Backyard Garden Harvest

The Royal Family spent an hour in the garden today and harvested some purple potatoes, carnival carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions (not pictured) and the last ear of corn. We are still harvesting the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, carrots, melons, and squash. We might get another run at the strawberries.

There is something deeply wholesome about working the earth and bringing forth a harvest. It can be a lot of work. Our garden this year is a weedy mess due to the huge quantities of time that the King has spent away from home and the fact that the Queen is ready to deliver royal child #6 in a few weeks...but in spite of that, we have been regularly harvesting lots of wonderful garden products and enjoying them in the kitchen.

The Five Minute University

A hilarious and far too accurate parody on the value of a typical university education today. Of course, there are exceptions...but university education generally ceased to be a place where you learn to think a long time ago - now it's just a place where you receive training for a career.

Trebuchet!

I just returned from Boy Scout Camp - there was a class on medieval engineering where we built a trebuchet - so awesome! Time to build a home version...

The Danger with Busy-ness

You blink and your little kids are not so little anymore. Isn't it crazy? We all have our reasons, but many of you can probably identify with me - the busy-ness scale is off the chart in my life. This photo is taken from an airplane about a week ago - I went up with our pipeline patrol pilot to see what my project in Colorado looked like from the air. When combined with all of life's other activities, this project has kept me hopping, and has taken priority over some things in my personal life.

What do we do to counter the craziness that we experience when life gets so busy? I don't yet have all of the answers, but I'll be blogging about it here as I figure some out...and I hope to hear from others about what they do to cope.

Outfitter Stove

This is the new outfitter stove that my brothers and I picked up for use in the mountains - it weighs around 80 pounds and everything fits inside the stove for convenience in transportation. It has a 3 gallon water tank on the side - you always have hot water available and it improves heat retention in your living space. The stovepipe nests inside itself - it grows from 5 inches at the bottom to 6 inches at the top. Very cool - we are going to enjoy using it very much. If you're looking for something similar, go to the Cylinder Stove website.

Do Whatever Brings You Back to Your Heart and the Heart of God

From Wild at Heart:

Against the flesh, the traitor within, a warrior uses discipline. We have a two-dimensional version of this now, which we call a “quiet time.” But most men have a hard time sustaining any sort of devotional life because it has no vital connection to recovering and protecting their strength; it feels about as important as flossing. But if you saw your life as a great battle and you knew you needed time with God for your very survival, you would do it. Maybe not perfectly—nobody ever does and that’s not the point anyway—but you would have a reason to seek him. We give a halfhearted attempt at the spiritual disciplines when the only reason we have is that we “ought” to. But we’ll find a way to make it work when we are convinced we’re history if we don’t.

Time with God each day is not about academic study or getting through a certain amount of Scripture or any of that. It’s about connecting with God. We’ve got to keep those lines of communication open, so use whatever helps. Sometimes I’ll listen to music; other times I’ll read Scripture or a passage from a book; often I will journal; maybe I’ll go for a run; then there are days when all I need is silence and solitude and the rising sun. The point is simply to do whatever brings me back to my heart and the heart of God.

The discipline, by the way, is never the point. The whole point of a “devotional life” is connecting with God. This is our primary antidote to the counterfeits the world holds out to us.

All Men Die; Few Men Ever Really LIVE

The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live. Sure, you can create a safe life for yourself...and end your days in a rest home babbling on about some forgotten misfortune. I’d rather go down swinging. Besides, the less we are trying to "save ourselves," the more effective a warrior we will be. Listen to G. K. Chesterton on courage:

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

Eldredge, Wild at Heart , p.169