Blogs, Stores and Stuff

Well, Christmas is over and once again we are left with the aftermath of plastic wrappers and gluttonous appetites. In our family we really do endeavor to focus on the meaning of the Christmas season every year but somehow we too get caught up in the materialistic aspects of giving more. There is nothing like hearing your child say “THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!” unfortunately that statement is rarely prompted by copious amounts of time spent with family and is, instead, usually expounded upon after opening a more expensive and more lavish gift than last year.

We really did par down this year, Fred and I put a limit on each other’s gifts and did use the gift money wisely, to buy things we could use but that were still somewhat luxuries. I bought Fred the new pocket knife he had wanted and he bought me a starter kit for harvesting our beeswax into bath and body products. Fred also made me a lovely braided copper bracelet from copper wire he repurposed. The bracelet is especially meaningful to me because he did not wait until the last minute and rush to the store trying to figure out how much to spend to prove his love. I look at my bracelet as a token of how the lessons learned in our greener lifestyle are actually beginning to sink into our daily lives, much like “devotions” sink into the spiritual realm of a person who daily studies the Word.

When I was a child I never understood the purpose of the ten or fifteen minutes my dad spent in the mornings studying the scriptures and talking to God. I was haphazard in my study and prayed when I needed something or felt guilty. I did not realize those few precious and deliberate minutes my dad spends in study of God’s word and in communion with God every day actually arm him to face the trials and tribulations of daily life. Instead of scrambling for scriptures and hastily praying from a fox-hole, my dad has made the Bible part of the fiber of his existence. As I got older I began to see the merit in his behavior, as Fred and I push our way into a changed lifestyle I not only see the merit in it, I see the necessity.

It is the same with homesteading and green living. One must daily practice what one preaches or we quickly find ourselves slipping off into the drive-thru lane or the take-out line of life. I will not lie. In this hectic season of Christmas, rushing from practice to play, from house to house, throwing decorations and wrapping in every available space, we found ourselves standing in the line at Taco Bell on several occasions and I believe I personally financed the new Abercrombie jacket my favorite waitress at the local Chinese restaurant was spotted wearing. Being green and doing things from scratch takes time and, unfortunately, that is something in our culture we always seem to lack.

All I can say is: we did better this year than last and with our eyes to the future we will only continue to improve. As you can see by the scarcity of blog entries some things just had to be cut in this hectic season. In the interest of time and of finishing handmade Christmas presents the blog just kind of got lost in the tide. I am not really into New Year’s resolutions, mainly because we have been resolving things in our life all year, but I will say that as we look forward into 2011 we are happier, healthier, more wholly satisfied people as we have shaved off the unnecessary clutter of our lives, focused in on what is important and done more for ourselves. We as a family intend to continue on along this path expanding our endeavors at self-sufficiency and improving our homestead.

As many of you know, I stay home and Fred works a factory job to finance our lives. Although the chickens, bees and other homestead duties keep me busy I do find time to crochet, knit, quilt and create other crafty extras. As I slammed through the creation of my last few Christmas gifts this year it was commented upon several times that people would pay for the hats/scarves/tree-skirts etc. that I create. I actually had several people request to purchase hats just based on photos I had taken of gifts I made and posted on Facebook.

Fred and I have talked many times of opening an Ebay store to sell the extra stuff we make or no longer use but Ebay is expensive with lots of fees and commissions and whatnot. Similarly, we have purchased things on Etsy and had fantasized about putting up our own craft goods to earn a little extra. Etsy, like Ebay, has per piece fees and listing costs. Then a friend suggested Artfire. I perused the Artfire site on several occasions and finally was enticed to open a store when they offered a fixed low monthly fee. If you look at the top widget on the right side of the blog you will see a link to my Artfire store.

