Problem is that I really like the shrubs they like. Bummer. But since my allergies are bad I have to have a pretty low maintenance landscape. I did the “shake the bugs into a bucket of soapy water” thing every day for a couple of weeks last year. It worked well, but my shrubs still looked terrible.

Let me know how your new method works.

My wife, four kids, and myself recently went back to Chicago for an extended weekend visit. I was shocked by some of what I heard and what I saw at our old church. Short term focus to get mediocre results with little to no long term goals or planning (with few exceptions of course). We had looked forward to returning and worshiping, what we came into was lots of people needing counseling – the beatles had invaded, the pesticides overwhelmed. We everyone there, bumps bruises and secrets and we pray, even more so now for them.

Persistence. Patience. Prayer in faith.

Hope you have a good growing season!

My wife an I are trying to run our farm using sustainable methods. It blows my mind that some folks in the Church consider the whole idea of sustainable living as some plot by the antichrist. They turn the whole thing into some kind of wacky conspiracy.

I don’t get people sometimes, especially in the Church.

As to patience, I think all the reasons youmention are valid. Our business mentality translates into our churches as if we’ve got to be profitable quarter after quarter or the shareholder will revolt and kick the board and CEO out. No long range plan or goal exists.

But that’s insane. And it’s insane not only in our churches, but in our businesses. The Asian countries and their businesses are going to clean our clocks one day because, to them, it’s all about long term strategies. They possess remarkable patience.

The Church used to have remarkable patience, too, but we adopted our culture’s and business’s love of the short-term. That ruined much of what we do. Now we operate with impatience and reap the results.

One of the best books I ever read was Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende. I wouldn’t go as far as he did to make the change to a simpler life (I like electricity), but the ideas he raises about what technology does to us, how we wind up serving it instead of the other way around, should give us pause.

I’m a bit tired of the modern concept that we need to keep adding to produce better outcomes. What about subtracting? What can I subtract? Or what can I naturally keep as is?

I love lunch meat. To me, no more perfect food exists than the humble sandwich.

But I don’t like the staggering amount of processing that goes into making lunch meat. Does it really need a half dozen different kinds of preservatives? For years they told us that nitrite and nitrate preservatives weren’t harmful. Now they know otherwise and are trying to backpedal. I’ve recently started buying Hormel’s Natural Choice lunch meats because they’ve found a way to remove all the preservatives by using crushing amounts of pressure to kill bacteria in the packaged meat. I know that Hormel’s still buying meat that’s not organically raised, but I’ll support them in this trend away from adding.

In fact, at this point in my life, I automatically question anything that begins with an addition to something already existing. God did a perfect job making this world, and though sin ruined it, He still found a way to make it work. He made ways for us to find answers that don’t throw the Creation into further turmoil. I trust His thinking. I wish more people did.