What To Do?
In the next few weeks I will be posting a series of Wednesday Quotes to lay out a few basic principles and a concrete plan for stewardship in every household, since the household is where caring for people and caring for the natural world come together, naturally.
Transcending Mere Efficiency
In the noise of an efficiency and technology driven world, we find it difficult to hear and respond to what nature is saying. You can learn to listen and live in accord with a wisdom deep within reality.
Mending Broken Ties
Socio-economic practices push our interactions with the natural world toward bodily comfort and acquisitiveness, alienating us from our place in nature. By reconnecting with the natural world you can re-forge broken ties in your life.
Finding Our Place
We feel we’re missing something of being human in this world. If you find your place in stewarding nature, both giving and receiving, you fulfill both human nature and the order of the world around us.
Featured Posts:
A Great Reason to Maintain Our Home with Care
“Now to cultivate something is to devote one’s attention to it. And we can cultivate something in two ways: either to make what is cultivated better, as we cultivate a field... or to make ourselves better by the cultivating, and in this way we cultivate wisdom.”...
Knowing Where Our Food Comes From
“A significant part of the pleasure of eating is one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world form which food comes.” Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating” in What are People For? There are very good reasons to consider where our food comes from. Let us...
Stewardship Plan for Everyone: Conserve, Beautify, Fructify
Stewardship is using the natural world carefully so that it thrives and thus serves human life well. The natural world provides food, cloths, and shelter, each with its proper delight and beauty. It can also form our mind and character, teaching us basic lessons of...
Recent Posts:
What Autumn Offers
“Autumn sheds its varied windfalls.” Virgil, Georgics Nature is constantly prodding us, offering us something to humanize our life. Often we do not hear or notice. So, nature strives all the more, changing things up and trying to get our attention. This is always the...
Weeds and Life
“Daddy, why do weeds grow faster than carrots?” I was really struck by this question as my son and I worked together in the quiet of a beautiful evening in our garden. Surely all plants are good in some way and have their place in the natural order. But nonetheless...
Learning to Hear Again, Starting with Nature
“A man may have hearing and yet not be hearing...” Aristotle, On the Soul We probably take hearing for granted, as though simply something we can do at will. But what if without realizing it we are actually hard of hearing, or even deaf? Hearing is a wonderful and...
Choosing Toil this Summer
“The Father himself Willed that the path of tillage be not smooth, And first ordained that skill should cultivate The land, by care sharpening the wits of mortals...” Virgil, The Georgics Summer has begun. As a kind of new beginning, every season offers a natural...
A Great Reason to Maintain Our Home with Care
“Now to cultivate something is to devote one’s attention to it. And we can cultivate something in two ways: either to make what is cultivated better, as we cultivate a field... or to make ourselves better by the cultivating, and in this way we cultivate wisdom.”...
Out Standing on the Earth
“Alone of all, the human race lifts up its head on high, and stands in easy balance with the body upright... Thy glance is upward, and thou dost carry high thy head, and so thy gaze is skyward...” Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy Philosophers and theologians,...
Craftsmanship Vs. Money-Making
“...you thought that the shepherd as a shepherd tends the sheep not with a view to their own good, but like a mere diner or banqueter with a view to the pleasures of the table; or, again, as a trader for sale in the market, and not as a shepherd.” Plato, Republic Both...
To Be or Not To Be, a Craftsman
“And aren’t the respective crafts by nature set over them to seek and provide what is to their advantage?” Socrates, Plato’s Republic Rereading the first book of the Republic, I was struck by a bolt of lightning. Plato saw the root question of human life. To be or not...
A Time in Life for Pruning, Now
Before she comes, prune the vines. It is better this way. Hesiod, Works and Days The other day my wife and I were pruning our peach trees. According to Hesiod we were late—for the star Arcturus (the ‘she’ in the quotation) appears at the end of February. As Hesiod...
The Economics of Splitting Wood by Hand
*This is a reposting of the first piece I ever posted online, almost exactly eight years ago, at Front Porch Republic. It has remained one of the most popular I’ve posted. Also, here is short video sharing my joy in splitting wood. Hilaire Belloc once wrote that he...
A Plan for Winter: Receive the Gift of Slowdown
“We’ve gotten stuck in the summer mode, in chronic summer... In fall and winter we should move into a new mode, a contractive and restorative mode... like coming home at the end of the day... with a sense of settling, of slowing down, of peace, of belonging, of...
Knowing Where Our Food Comes From
“A significant part of the pleasure of eating is one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world form which food comes.” Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating” in What are People For? There are very good reasons to consider where our food comes from. Let us...