Sow True Seeds Fan for Life

So when I was planting on Sunday I opened one seed packet and found this:

$10 off?  And a thing called an action Golden Ticket?  I am a fan for life.

Garden 2019 I

Today I planted.

I went nuts.  I planted two kinds of onions, four kinds of beans, 2 kinds of peppers, and wheat, barley, and rye.  I have no idea if any of them will grow.

That is okay, of course.  There is nothing wrong with trying.

The soil was remarkably friable.  The rabbit droppings and composed wood pellets are working out well.  I just need more of them (if necessary, I can "borrow" some from the rabbit shelter).

That is it.  We are going full bore this year.  NewMantra:  Garden or Die.

This Night And Every Night

"God shield the house, the fire, the kine,

Every one who dwells herein to-night.

Shield myself and my beloved group,

Preserve us from foes this night,

For the sake of the Son of the Mary Mother,

In this place, and in every place wherein they dwell to-night,

On this night and on every night, 

This night and every night."

- Carmina Gadelica (Alexander Carmichael) from Celtic Devotions (Calvin Miller)

A Few Word From...Masanobu Fukuoka

"I tell the young people up in my orchard again and again not to try to imitate me, and it really angers me if there is someone who does not try to take this advice to heart.  I ask, instead, that they simply live in nature and apply themselves to their daily work.  No, there is nothing special about me, but what I have glimpsed is vastly important."

"An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing."

"I probably know more about what can go wrong growing agricultural crops than anyone else in Japan."

"You might say that, rather than growing citrus and vegetables  up here, I have been helping to restore the fertility of the soil."

"Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers.  They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create."

"When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself.  They seldom do."

"If natural food is to become widely popular, it must available locally at a reasonable price."

"The world used to be simple.  You merely notice in passing that you got wet by brushing against the drops of dew while meandering through the meadow.  But from the time  people undertook to explain this one drop of dew scientifically, they trapped themselves in the endless hell of the intellect."

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation of human beings."

- The One-Straw Revolution

People Who Challenge And Inspire

I post this because I had this in high school, lost in it college, and then spent a great deal of time trying to re-find such people - but when I found them again, everything changed for the better.

Lent 2019

The season of Lent is upon us.

In past years I have "given up" such things as sugar or alcohol.  They make for an excellent initial step of self discipline but I have come to understand (at least for myself) that physical deprivation of things is not what I need to be working on in the season.  It has varied over the years since I discovered this fact, ranging from behaviors I needed to give up to behaviors that I needed to adopt.

This Lent?

1)  Media - I am completely shutting myself off from current events and really media of any kind.  My interest - or angst - about current world events in no wise actually changes them.  Instead, I need to fill the time with mediation or God's Word.

2)  Social Media - I have already been experimenting with this more and more.   For now, my goal is to cut down my FaceTome time to twice a week (yes, there are still some reasons to get on there - some of my social groups and activities only post on there at this point).  Outside of a brief check of Instagram to see if Na Clann have posted anything, I will effectively be InterWeb silent.

I can always read or go practice more Iai.

3)  Music - This one is kind o the most interesting of all to me- for Lent, I will abstain from anything other than Classical Music or Instrumental.  Nothing particularly driving this other than just to see what, if any, impact it has on my moods and my life.

So, as I look at this, I see a theme of inner and outer silence.  Surely there is a theme here somewhere.

Do you practice Lent?  And if so, what do you do?

Serenity

One of the feelings I have noticed over the month or so since I have returned from Japan is, occasionally, a sense of serenity.

It is hard to grasp, this serenity.  If I think too much about it, it escapes my grasp.  If I try to make it come to me when I think I need it most it eludes my flailing about.  But if I am patient - if I simply wait for it to come - it comes.

I am not really sure where it is coming from - if it "The Peace of God which passes all understanding"  (which it very well could be) it seems, well, less supernatural than I would have expected (Not sure what I anticipated, really.  Just something more, you know, Thunder and Lightning and Wheels with Eyes).  If it is the result of making a decision and being comfortable with a path, that could be true - except that I am not sure what path I have chosen ( I would be very surprised to find that settling my mind that Iai is the path forward is as life changing a decision as this seems to indicate). 

But even to question where or why this serenity has come seems to undermine the whole concept of it.  In life, at least most modern life, people seem very eager to run hither and yon seeking "peace" by being incredibly active and frenetic and perhaps mistaking serenity for exhaustion.  Or if they have it for a moment, trying to discover what caused it so they can go back to that same well again and again.

It does not really seem to work that way, however.

So for now, I take simple comfort in the fact that it is there. If it is of God, then it will grow all the more. If it is a decision that I have made (perhaps unaware), then it will manifest itself in time.  In either event, the true point of it is to be serene, not necessarily to question how it has come.

Waiting For A Big Change

Ever get the feeling that there is a big change ahead?

You can never really point to it.  There is nothing in your life at the time that makes you say "Hey, sharp 90 degree turn up ahead" - nor is there any signs whereby you can point out the same to the others in your life. 