Please do not read this and think the blog is going to become one giant marketing tool for my merchandise. It is not. I may occasionally mention if we add a new type of product but for now I just want to make blog readers aware of it and that it is there if you are interested. For now, it is small and only contains a couple of my handmade hats but my vision for the future will include beeswax based products and maybe even artisan soaps, jams or jellies. Who knows? For now, like everything in this adventure, we are starting small. Baby steps. Two little hats may lead to great things or two little hats may fizzle out and leave us back at square one. Either way, we are trying to leave ourselves open for God’s direction and do not want to find ourselves caught back up in the materialism that consumes so much of today’s society.

I want to thank everyone for supporting us in prayer, in kind words of encouragement and by silently clicking on this blog to read our adventures. If we have disappointed you or let you down, I am truly sorry. We do not mean for this blog or our lives to be a stumbling block for anyone. Instead we wish to encourage and to be encouraged to commune with our fellow homesteaders (if only on the internet) and to share our joys and struggles. We are making progress and we are sure you are too! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and may peace and joy abound in your life.

With our heartfelt thanks & much love,

Autumn

More Abundantly: In Memory of Julie

As many of you who know me in real life know, my aunt Julie died a week ago Monday after a fifteen month battle with lung cancer that had metastasized into her spine and shoulder. Jewel lived a rough life and although cancer was, by normal standards, a death sentence, for her it was a reprieve. That fifteen month gave her time to “put her house in order.” She was granted something that many of us, caught up in our day to day struggles never recognize, she was given a time of reflection. Like the season the Jewish community recognizes between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, she was given her “time of Awe” to look back and make peace with her family; she recognized her past and came to terms.

I will not defame Julie’s testimony by setting her up here as a saint. She lived a life fraught with heartache and wrong choices. Haunted by addiction, cancer brought her to her knees and ultimately to Jesus. I have learned something from Julie’s life and death and that is this: life is preciously short and flimsy. It can be snatched away from you in a moment or it can be wrested out of your grasp by a long debilitating illness. I do not mean to lose the focus of this blog or to totally stray from our mission statement but I will tell you this; a more “God centered” life is not just a pretty turn of phrase for Fred and me, it is the ultimate goal of our lives. Julie made the most of her last fifteen months, she tried, she gave it all over to Christ and she did her best to make amends.

I do not want to spend the last fifteen months of my life scrambling to “live right.” I want to do it now. Part of that for both Fred and me includes doing more to be self sufficient. It behooves us to be better stewards of our lives' and world's now instead of scrambling in the end to make right things that have been neglected. That said since last Monday I have neglected a lot. Short of the chickens, and Fred and Sarah’s stomachs, which refuse to be neglected, I have pretty much gone into zombie mode. I have mindlessly and numbly auto piloted my way through daily activities.

Do not misunderstand I was not shocked by Julie’s death, it was expected. Nor am I in abject mourning. I know that Julie no longer suffers and that it was better for her to die quickly than to linger painfully in the hospital, just like it was better for her to die in a state of grace than one of turmoil. I do not think I have vegged out of life due to some overwhelming grief (although I do admit the amount of loss and death in the last few weeks has been staggering) instead I think that loosing Julie has forced me into a state of reevaluating my life, our goals and focus. I know, many of you probably think, “good grief does she do anything but introspectively reflect?” but I promise I do not sit around contemplating my belly button everyday (the blog just seems like it).

Ultimately, what Fred and I are trying to do, in all of our “green” endeavors, is to simplify our lives. You may think we are taking on way to much work to make things simple but even in hard work there is peace. There is a satisfaction in removing the middle man and of holding a finished product in your own hands, something in which you have a vested interest, not just a buck ninety-nine from the grocery. I can happily say that there are now more eggs in my refrigerator that I can use and I find myself trying to come up with creative ways to slip eggs into every meal. The satisfaction of holding something that represents our goals, as tiny as an egg is, fills me with such joy and gratitude that it is hard to express. I tell you, the pleasure of having a finished product is more rewarding than any career in which I have ever participated. This is a big statement for me, I can honestly say in my career as a firefighter I had a part in actually saving lives, and as rewarding as that was you still went home at the end of the day feeling tired, sometimes let down and often disappointed.

