Creating Farmily

They say you can choose your friends, but not your family. Wendell Berry has written about the health of the farms in a society as a good indicator of the health of its nation. The spirit of connection (the real meaning of religion- from ligare to "bind",) inspires me to think of a new way to extend family into farmily. I have seen it at the Grange as it closes each meeting to ask if there is anyone sick or in need in the community, in some churches, at recovery groups, but never in the polling booth. Democracy with a party system divides us: always in half, and sometime into dozens of factions. The fact that 51% can make a decision, (yes, sometimes it takes 67% to get by politicians blovination,) guarantees 49% will be unhappy, does not a farmily make. Consensus is a good start, but really at some point we have to realize that there is no me, only we; we are all in the same boat and nobody gets out alive. Enough is enough. Just enjoy it.

The Dalai Lama re-emphasized this

Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents, and then later on in our life when we are oppressed by sickness and become old, we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since at the beginning and end of our lives we are so dependent on other´s kindness, how can it be in the middle that we would neglect kindness towards others?Suffering originates from various causes and conditions. But the root cause of our pain and suffering lies in our own ignorant and undisciplined state of mind. The happiness we seek can be attained only through the purification of our minds.

Analysis Paralysis

Analysis Paralysis. A multiply syllabic way to say the more we study, the less we know until the final grid lock of too much information. One of the side effects of this, and really the only solution is to make decisions based on partial information, and the effects are stunning. This lesson was taught to me by an older Greek engineer in the preliminary design group at GE jet engines. I asked why GE and Pratt had two completely different ways to handle compressor non-linearity during start up. His response was considered and philosophical, way beyond mechanical engineering. He said that it was like two trains headed west from New York that encountered tiny course changes going through rail switches, less than a degree to the north or south; at the end of the day one is in San Francisco and the other in New Orleans. So it goes with partial adoption of what we believe to be absolute truth. The only thing we know absolutely is that we know nothing, absolutely.

Truth is, we are simpler than we think, or can

We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know…
~Wendell Berry from “The Country of Marriage”
How is it that the chickens I dispatched last Saturday
know more of life than me?

Progress not perfection.

Progress not perfection. So we (the editorial we) the blog "Nulla dies sine linea" and have pathetically only posted 5/22's of days. The perfect is sometimes the enemy of the good, it has been said and so we have to accept progress: we are 5 blogs ahead of last year, and perhaps as thoughts are put on paper they can be dismounted from the tapes repeating in my head. The little squirrels that circle in the cages are the ones who bring in the nuts!

Attention

Mowing the fields is an education in soil and microclimate. I notice the differences in plants, thistles here in a wet pocket, bluets here on the hillside, Rudbeckia in the higher dryer areas.....not to mention the shift to blueberries where the soil becomes drier and acidic. So the plants tell us where they like to grow, wheras agribusiness feels that if you flood enough water and fertilizers you can grow anything. Back to pushing on a rope?

Success

As you wander through this life brother
Whatever be your goal
Keep your eye upon the doughnut
And not upon the hole....old homily on a farmhouse bathroom wall.