Reaching for the Stars

Our suitability to explore other planets is measured first in our stewardship of the garden we call Planet Earth. And our stewardship of Planet Earth begins with our stewardship of the square foot garden in our own backyard. If we cannot manage to discern between weeds and food or flowers, and if we lack the initiative to tend the soil we see every day, we are not suitable candidates for the exploration of the pristine worlds of outer space. If we have not learned how to think about and appreciate the life within arm's reach, we have no business reaching for the stars.

The world is vast and wonderful. But it is as wonderful in its magnitude as in its minutiae. We cannot compare one wonder to the other and judge the small as insignificant and the grand as great for they are all interwoven with the same core fiber of life. If the small suffers, so does the great. If the great suffers, it is because the small is under siege. In fact, it is our faithfulness over little, seemingly insignificant things that first indicates our suitability for grander responsibilities. If we cannot be faithful over little, how much less faithful are we likely to be over much?

Reaching for the stars ought to invoke a reverence as precious as that we experience when reaching out to hold our newborn infant for the first time. There should be nothing cavalier about our efforts. There is no room for trial and error when it comes to holding new life in our hands. We must value that life at least as much as we value our own. If we cannot do this, we have no business holding the baby.

If others were to judge our treatment of Planet Earth as the measure by which we were considered suitable stewards of other worlds, we would fail miserably. Our planetary report card would be all Fs. Economics -- F -- our world lives on credit borrowed from the next generation. Ecology -- F -- for the sake of industrial pride and profit we have shamelessly exploited and almost irreparably destroyed the balance of life. Sociology -- F -- nation rises against nation, kingdom against kingdom, a man's enemies are the members of his own household and yet we presume to be experts in human relations. Incredible!

Unfortunately, the most incredible thing about mankind as a race is our shared audacity -- an audacity as impudent as it is reckless. No, there are no As on our report card to commend us as suitable candidates for the exploration of other worlds. Our reckless treatment of our launching pad is predictive. If the cornerstone is so carelessly shaped and placed how unleveled and hopelessly out of square is the foundation likely to be. And if the foundation is neither level nor square, why do we continue to naively believe that our efforts will meet with success. If the concept is faulty the completion will be flawed!

So should we reach for the stars? By all means! But only if the original inspiring concept is true. Our motive ought not be to escape from the decaying world we've nearly destroyed. A nobler, more redemptive aim ought to be to glorify the Creator of heaven and earth. Here is the watershed divide. If there is no Creator the exploitation of life takes precedence over its preservation. If there is no Creator, life is merely a function of biology without value or purpose. But if there IS a Creator, then all of life is a mystery left for us to explore that we might discover the majesty of our God.

War, industry, technology -- if these are not sanctified they will be vilified by the base nature of men. If they do not bring equity and justice, they will only bring inequity and injustice. At its worst, reaching for the stars exalts men to god-like status without the accompanying godly character. At its best, reaching for the stars proves the capacity of man to reflect the nature and glory of God. If this is not the sacred trust with which we begin, our efforts will be forever doomed to revealing the limitations of mankind one awful layer at a time.

Michael Hennen

PS - Check out the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ

What's New? Chickens!

It was my mistake. I was perusing a hatchery web site and decided to place an order for 15 Rhode Island Reds. I clicked on this and that and when the final page came up, I realized that I had not seen a hatch date on any of the pages. The last web page said I would be notified by email of the hatch date. I placed the order, but had this nagging feeling that I should find out when these chicks were coming my way. After all, it was January, and I didn't want to deal with baby chicks until the end of February.

I had been keeping abreast of the blog news, and was well aware of the predictions of food shortages and rising food prices for 2011. I was thinking that it takes chickens a few months to mature before they lay eggs, so I thought that summer would be a good time to start having our own eggs. This thought that I'd better check on that hatch date kept coming to me, so I called the hatchery. This was on a Wednesday. I was told my chicks had hatched that morning and would be at my local post office the very next day, January 17th.

Scramble!!!! A quick trip to the farm supply store for a big washtub to keep them in, a waterer and a chick feeder plus some chick feed. We were all set. You are beginning to think, I am sure, do they have a chicken coop? The answer is no.