But the feeling is there. You go to sleep with it.  You wake up with it.  It haunts the fringes of your day as you go about it. 

Oddly enough, you begin to find yourself actively looking for signs of the change - which can be difficult, of course, when you do not know what kind of thing the change is supposed to be.  But you keep looking for hints, signs - good heavens, flocks of birds flying overhead or your lunch mysteriously forming itself into a symbol in its container.

It would be great to know what the change is, of course - after all, it helps with planning - but for now I am simply trying to live in the moment of anticipating the change, something I have not always done as well as I should have.

But change is coming.  I need only wait and watching.

Sow True: A Review

Regrettably, my previous seed supplier went out of business (rather mysteriously and all of a sudden).  Leigh at Five Acres and a Dream suggested a couple of sites.  I went to one of her suggestion, Sow True Seed, and made a purchase.

Happily not too long later, I received a package:

Inside, a treasure trove of spring excitement:

Some high class glossy advertisements:  one for an upcoming book on Okra (which, strangely, I am now interested in) and one for sweet potato slips (who knows?):

Three of the seed packets had quality looking hand drawings on them:

And two were just plain (mostly likely seasonal seeds):

They also sent along two packets for collecting seeds.  Yes, I know that I can just as well use plastic bags or envelopes (I often do), but it was still a nice touch:

I have still have yet to plant, of course - but my initial impressions are very good.  A well thought presentation and marketing of the product.

Each Thing

Each thing I have received, from Thee it came.

Each thing for which I hope, from Thy love it will come.

Each thing I enjoy, it is of Thy bounty.

Each Thing I ask, comes of Thy disposing.

- - Carmina Gadelica (Alexander Carmichael) from Celtic Devotions (Calvin Miller)

Budapest

Today's posting - for no other reason than I like and it strikes me as delightful - is George Ezra's song Budapest.  Click and enjoy.

Doing Today

Logan's Run

So last week, thanks Netflix's amazing random carnival of additions, I got to re-watch Logan's run for the first time in 35 years.

Seeing future movies from the past is always fun because it is interesting to see what the directors and designers thought the future would be like.  In this case, apparently the future involved lots of colored rayon fabric, mall-like structures (apparently escalator technology is also a going thing in the 23rd Century), small cars that run in tubes, and the inevitable "pleasure shop" (because, as always, in the future sex is a thing that we have to have available all the time - sort of like now, actually).  Both main characters, Michael York and Jessica Agutter, have continued to act throughout the years but the only person that "broke" out into true stardom was a minor character actor, Farah Fawcett (Peter Ustinov is also in the movie but he came with his own stardom).

The story - based on the book Logan's Run - is a post war society in which all people are given "life clocks" and die at age 30 (age 21 in the book).  The main character, Logan 5, is a "Sandman", a lawman who chases down "Runners" (those who do not agree to self-terminate).  The movie is Logan's "run" along with a member of a loosely defined "Resistance", Jessica 5.  

I will not spoil the plot for you beyond that - it is not amazing, but is enjoyable - but I was more struck by the idea of watching something 40 plus years after it was made.

Remember the year - 1976 - one year before the Star Wars debut that changed how and what we expected from Science Fiction.  The costumes and models and weapons and sets and computer scenes - everything - are more reminiscent of the 1960's Science Fiction than what came out the following year.  In that way, Logan's Run was fortunate - had they come out the next year, the movie would have been lost to time rather than have something of a small residual following of sympathetic oldsters with nostalgia on their minds.

In a way it is a great and visual reminder of how sometimes a single moment or thing - the Apple IIe, the iPhone, the InterWeb, a kiss - can completely change everything that comes after it.  Expectations are not just changed:  they are expanded, blown out, never to return to their former confines.

Which, of course, is I will continue to watch such things as Logan's Run:  a reminder of simpler and happier times, never to return.

Second Garden Plot

 So one of the issues I have with my garden location currently is that - due to its proximity to the house - it is truly a "Summer Garden".  It only gets 4-5 hours of sunlight in the Winter.  I have a section along the fence that I can use for a Winter garden - gets a great deal of sun, but with Poppy the Mighty growing anything there is a risk.  So it was time to do something about it:

The space measures about 14' long and a 4' wide.  4' metal green fence posts fill the need:

Chicken wire was $20.00 for 25' and I only needed 18' or so.  I cut both sides to the center so I can get in on either side.

I have been putting my used rabbit litter and rabbit droppings there for about two years.  I had two more containers to added to the mix:

The finished product raked out:

The finished product:

The good news is that since the fencing has gone up, Poppy has not tried to run through it.

It is a little cold still to plant, but I am thinking I will put 50% of it grain this coming weekend and see what happens.

Japan 2019: Asakusa Temple

As you may remember from last year, we had about 2 hours in Tokyo to visit and shop and the one place we went was Asakusa Temple, a very old (and famous) temple in the greater Tokyo Area.  This year we had a bit more time to look around:

My personal favorite:  something dedicated to pigeons

Japan 2019: Shinto Shrine

One of the things you find in Japan, even in Urban areas, is Shinto Shrines, where the kami (the deity, or the physical manifestation of the deity) dwells.  In some cases this was landmark - a stone, a pool, a stream.  In time the city grew up around it - but the Shrine is still there.  In my various travels in urban Japan this is not unsurprising - you will be walking through the middle of something and suddenly a shrine will be present.

