Simple living

Phil Togwell and family where out with us last week and he has written a great little report on his visit, check it out here.

We don't actually have a well, we have a cistern that fills up rain water, it's all very clean and filtered and actually very soft water. The problem is it doesn't rain very much here, so last week we ran out of water. This was not a total disaster as you just get a lorry to bring you 10,000 litres up the hill to put in your cistern for about 80 euros.

This has made us all think about our water use, something I would imagine most people in the western world don't have to think about much. We have checked a few things out and found that just running the tap for the dishes waiting for the water to get hot wastes 4 litres, like wise for a shower. So on any given day we waste a minimum of 30 litres!

It's a similar situation with electricity, if you run a washing machine at night you deplete your solar batteries, if you leave an electrical item on standby you deplete the battery, forget to switch a light off and you further deplete the battery. When the battery gets depleted we then kick over to a petrol generator which isn't very eco friendly, this recharges the batteries.

It's almost like we have become reluctant energy and water conservers, we are totally not used to living this way it is good for us but can also be a little stressful. We could end up easily getting through 10'000 litres of water every two or three weeks and the generator costs about 500 euros to put 680 litres of fuel in.

Yet we do live in the western world and this isn't Africa I am catching a very small glimpse of what it must be like to have no water, but I can always just phone for a lorry!

To be honest I am becoming more eco conscious not solely because of the environment but because of the cost!

I am westernised and as far as I am concerned, on a convenience level, simple living sucks!!! but I am stuck with it and having to embrace it, which is good. I'm not a hippy although I would love a kaftan

Packaged food

The idea that our food was once an animal is often difficult to get our heads around. We sort of know it but the reality is that most of us eat packaged meat, me included. I don't often think about all the killing that goes on to provide us with a nice roast dinner.

Well tonight I shot my first Rabbit, a good clean shot, then a quick neck break just to make sure it was dead.

Robb and Sally thanks for the sight. I have practiced much and tonight when it mattered it was "hasta la vista bunny"

Heres the evidence




I don't feel very deep at the moment, my previous post was rubbish, I'll just stick to a bit of reportage until the juices flow again.

Style over substance

I've just realised that i am becoming a bad blogger! As you can see i have been busy planting onions. You have to put manure into the land, I'm spreading a rather pungent concoction of sheep pooh!

You should check out Helen and Bruces blogs for some great photos of our life here.

I will try to improve.... life here is still going well.

Anonymous made a great comment on a previous post "Is church what 'church people' try to define, redefine and generally get their knickers in a twist about while 'non church people' are trying to get in?"

I totally agree with this, probably would change it slightly most non church people aren't trying to get in, they probably aren't even giving it a second thought.

The other thing is that most people who don't go to church have a pretty traditional view of church and a lot of the new things happening out and about could look weird and cultish!

I agree we need to change in order to more fully engage with the world, but I am a little fed up with the emerging philosophies and the mega church tyrannies! Mark Driscoll is irrelevant. Brian McLaren is irrelevant and everyone in between unless they are grounded in an incarnation-al expression of jesus following.

Do you think we have got caught up in form and structure when in reality they matter very little. i look at Alpha and see a way of connecting with people all over the world that is outworked in a traditional church framework. They are more concerend with the lost than what they look like.

Maybe the emerging debate is an out working of a western label orientated style culture and i don't just mean the ascetic. The thinking, the words they are old debates dressed in new clothes. Oops! maybe I am being negative.

Weekends work

I plowed my first field this weekend, sorry no photographs. I will post some soon.

Due to the kindness of my blog readers we were able to buy a rotivator, it's a back breaker and a shoulder maker. I have felt like I have done a 4 hour upper body workout. The biggest thing is that it tries to run ahead of you and you need to hold it back as it churns up the land, this is easier said than done. Stones are another problem the blades chuck stones out which can kill the shins and it will also leap in the air if it hits a big one, you end up with this 60 kilo machine bucking in the air. All good fun.

Bruce cranked up the bread oven over the weekend, check out his photos. I asked Pepe our landlord how old the bread oven was and he said "older than us". We are enjoying getting this place working again.

We talked to our land ladies mother and asked her about the house. It is the oldest house in Benimussa and was built by the Moors (Arabs) over 500 years ago. It then fell into the hands of the Serra family, who where very religious. This house became renowned in the area as a place you could come if you needed food or somewhere to sleep for the night. She also said "they prayed to much" they where always praying. During the civil war they provided refuge for 10 people on the run from the army and hid them in caves in our hills for months, sending a donkey up with food. They would often let people sleep in their hay barn and had massive fiestas up in these hills where they fed many people.

So the history of this house is that it was a place of hospitality and prayer, how weird is that.

We are off to buy some potatoes this morning to plant in our fields, then I need to put some fences up around the plowed land before we plant anything else, as the rabbits will try to eat everything. I nearly shot one on Saturday I fired a round off and missed, it ran under a bush, I followed it, couldn't find it, then I noticed it moving, it was 3 feet away, I panicked and shot from the hip, totally missing it, then it ran off to safety.

It's probably going to eat all my lettuce in revenge.

