Responsibility

I'm getting excited about raising chickens again this coming year.  We raised 100 last year and butchered them all by hand (yes, including the feathers).  What an unbelievable experience that was!  It spawned a lot of good conversations with friends and family.  I think most people, at least at the outset, were very unsure of what I was talking about.  Though my wife and family were totally on board with this, we talked about it for an entire year before we actually did anything.  Now, to us that entire time was spent learning.  We visited family farms and assisted them in their poultry endeavors.  I devoured blogs, books, magazines, and websites related to poultry just to understand what I would encounter.  When it was time for chicks to arrive, we were ready.

Or so we thought.

Despite our best efforts there was still a learning curve.  You can read more about it in three articles here.  I think, though, that the learning itself was most of the fun.  Certainly the chicks were cute and all and we had great fun in watching them grow, but the greatest benefits is that we now have a knowledge of what to do.  Certainly we are by no means experts.  There is so much more to learn and experience.  Yet there is a knowledge and I can do something for myself.  My children now know exactly where our chickens come from and the joys and pains associated with it.  It is in this feeling that I think life becomes more simple.

Imagine this all too realistic scenarios:  it's the dead of winter and there are three inches of snow on the ground.  The local weather person has just announced that another 10 inches are coming our way.  People begin the mad rush to the local store.  What are they searching for?  Additional food, bottled water, generators (to produce heat mostly), and various and sundry necessities.  They stand in line for hours waiting for these things in hopes of getting the goods before someone else does.  The stress and emotions of it all become overwhelming and verbal attacks begin.  Sometimes it even comes to fisticuffs (when was the last time you read that word in a blog?).  The sum total of it all is a wearying, disappointing mess.

Yet there are those who avoid it all.  They are able to remain un-phased because they know how to handle things themselves.  They might have a stocked pantry or proper equipment.  They may have canned their foods as opposed to freezing them.  Perhaps they have a water filtration system that works without electricity.  The possibilities are endless.  Compared to the scenario at the store, it sounds pretty simple.

The fact of the matter is that we have lost the art of doing for ourselves.  Now, let me be clear; I do not advocate the life of a "lone wolf" who needs nuthin' and no one.  I think this is contrary to the way we were designed.  We were designed to need God and to need each other.  Nor am I a survivalist.  As I sit here in my argyle sweater sipping a cup of Bigby coffee (take that Starbucks lovers!) I would not be looked upon by the great woodsman of yesteryear as  the pinnacle of rugged manliness. 

What I'm advocating is a chance to go out and learn to do for yourself and your family.   We've come a long way from what our Founders intended.  They had no idea that we would be demanding government involvement in pay structures of CEO's and national health care options.  They assumed you and I would help our neighbor's out in times of disaster, not verbally assault the government for not moving fast enough.  We are responsible for ourselves both individually and corporately.  When will we start acting like it?  I think that when we start to take on that responsibility we will understand simplicity in a whole separate level.  When we finally learn to live in the community that Christ called us to, we will take on the simplicity of life that He intended.