I said all of that to say: I want Julie’s life to be an illustration for myself and others. I want to do it right the first time. I am sure if Julie could tell us all one thing from heaven that would be it. Do it right the first time, do not spend your end scrambling to repair relationships and to atone for things, take your time to slow down now. Be kind to each other. Be kind to the world in which you live. Live each day with meaning and do not let your life become bogged down whether that be with possessions or unimportant details. Live fully and live well.

Jesus told us, "I came that you may have life and have life more abundantly." That is what I want "life more abundantly." What about you? I challenge you today, examine your life. If you knew you were down to fifteen months what would you do? Who would you make amends with? What would you change? What would you live without? Now live like that, live more abundantly!

I would like to make you promises about being back in the blogging saddle but the last few weeks have been so hard I am promising nothing but my best effort. I have lots of things to catch up on here on the “homestead” so the blog may be pushed to the bottom of the pile for now. I want to thank everyone who has prayed for my family and who has supported us in this time of struggle and need. Thank you.

Much Love,
Autumn

a song

My heart is heavy this morning with the loss and sadness and suffering I see all around me. I have held off for several days on any new blog entries hoping for something lighthearted and pleasant to write about. I have systematically avoided writing about the things that have been so prominent in my mind and since these things have become almost all consuming there has been nothing else of which to write. Unfortunately, this cloud of sadness has not lifted. Instead of continuing to avoid the blog I decided that I need to address these things because they are not going away. I feel compelled to write because all other roads are barren and these thoughts must work themselves out of my mind and heart:

Everyone struggles, even Christians, even Christians who walk closely with God, and struggling does not equate punishment. Sometimes we struggle because there are lessons to be learned and sometimes we just struggle for no apparent reason, other than we live in an imperfect world. I know how flip that sounds and what a poor and lackluster reason that is to give someone whose world is wrenched apart by grief but sometimes it is the only answer we have. So often we are quick to pass judgment on those among us who suffer. We think God is judging them or they have done something wrong to merit the suffering in their lives and so they are reaping what they have sown. We judge ourselves and question God and wonder “what have I done wrong? Why is God punishing me? Why can’t I ever win?” When, in reality, as our salvation is “not by works of righteousness which we have done” sometimes our suffering is too by no fault of our own.

This week I lost an old friend, whom I had not seen in years and had only recently reconnected with through facebook. He was only thirty-three years old. We had chatted on line and said those things like “let’s get together soon” feeling for all the world like there were many tomorrows stretching ahead of us because, really, no one thinks at thirty-three that we will die in our sleep. This week a former colleague, whom I hold in great esteem as an honorable man of God and whose family I greatly respect as good and kind examples of practical Christianity, lost a son to cancer. They knew their tomorrows together to be finite but I assume their grief is no less sharp for the knowledge, because twenty is too young to die of cancer. This week I have watch a friend struggle with her son’s illness and vague diagnosis and with all the financial burdens that weigh down single parent’s everywhere and I know as I look at him that eighth grade should be a year of carefree fun not of doctors visits and tests. This week I have watched my dad struggle with his chronic pain and more surgery. I look at his sleepless face and know that retirement should be a time of ease and enjoying grandchildren not a constant struggle against insidious pain and depression. This week the nucleus of my own family has struggled and I find myself helpless.

In this time of powerlessness all I can do is give my struggle and my doubt to the Lord as we are instructed in I Peter 5:7 “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you,” because I can do nothing else. I am staggered by the vast amount of suffering everywhere. As I look out my window onto the first calendar day of Autumn I see with my physical eyes a beautiful, calm, warm and sunny day. As I look around me spiritually I see the storms of life raging all around the people I love and rocking their boats, and mine, to the point of capsizing. I see friends and love ones clinging by their spiritual fingernails to the planks of driftwood that are all that remain of their lives.