We drove to the post office the next morning in a strong snow storm, picked up a bolt in our tire on the way up and down the icy snowy hills from our house. The chicks were there all right, peeping away in their little box. Fortunately, we live in a farming town, so no one thought we were too strange sitting in the waiting room at the tire fixing place with a box of peepers on my lap.

We all arrived home safe and sound and got the chicks settled in their washtub. Then I realized what a predicament I had put my husband in. It was near the end of January and it was cold and windy. There was snow and ice everywhere, not a clear patch of ground to be found. We don't have a barn yet, just this little cabin. Michael looked at me and said, "Where and how am I supposed to build a chicken house?" Gulp.

The blizzard of 2011 on February 1st and 2nd along with several other snowy and windy events, slowed down his progress. Days and days out in the freezing cold till his hands were perpetually numb, and I was beginning to get the picture that I am far too impetuous. Yes, we needed chickens. No, we did not need to get them in the middle of winter. Believe me, I have apologized to him and to God many times.

All that to say, the chicken house is finished today. It is a balmy 64 degrees, the January thaw having come in February. It is none too soon, since the chickens are completely filling up the washtub by now. We are all looking forward to their new quarters, and some peace and quiet at night. Except for the coyotes howling at the gibbous moon.

Why the Ashland Stove

I have a new wood cook stove. I pondered this decision for a long time. In the process of building our tiny house, I realized that I couldn't fit in a wood heating stove and a regular electric or gas stove and oven. I had to choose one or the other. Since I like to be warm in the winter, I chose the wood cook stove.

Why the Ashland? I am sure there are many good cook stoves on the market. It so happened that Michael and I were visiting an Amish home in the fall and I mentioned to Mrs. Yoder that I would like to get a wood cook stove. She took me into the house and showed me her Ashland stove. It had the feature I wanted: a switch-over apparatus that made the heat go around the bottom and up the side and then out the stove pipe, thus heating from the bottom. There are some other stoves that do this, but they are too large for my little cottage. I fell in love with Mrs. Yoder's cook stove.

We drove all the way to Jamesport, Missouri to buy it. You gotta hand it to the Amish - they've been doing this off-grid thing for a long time and they have learned to make it as convenient as possible. Mr. Ropp spent 2 hours explaining everything to us and helping us to get all the pieces necessary for the stove pipe set-up. He was so kind and offered to give us advice any time we needed it. He advised me, "Now don't go cook your husband's birthday cake first thing in the oven. Try some biscuits first." We sat and fellowshipped a while, discussing everything from religion to politics.

One thing about Missouri is that there are many Amish communities. They are a treasure in our midst. Michael told one Amish fellow who was working for a local farmer, "One day people will come to you asking you to show them how to live as you do." "They will?" asked the shocked young man. Yes, they will. People like us, people who want to change the way they live, to slow down, to eat well, to enjoy friendships and communities.

I look forward to having folks over to eat meals cooked on our Ashland cook stove. But first I have to bake those biscuits!

Home at Last

On Friday, December 10th, we finally moved into our tiny cottage. It took twice as long to build, cost two or three times more than we thought, and it was a lot harder than we expected. We will need to add on before too long probably.

Since we moved in on a Friday evening just in time for Shabbat, I suggested we call the little house "Sabbath Rest". Michael commented that it had been anything but a rest for him, working full time and house building full time. Time for some winter hibernation!

We celebrated by going into town to see the new Narnia movie, "The Dawn Treader". Why is it that the book is always better than the movie? It wasn't too bad, though the change up in the story flow and the overdone sea serpent were a little distracting. I wonder what C.S. Lewis would think.

Now that we are in our tiny cottage, and out of the apartment in the consignment shop, we are breathing a sigh of relief. We have downsized significantly - from a 4-bedroom villa near the Mediterranean, to a one-room house with a loft on the prairie. Needless to say, there is a storage room a few miles away with most of our household goods! Still, it is an adventure and a joy to set out on the agrarian road.