Church

“Church isn’t where you meet. Church isn’t a building. Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let’s not go to Church, let’s be the Church.” Bridget Willard

Amen to that sister

Change

I have been thinking about change a lot over the last couple of days. Change is enevitable it happens constantly and comes to us all. I read a quote in the Science Museum in London which said something like "The only thing that will not change is the fact that there will always be change"

I love this from W.H. Auden.

We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

I also liked this quote:

After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over. ~Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958

A friend of mine once said "If we always do what we have always done, we will always have what we always had"....

Shrinking God

We have Billy and Caroline Kennedy out with us for a few days, which is really great. They have to come to hang out and do a little bit of training with us.

I have a cold which is bugging me. I was going to say flu, but it would only be man flu.

I love training, learning new things, being challenged to grow.

I guess this whole new move has proved to be a massive learning curve and probably will continue to be one.

Comfortable-ness is something we create no matter what are circumstances are, we create little worlds of comfort. Or we soon become acclimatized to new things. When we first went out on the west end it made me feel uncomfortable but after a while you become used to it, you learn a lot, but you still become comfortable. This is natural.

I realise that we probably learn more through periods of discomfort and upheavel than we do when everything is going well. This is probably why I find it hard to subscribe to some of the faith ministries that are out there. There is a philosophy that Christians should be blessed and that blessing should be in a smooth and prosperous life. I can't run with that.

Read Job, look at the life of David, trail through the book of Acts or any particular book in the Bible and most of it was written by people who went through hard times, yet hung on to their faith.

My biggest worry about faith ministries is that in the long term they actually damage peoples faith. If you are meant to be healthy, financially stable and blessed. Where do you go when it all goes wrong.

You believe for healing and someone dies. Is that your fault or Gods? Your faith takes a battering.

You believe you are meant to be financially blessed. How does that work for a christian in a refuge camp in Darfur?

My other worry with the whole faith ministry scene is that if you ever try to talk to someone involved in it, it's like trying to talk to a jehovah witness. They have so many prepared formulaic bible verses, interpreted in a modernistic and scientific sense that it is hard to argue with them. Their God has been reduced to a slot machne, it you say the right thing, pray the right prayer quote the the right bible verse than he will deliver. A + B + C = D

Where's the mystery in that? How can these people have the audacity to believe that they have sussed who God is and can make him work for them just by following the prescribed teaching? They have worked God out, they know what to say to get certain results. If they don't get the results they expect they ignore them because it could look like they are doubting and then the Big Man will punish their lack of faith.

If it all goes wrong, they don't blame God they blame themselves, with an almost "must try harder next time" kind of attitude.

It's all to simplistic for me, and I am actually a man who likes simplicity.

Faith ministries are reductionistic, they shrink God.

This is my favourite job, wood splitting. My friend Sally took these photos I think they are great.

It's been a good week here on the farm, my best yet. I think the temptation is to run away with loads of ideas and dreams for the place, which are necessary and good, without first building a proper rhythm.

The words of the week for me are foundations and perseverance.

We've got to persevere but also we need to lay good foundations, without feeling the pressure of instantly needing to deliver a full on farm program. I checked yesterday and so far just through this blog there has been over £2000 from the donate button towards the move, which is absolutely fantastic. Thank you for giving, words can't really express how humbling it is to be help in this way.




Back to foundations, someone once gave me a great piece of advice "don't let other people live out their dreams through you" this hasn't happened yet but you do occasionally in life meet people who have lots of suggestions about what you should do and how you should use what you have been given, without any willingness to do it themselves.

Of course take advice, listen to counsel, implement wise suggestions, always be open to mature direction and correction, but always remember your own calling and God's specific task for you. Thats what I am learning.

In leadership you will get people who want authority without responsibility, you can't have authority without responsibility. People who sometimes just want to sit in an advisory role can want authority without responsibility, or even people without a role always want to tell you what you should do without actually wanting to do it themselves. Just thoughts.

The wood looks great once it is split. Thank you for journeying with me.

It's worth it

We are a few weeks in now.

What am I learning.

1. Sometimes you don't realise how much you appreciate things until you don't have them.

2. Other timers time you realise you had things in your life that you don't really need.

3. Haven! an interesting word. Your home is your haven that place where you go and escape to completely be yourself, once you share your home with others that sense of haven takes a while to be restored.

4. Sharing a house with people is completely different than having people stay in your house.

5. I don't miss television.

6. I am enjoying limited internet access.

7. I miss the telephone, I prefer to hear peoples voices over email.

8. Grace

9. Rabbits are tricky little things to shoot. I have shot at 6 rabbits and missed them all.

10. You have to ensure you don't lose a sense of family, we have created a family space in our large bedroom to watch DVD's and play games or just read.

11. Wood cutting at 4pm on a sunny day will result in mosquito bites. I had 20 bites plus sunburn.

12. I am better with an axe than a chainsaw.

13. Realistically moving here has been as tough as leaving England to move to Ibiza.

14. It's worth it.

15. To stop smoke blowing down your woodburner you need to keep your fire very hot.

16. Lemon trees and pomegranate trees have thorns.

17. Community living as an ideal sounds wonderful, community living in reality takes hard work.

18. It's worth it.

19. Growth is being forced upon me and I am happy with that.

20. Pushing a wheel barrow up a hill is good for the heart, being dragged down the hill by it filled with wood is bad for the back.

21. This place will be great for so many people on so many levels.

22. It's worth it.