Growing up in Sunday School I was taught that we are always in a state of spiritual warfare, that we are in a constant struggle with the unseen to maintain our soul’s integrity. I do not so much believe this as I have gotten older. I believe that if you truly accept Christ as your savior then that ultimate battle has been fought and won. I do not believe that it is then somehow my responsibility to fight and re-win that battle every day. That lends a “works” aspect and a sense of futility to the whole thing that I just cannot swallow.

That being said I know through my own practical experience that being a Christian does not somehow magically exempt me from suffering, from hurt, from loss, from bad decisions, from death or from hurting others. We are still human, we still function inside this flawed world, we are still children of flesh and blood who bleed and die. So if Christianity does not exempt me from suffering then what practical good does it offer me? I think this is where I personally have struggled and where I have seen so many loved ones fall away. They often feel as if God did not answer this specific prayer with the answer they begged for so: A) God obviously does not love or care about them, or B) God does not exist. Well, I have been there. I have been on my knees begging for healing, begging for a job, begging for relief from pain, begging for specific answers only to feel like my prayers hit the ceiling and fall back down on my head.

I think too often we want to treat the Bible like a magic eight ball or a Google search, expecting it to magically fall open to a verse tailored for our specific question when we reach a crisis. We pray to God like he is a genie who will grant our wish if we can just find the right combination magic words. Too often in our day to day lives God gets pushed to the back, Bible study becomes a once a week social excursion to church or a five minute cutesy story with an abbreviated Bible text blurb at the end. If we sit down and really delve into the Bible God does not promise us lives of ease if we follow him. In fact Christ tells the disciples the opposite that if we follow him the way of righteousness will not be easy. Matthew 7:13 tells us, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” The undemanding path will ruin you.

That leads me to the conclusion that the Christian life will never be easy but I will tell you this; I will tell you, from my own experience, that surrendering your burden to Christ offers an ease of the spirit if not an ease of the circumstance, a shelter in the storm. Immersing yourself in God’s love and surrounding yourself with the church, delving into the scripture and truly seeking God’s face is like rubbing a balm on a wound. It will offer comfort. It can ease pain and prevent the suffering and the hurt from infecting your heart and eating away at your joy the way disease infects an open wound.

King David was a man who lived an extraordinary life. Reaching the loftiest heights of accomplishment and sinking into the lowest depth of despair. As I face the rest of this week and try not to be pulled down into despondency I seek comfort in the word of God, in my Christian friends and family and in prayer. I also look for inspiration and words to comfort those around me who suffer. I look to the words of David as he wrote poetry to God in the Psalms; “Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once again.”

We have the promise of God to always lift us up again. It is easy to look down and sink beneath the waves. Faith is sometimes a struggle and keeping our eyes on Christ is not always easy as the grind of daily living tries to churn us under the waves, but that is why it is so important not to neglect that relationship with God, that daily time spent in prayer, those moments spent reading the Bible trying to gain a deeper understanding and not just an instantaneous answer.

I am sorry if this blog is kind of disjointed. I should have been writing all along instead of trying to stuff down things I needed to get out. This week as I have watched so many around me suffer and have felt so powerless to help them I go back to the story Jackie tells about the flood that took away our church building fifteen years ago. Jackie talks about how, when they were trying to clean out the copious amounts of mud, she felt powerless and helpless but amidst all that suffering and pain she could still sing. And that song became her prayer, her plea, her communion with God. I feel that and I can relate whole heartedly to that elemental cry. When I can do nothing else I can raise the song in my heart to God’s ears and let the emotion of my soul cry out for me when I cannot find my own words.

So I encourage you, my brothers and sisters in this life, to raise your voice to God, find your song and let it pour out of your soul. God will hear you. He will understand. Throw your burden on him. When you are too weak to read and feel too abandoned to form the words to pray let your song take those emotions and carry them to God, let that be your prayer and let God heal you. He will give you the strength to carry on. I encourage you to spend time in the scripture and study when you are not in crisis so that when the storms of life rage you are standing on a firm foundation but when you can do nothing else, please, sing.