Thinking through our goals for the next 3 to 5 years, we realize that it will take a good while to get a barn built, animals added, fences mended, our own water supply, some form of off grid energy, and so on. The key is to prioritize and to be frugal in every way.

I must say we are thankful for the amazing Christians we have met here in our area. They have been helpful, and have shared their wisdom with us in so many ways. One men's Bible study group even met out here and helped us move in our Ashland wood cook stove one evening. That thing was so heavy! But we are sitting here enjoying its warmth, and thinking back on the dear folks who have been so kind to us, strangers in their midst.

Back to the Blog

Hello again. It's been a long time. I want to catch up on all the events of the past few months. We have been busy to say the least.

We left Cyprus in May this year. We traveled to the United States before TSA got weird. After visiting with relatives in Texas and Louisiana for a few weeks, our household goods shipment finally arrived and we were able to make the long drive to Missouri. We arrived in Kirksville on June 19th, and started the long process of moving to our land.

First we camped in Thousand Hills State Park. It was lovely, but two weeks was a long camping trip! We met some great people, even a Russian woman from Kyrgyzstan. We were waiting for our water line and our electric service to be installed. This took a couple of weeks.

On July the 1st, we finally moved our tents to the land. Happy day!!! We were still camping, but we were on our own place. July 4th was our day for pouring the footings for our cabin. We wrote Scriptures on all the big posts, and prayed for God's blessing on our little home.

All went well until the second half of July. Michael began to feel sick and was in a lot of pain in his stomach area. He rested and he worked, until he couldn't stand it anymore. We went to a doctor, and he sent Michael to a surgeon. It happened to be a bad gall bladder that was about to burst. Since we had no insurance, we were floored by the cost the hospital quoted. We wondered if it were better to die than to be in debt for years. The doctor insisted that if the gall bladder wasn't removed immediately it could burst and cause gangrene and Michael's life would end much too early.

We went through with the operation, and then we had to check into a budget motel for a week to recover. Our cabin was put on hold. We lost two weeks of work time, but it was August and terribly hot.

One day while in town I stopped at a friend's store and told her about this new development. She said we should just move into the apartment on the upstairs floor of her store until Michael was on his feet and the cabin was finished. So we did. It is a consignment shop right downtown. This has been an interesting journey.

Meanwhile, back at the land, we were stuck since we needed help in a major way to put on the roof. One Saturday I went shopping at the local downtown farmer's market and met an Amish looking lady who told me her husband did handyman work. I told her we needed help. They went to their church group and the whole bunch decided to come out and help. We had a roof raising, and they also got the sheathing on the outside. What an incredible blessing!

I will post again soon and continue this saga. For now, we are humbled by the process.

Aimee

Agricultural Tyranny

Tyranny requires people to sustain the system that exploits them. The 'system' may be the brainchild of a person, a government (military or political), or an infrastructure. But regardless of the source of the tyranny it can only be managed through intimidation and deceit. Where people are afraid they invariably yield to exploitation. Where people are deceived they tolerate tyranny (whatever its ilk) for as long as they remain deceived about the alleged benefits of the tyrannical system.

Whether intentional or not, the tyranny against local agricultural autonomy has two forms -- urbanization and industrialization. Where house is joined to house, so that the land can no longer sustain its inhabitants, agriculture becomes the slave of luxury. Everyone needs to eat but not everyone wants to work to grow the food they need to survive. That 'odious' task is relegated to those seen as 'less sophisticated laborers' -- in other words, to family farmers. By default, urbanization tyrannizes local agriculture.

To avoid the distasteful stigma of human agricultural exploitation (and to turn a healthy tax-profit in the process), governments usually promote agricultural industrialization. In this way, rather than exploiting their fellow man, they are able to exploit the efficiency of machines and the fertility of the land. However, the long-term productivity of the land is better served when tended personally by the smallholder rather than by industry. Of course, it may be legitimately argued, this effort neither makes one extravagantly wealthy nor is it industrially efficient. But is that really important in the epic scheme of things?