God's Aid

God to enfold me,

God to surround me,

God in my speaking,

God in my thinking,

God in my sleeping,

God in my waking,

God in my watching,

God in my hoping,

God in my life,

God in my lips,

God in my soul,

God in my heart,

God in my suffering,

God in my slumber,

God in mine ever-living soul,

God in mine eternity.

- Carmina Gadelica (Alexander Carmichael) from Celtic Devotions (Calvin Miller)

A Few Words From...John Lewis-Stempel

"In harrowing half an acre Willow and I walk five miles.  No one except kings and clergy was fat in the time of the horse.  A man ploughing one single acre could expect to walk as much as ten miles.

The high-tone jingle of the harness, the clinking of the harrow when it hits a stone, the working-oneness of man and beast, the breath of horse in the coldening afternoon air, the proud lift of hoof out of soil, the distant cawing of the rooks - these are things English and lost.

I am happy harrowing, an emotional state which may, according to scientists at the University of  Bristol, be enhanced by the soil itself.  A specific soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccue, activates a set of serotonin-releasing neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus of the brain, the same one targeted by Prozac.  You can get an effective dose of Mycobacterium vaccue by walking in the wild or gardening.

Or walking over a ploughed field."

- The Running Hare

Sword And Mind

The Decline And Fall Of The American Church

Sitting in service on Sunday, it occurred to me that there are really only four kinds of churches in America:

1)  The Liberal Church:  This is a church which has abandoned all sense of historic Orthodox Christianity except for the saying that "Christ is Love". 

2)  The Traditional Church:  Include Mainline denominations which have not fallen into category 1 here, but also the Catholic and Orthodox tradition, which have strong historical or cultural components.

3)  The Modern Church:  This is the church which may be traditional in some sense of the word, but is actively seeking out the modern individual (say age groups from 20 to 40).  In all likelihood, they come across as more "hip".

4)  The Conservative Church: I would include non-denominationals which have orthodox understandings, such as John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, or Steven Lawson.


Of these churches, the first category - The Liberal Church - is just about useless as a means of transmission of classic Orthodox Christianity.  The Traditional Church can still do this, but is often saddled with the problem of not connecting with the next generation required to sustain it. 

My big concern is category 3 - The Modern Church.  In some ways it has the greatest potential in that they have mastered the art of connecting with the 20-40 year olds in a way that gets them involved.  My concern - one which I do not have full clarification on - is how they are doing in terms of transmitting classic Orthodox Christianity.

I can only use the sermons I currently hear as an example.

What I do hear is a minimum on the nature of sin and the need for repentance.  What I do hear is a sense that we need forgiveness (but never clearly what we need to be forgiven from).  What I do hear is a great deal of current social mores about how our society has failed certain groups and that while we as a church are about holiness and justice, we talk a lot more about justice than holiness.  What I do hear is a great many words that the current social culture would find itself very comfortable with but very little discussion that the current social culture is challenged by.

Now, there is a lot of good thoughts in the sermons, and a great deal about the love of God and His purpose.  And one of the greatest things that is being communicated is apologetics for an age where "just believing" is not enough.  But what concerns me is what has always concerned me about any church which seeks to become socially relevant:  at some point the church has to choose either relevance with the mainstream (in which case more often than not it becomes The Liberal Church) or keeps with the traditional orthodox faith, in which I suspect it would rapidly find itself to be in The Conservative Church with a rapidly diminishing population base.

The great days of challenge (at least for Christians in the US) are still ahead of us - social trends, frankly, are not in our favor and most (if not all) historic and orthodox Christian beliefs are either laterally or directly opposed to how culture (and in many ways, government) are trending.  In situations like these (study the effects of Communism on churches after the initial societal conversion), Liberal and Modern churches are almost always wiped out (because who wants to die or be impacted adversely for a belief that is not a core belief?).  Mainline churches perhaps survive due to historical context.  The Conservative churches are always battered, destroyed - and then go underground and flourish.

My concern is that the Modern Church - the church currently most growth oriented and most reaching - has tied itself to the wrong platform.  My concern is that it is making people feel good and relevant about themselves and God without teaching them about all the expectations of God - not just justice, but personal holiness and right and wrong as defined by the Bible.

Those things are costly.  Simply believing what culture and society already teach you to believe is not costly at all.

"Wide is the gate and easy is the path to destruction" - yet we only ever want to describe that in terms of the unbelieving or the mis-believing.  Scarcely do we ever actually measure ourselves against that standard.

Look for the American church as we have known it to disappear.  Also, look for God to do some of His greatest work ever through those who truly base their lives on His word and understand the whole counsel of God - that His holiness is just as important as His justice and that without a forgiveness of sins, not just a general feeling being forgiven from our bad habits and bad practices, true conversion is not possible.