Much love,
Autumn

Love Your neighbor as Yourself

This is one of the very first things I remember learning growing up in the Baptist church, it went hand in hand with the words to Jesus Loves Me. It is an easy thing to comprehend, it is an easy thing to learn by rote, it is an easy thing to give lip service to, however when the rubber meets the road it is not always an easy thing to do. We all know that God is not instructing us to love just the person who lives next door but that the word “neighbor” encompasses a much broader spectrum of people. I struggle with this. It is easy for me to love the people who are good to me, it is easy for me to love the people I deeply care about but it is also easy for me to write off all the people who irk me or who cross me.

Those of you who know me personally know I have a wicked hateful temper that sometimes gets the better of me (for those of you who do not know me personally I will readily admit this fact). At one point in my life I thought it was cute, a defining characteristic. Now, more often than not, it is an annoying trait I wish I had better learned to control at a much younger age. As I stood in my driveway last night literally fighting with my neighbor over the stupid triangle of land where we sit our garbage cans I realized just how idiotic I must look and sound and for once I had the wherewithal to momentarily step back and realize what I must be doing to my testimony.

I stood there, caught in the moment, and realized that I was viciously breaking the simplest instruction of God’s: to love your neighbor as yourself. After I made a complete imbecile of myself, stomped back into the house to get the deed and the map of our property, drug Fred into the whole mess and stomped back to their house I stepped on their porch and realized just how far away from God I was probably pushing them. Now do I think I am personally responsible for someone else’s relationship with God? No. Do I think that I am possibly (more frequently than I would like) a stumbling block to others? Yes.

Had I judged these people from the moment they moved in? Yes. Had I talked about them without ever talking to them? Yes. Had I been rude and uncommunicative? Absolutely. Am I completely ashamed of my behavior? Most certainly. It started with silly stuff. Their vehicle would be hanging partially in my driveway, not really obstructing our entrance but just annoy me or someone would move our trash can. Just little things that really have no bearing on the larger scheme of life and that most people would and should shrug off. Instead, I compiled them like a black list of sins, storing them up in my brain and holding them against my neighbor without ever talking to them or trying to amicably resolve anything. I bore a grudge like a piece of clothing, wielding it like the amour of righteous indignation. I had unwittingly and unconsciously become a nasty little neighborhood curmudgeon, shame on me.

You know if my Sunday school kids treated each other the way I had treated my actual physical neighbor I would have chewed their ear off with a scathing lecture. If Sarah treated a classmate that way I would have grounded her. I could not see the error of my own ways because I was standing smack dab in the middle of my slow boiling anger. I shudder to think the damage I have done and the poison I have spread by breaking this elementary commandment.

I am happy (and abashed) to say that as I was immediately convicted I promptly apologized for being hateful and nasty and for getting off on the wrong foot. I tried to explain where it began for me and how I had ended up in my present state of mind. I felt even worse as my neighbors began to explain how they felt unwelcome by the whole neighborhood and how it had been a constant struggle since they had moved in. I feel terrible. I think about not only what a horrible testimony I have with them but I consider what an example I set for Sarah and I am deeply sorrowful and ashamed.

I write these things this morning, not as a form of self-flagellation or as a way to say “oh look at me how righteous I am now that I’ve seen the error of my way” instead I write in hopes of deterring others from making the same mistakes. I write to show that I am human and although my blogs are usually thought out tales of how we are trying to make our small corner of the world better, that indeed we are not perfect, that we often make mistakes and sometimes we poison the well. We may be able to keep our physical trash out of the landfill but if we cannot keep out emotional trash out of our neighbors’ lives then what good have we really accomplished. I write also as a reminder to myself, to be kind to people and not just the environment. I write because if I really want the God-centered life I profess then I cannot put a giant barrier there by being cruel to his favorite creation.

Do I think that this epiphany will somehow save me from every getting angry again? No, I am only human. I am sure that I will get mad, that I will yell, that at some future date I with further embarrass myself. What I hope is that I will never again be deliberately mean to my neighbors. That I will stop and think and let the little and petty things go instead of harboring them like emotional poison ivy. Whether they be my actual physical neighbors or the people I see on the streets or the people I do business with in the world. I hope to be kind. I hope to be a good example to my child and to the people I come into contact with every day.