It is true that more men will have to sacrifice more time and personal effort to make the smallholder's land 'fruitful' than under the management of a centralized industrial regime. Yet, at the very least, these personal efforts at local cultivation will feed one's family if not the nation, resulting in one less family on the government dole. Farming will also keep one's children out of trouble while engaging them in meaningful labor that promotes a healthy work ethic, good nutrition, and strong bodies (assets to any nation).

Where there are many houses, there is no land left to tend and land that is no longer tended cannot sustain the luxury of the people living on it. For, ultimately, the rich are sustained by the fruitfulness of the land and even the wealthy perish where the land is made barren. But the industrial solution, since it wears out the land through its relentless exploitation, offers little long-term hope for resolving this dilemma. For where the land is cultivated more by industry than by families it quickly loses its long-term fertility.

What is the lesson to be learned here? Agriculture cannot sustain industry. It was never meant to. It cannot sustain that which exploits it to death and all industry (in some measure) exploits agriculture as reliably as the wealthy exploit the poor. Poverty is always the wholesale price of extravagance and greed. Luxury both causes and becomes the eventual victim of its own exploitation.

Thus, the tyranny of luxury that further impoverishes the poor also eventually erodes the foundations of a nation's health and wealth. This is the fruit of agricultural tyranny -- that a people who can no longer provide for themselves bankrupt the nanny state they've created to serve them. Under such duress, the government's options are few -- revolution, repentance, or war. In the current social venue, where an expedient solution will only compound the problem, the right choice rests on the courage and humility of a nation's leaders.

Michael Hennen

Valiant for Truth

Lies are rooted in fear and unbelief -- the truth in faith and love. It takes courage to tell the truth. Those who fear justice will never speak it. Those that walk in love can speak nothing else, for love is always just. It cannot be otherwise. But because justice is always unpopular with those whom it convicts of sin, love and truth require great courage.

Truth and justice are as inseparable as lies and injustice. Truth and love are as inseparable as lies and fear. We speak the truth to those we love. We lie to those whom we do not esteem or to those whom we fear do not esteem us. And in so doing, we plant seeds of injustice in the soil of fear and reap a harvest of war, suspicion, and hate.

Because they fear justice, liars cannot afford to speak the truth. But those that love God and their neighbors cannot afford to speak lies. Truth is the root of justice and love is the root of truth. As our love grows cold, so does our passion for truth. As truth perishes, so does justice. But love is always just and justice is built on truth. Love speaks truth for the sake of justice. Justice requires truth for the sake of love. Truth and love are of the Lord.

But because we have bent our tongues toward deceit, we cannot recognize the Lord. We proceed from evil to evil because we are not valiant for truth. We walk with slanderers and deceive our neighbors because we have taught our tongues to speak lies. We dwell in the midst of deceit and weary ourselves to commit iniquity and, through our tolerance of deceit, we refuse to know the Lord (Jeremiah 9:3-6).

Being valiant for truth in the midst of a sinful world requires more than social outrage, it requires a commitment to suffering for righteousness sake. It requires a willingness to suffer the scourge of unpopularity and the cross of persecution. These are not something we seek, as if suffering, unpopularity, and persecution were priceless treasures. Rather, they are something we cannot avoid if we love the truth.

It is the truth that sets us free and it is lies that bind us. Those we love, we seek to liberate from the bondage of deceit. But lies proliferate wherever our love has grown cold. Love cools wherever things are valued above relationships. Being valiant for truth is not only about justice, it is about love. To their destruction, we allow those whom we do not love to continue in their deception. But to their salvation, we valiantly proclaim truth to those whom we love.

This is what God did for us and what He expects us to do for our fellow man. In a world bent on deceit and greed, in love, we are to be valiant for truth. If this were easy, it would not require courage. Regardless of the love that is in our hearts for our fellow man, we can expect severe resistance to the truth, for it will always convict men of their sin and those that love their sin more than they love truth will hate both truth and its messengers.

They will lie to conceal the truth and commit acts of violence to silence the witnesses that testify against their injustice. But nothing can silence the truth, for when the lies have run their course the truth will remain, and those that have been valiant for truth will shine like the stars in the heavens.

Michael Hennen