I have already apologized to my neighbor and asked God to forgive me and make me a better neighbor but I want to also take this opportunity to apologize to all of you. I am sorry for any bad example that I have set and for any seed of doubt that I planted. Please realize when you read this blog or look at me that I am human and flawed but I am trying everyday to be better. Like our move towards greener life our spiritual growth is also sometimes a bumbling and awkward path full of ruts and mistakes but we are learning and we hope to never stop growing into better people.

Thank you for reading,
Much love,

Autumn

Updates & Musings

Things have been insane around here trying to finish up the school year with Sarah, who by the way made straight A’s, and just generally trying to manage chickens and bees and whatnot. Here is a quick update:

The chickens are GIANORMOUS they have more than quadrupled their size since we got them several months ago. They actually look like chickens now, they have lost almost all of their baby feathers and are almost entirely a gorgeous glossy black, when they stand in the sunlight there feather glint beautiful shades of green, blue and purple. Their little spindly legs have thickened and turned completely black, however their combs and waddles have yet to grow into much of anything and are still a grayish brown, they are supposed to turn red eventually.

They have such personality and charm and it is hysterical to watch them torment Fred in the evenings, refusing to go to roost and making him chase them all about the coop. Nights when it is my turn to put them to bed they are usually already nicely settled in their house and I merely have to close the door. I really believe they just get a kick out of Fred chasing them madly around the coop and banging his head on the ramp. He grumbles and complains that they are “dumb stinky chickens” but he is attached to them too. He takes his guitar out in the evening and serenades them as they scratch around in the yard. I am not sure if they enjoy this or not, he thinks they do. (It seems to me they tend to hurry into the house a little earlier on these evenings.)
As for the bees, well, they are alive! My transplanted queen was a success. Fred saw her earlier in the week. She is hard to miss because she is marked with a bright blue gob of paint. Fred did a little research and said the queen raisers specifically color code the queens according to the year in which they are hatched. Theoretically, a queen from good stock can live for around five years but, according to whichever book you read, a queen’s ability to lay is really tapped out after around two or three years and most books advise requeening prior to the queens natural death to prevent swarming and to control the genetic makeup of your hives. All I know at this point is I am glad I did not kill her and or tank the hive.

We had a short break in the weather yesterday and Fred went out to check the hives the bees had begun to “pull comb” in our top super of our largest hive so he went ahead and added the queen excluder, this is a small screen that allows the workers up into the super box to make honey but does not allow the queen to follow them and lay eggs. If the bees produce enough honey this super should be our first honey harvest in a few weeks. We are very excited. We have been feeding our smallest hive, our split, for a couple of weeks now and although they are maintaining they are not growing significantly. We will continue to feed them and may need to do so through the winter to keep them alive.

That is an update on everything you may have been following to date. We are struggling with this weather and the rain as are many people around the country. Our hearts and prayers are with the victims of the flooding out west. We know intimately what it is like to watch the water rise and wonder if this will be the storm that washes away everything we own. We count ourselves as very blessed because even now as I type this and watch the rain fall outside our window God has given us enough significant breaks in the rain over the last several days to keep the creek and the river within their banks.

These things that are outside of our control in life are often the things that leave us so very hurt and angry. Whether it is the ravishing of nature, illness, the oil leak in the gulf, loss or personal pain, things we cannot control sometimes leave us wondering where God is and why is he not answering our desperate pleas for help. There are so many things in life that disappoint and that just do not turn out the way we plan but sometimes that in and of itself is the problem, we so often focus on what WE plan instead of what God wants or has planned.

Regardless, sometimes bad things just happen, we live in an imperfect world with no promise of tomorrow Job tells us, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return there, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Basically, we came into this world with nothing and we will leave this world with nothing. It is a sobering thought when you contemplate that most of us spend our entire lives trying to amass stuff and to gather acolytes that have very little intrinsic value. My prayer for my personal life is that God will allow me to stand in the midst of my suffering and continue to praise his name.

This is not easy. When crappy things happen it is easy to get mad at God. The great thing about God is he is big enough to take our anger and like the father he is, still love and care for us when our anger is spent. Ephesians tells us “Anger and sin not.” This is good advice and a worthy point for people who think Christians should never get mad. Getting mad is not a sin. Sometimes getting mad is a necessary response to propel us into action. Jesus got mad and since he lives for thirty plus years I am willing to guess that he probably got mad more than just what is recorded in the Bible. Sometimes getting mad is just a natural human response to things that are outside of our control.

When I lost my job I was mad. I was hurt I was angry and not for the first time in my life I felt like I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing or what God’s plan for my life was. I had worked so hard to get that job I had jumped through all the hoops, passed all the tests, surely it was God’s will for me to be there. How could I have ever landed there and successfully passed the rigorous testing processes if it was not God’s will? So why did I have to give it up? Why the stumbling block? I have wrestled with this since September and I really still do not have any clear answers. What I do know is that through all of my anger and depression, for all of my ranting and tears God is faithful.

It is not always for us to know the way or the why of the Lord, we are but a small part of his creation. Yes he loves us but we are not in charge he is. The sooner we surrender ourselves to this the easier our burden will be. I have spent a great deal of time reading the book of Job lately. I have revisited my own anger and disappointment as I try to help a friend deal with theirs. We often focus on the first part of the book of Job the epic struggle between God and satan, Job’s loss and the shunning by family and friend. We applaud Job for his steadfastness in his faith but what we gloss over is: Job whines a lot. Job gets depressed, Job questions God and in fact I would go so far as to say Job gets angry.

We endow Job with saintly virtue because he continued to praise God through his suffering but so often we down play the part where Job is still human and deals with human emotions and turmoil through his loss and suffering and questions God’s fairness and loyalty. Ultimately, God’s response to Job is: if you think I am wrong and what I do is unjust then you do it better. Ouch. That puts it in perspective for me. We are not God. On this earth it will always be impossible to completely know the mind of God. I do not know why children suffer. I do not know why one man starves while another owns millions. I do not understand why a godly man is struck down with cancer while a child molester lives into his seventies. I do not know. I am not God. What I do know is that I will choose to praise God.

I can testify that through the trials in my own life God is faithful and a world with God in my life and in charge of my life is much preferable to a world without. We have no promise of tomorrow and we cannot guard all of these material things we collect against everything that may come. I am making a conscious choice in my life to place more value on the things that really matter. I am so grateful for my family. I am so grateful for my friends. I am so grateful for my church. I want to give back. I want to be a better friend, a better wife, a better parent, a better teacher. I want to help those around me learn from the mistakes I have made and start sooner to value those things of real worth. I make mistakes every day I am not perfect. I am learning and this is a journey but I would like to leave you with a passage of scripture that Jeff read at Fred and my wedding:

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, Love is kind and is not jealous: love does not brag and it is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account wrongs suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth:
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. LOVE NEVER FAILS…”
I Corinthians 13: 1-8

I know I said I would leave it there but let me add; to me this really sums up what a Christian life should be. If we follow these basic principles of love we will be kinder to ourselves, each other, our families and the world in which we live. Love makes anger obsolete, I am not saying I will never get angry again (in fact I get angry a lot, my temper is probably my least attractive feature) what I am saying is that if we act out a spirit of love our angry will not cause us to stumble or to harm.

Thank you for reading,
Much love,

Autumn

Peep, peep, peep

The chicks are here. Actually we picked them up at Green’s on Wednesday. They are amazingly tiny and fragile. I would say the absolute biggest of the four is maybe two inches in circumference. Yes, I said circumference, they are almost completely round except for two little toothpick legs that sick out the bottom. Their legs literally look like toothpicks. I wonder how any of them ever make it to adulthood. Fred is already totally enamored of them. I practically had to drag him forcibly from the bathroom last night(they are living in our bathtub at the moment).

I asked him, out of curiosity, since he seemed to so instantly bond with these little birds, if he would continue to eat chicken (we are raising these as laying hens not as meat birds). He paused for a moment and said, “Probably.” When I questioned him further he told me that when he ordered chicken or bought chicken at the market it did not seem like the same thing as these cute tiny fuzzy little eating machines. Once again, this is a prime example of how far removed we are from our food source. I do not oppose anyone eating meat that is their choice. What I oppose is the corporate mass production farms that harm the environment, harm the food and ultimately harm the people who eat it. This is one of the major things that has spurred our slow but deliberate move towards a more eco-friendly sustainable lifestyle.

We were put here on this planet and given dominion over the animals and the earth not to harm it but to sustain it and sustain ourselves so that we could provide companionship for God. We’ve done a lackluster job. Through the years, as I have practice yoga, I have learned that our physical bodies do not exist as something set apart. In Christianity we often want to feed, nurture and exercise our spirit while we neglect or abuse our bodies. For example, we go to church every Sunday, piously listen to a sermon, sing some songs, we may even do our devotions every morning and then, as soon as we are finished, we promptly package that up in a neat little box store it our morality shelf and proceed to eat whatever garbage is put in front of our faces.

When I was a child my mother never let us watch a lot of television, and we were never allowed to watch some of the more violent cartoons. I did not really understand this until I was much older and the only explanation she would give was “garbage in, garbage out.” Now, of course, what she meant was that if we watched cartoon characters beat each other senseless everyday then we would do that to each other. Since we already did a really good impression of trying to murder each other on a regular basis she probably was not too far off the mark. As I have gotten older I have taken this theory of “garbage in, garbage out” much more to heart.

In Romans 12:1 Paul tells the church, “I urge you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship.” I was taught for years in Sunday school that this meant you should not drink or smoke or be promiscuous. No one ever said a word about not sitting in front of the television and eating an entire bag of potato chips (which I have been known to do). No one ever mentioned that I should try to exercise and eat a healthy rounded diet. These are thing that were never said in any context of Christianity but if your body is the Lord’s temple that it makes no sense at all to trash it with the corporately churned out garbage that we call food.

As our family takes these baby steps towards a greener existence I look around me and I am shocked by what I, as an individual, do to this planet but I am even more shocked by what I as an individual do to my body. I do not smoke, I exercise regularly, I get plenty of sleep, I try (although not always successfully) to be kind to others but I think NOTHING of eating tons of processed garbage ever year. Yes, even vegans eat junk. In fact I would say that vegan junk food is probably equally bad, or worse, than regular junk food. Just because something is lacking in animal products does not mean in has not been chocked full of hydrogenated vegetable fat.

We are not perfect and I am not trying to be super preachy here. I am documenting where we are as a family and some of the things that have motivated us to move towards green. We are taking small steps, eating more meals at home (not all but more), trying to get closer to the source of our food, growing more things, raising more things. When we go to the store now we look for things that have less packaging, we try to buy whole fruits and nuts and veggies less boxes of over processed things with indefinitely long shelf lives. We want to be kind to the earth but I think it starts with being kind to ourselves.

Fred has promised that if we are successful with the bees and the chickens that next year we can add a couple of goats to our menagerie. If we are successful in rearing goats and chickens then I will probably give up my vegan ways, at least at home, and begin to once again use eggs and dairy. If the source is wholesome and treated well I do not oppose these things. And I know that if I raise these things myself I will have treated them well.

Come back to find out all about our tiny flock. Also, I will soon update some interesting (and yet TOTALLY different, sigh) information about the bees. I intended to blog some yesterday, but between the bee drama (I will update in a later blog) and my flock of baby chickens I have been extremely busy.

Thank you for reading, thank you for being patient and thank you for praying for us,
Much love,
Autumn