Meaningless, meaningless

I just got back from visiting the Habitat For Humanity home site that my son Rusty is supervising. He has 15 students from Portland State that he is trying to keep busy. They don't have any construction skills to speak of. Their accomplishments over the last two days are probably less than what two good framers could do in one day. The students all feel good about what they have accomplished, and they have contributed their time to help people less fortunate. This is a similar problem to me as my experience at Koinonia farm. I really like efficiency and high productivity. When I used to build houses I would often tell buyers who wanted to do some of their own work on their house "You would be better off working at what you do and hire a professional to do the work". Still I had people taking time off of their jobs and working on their house, usually doing inferior work and taking longer than it should, messing up my schedule. I can't help but think the world would run better if everyone would just do what they are best suited for, but how do you know what your field should be? Maybe one of those students will come away from their experience and revolutionize home construction.

I have recently started a study of Ecclesiastes, a book I find humorous and depressing at the same time. The "Teacher" says everything is meaningless. All of man's efforts, whether for industry or pleasure are "chasing after the wind". If he is right, then I guess I need to lighten up and not let other peoples efforts bother me. My father always used to say "a hundred years from now it won't make any difference" he's probably right about most things. It is becoming clearer to me that much of what we work for and spend our time doing is truly meaningless. I am not advocating that everyone just stop working, but maybe change our perspective. Work hard at what you enjoy, do good for others, spend time on noble causes, opt out of the "Rat Race".

This is still a work in progress, just keeping you updated.

Koinonia Farm

I've been putting off writing this blog because I'm not really sure what to say. My first impressions were not changed that much after my stay. Koinonia was started in 1942 by Clarence Jordan. He was a man who grew up in privilege, graduated from college with a degree in agriculture and went on to get a PhD in new Testament Greek. He was troubled by the prejudice and segregation of his time. He wanted to use his degree in agriculture to help poor farmers improve their situation. He used his Greek knowledge to make some translations of the bible called Cotton Patch Gospels. He also wanted to improve race relations. He used the example of early Christians in the book of Acts as his blueprint. He wanted everyone to share with each other and not consider anything their own. He and his wife and another couple bought a large farm in an impoverished part of Georgia. He was considered a harmless kook at first. He paid the farm help the same pay whether they were black or white, that didn't sit well with many. Then the civil rights movement got going and Koinonia was seen as a problem. They were shot at and there were some fires and businesses that traded with them were boycotted and burned. Koinonia persevered and started selling their products mail order. Clarence Jordan will probably never get the recognition he deserves, he remained at Koinonia until his death in 1969. Since then Koinonia has gone through many changes, with the last change trying to return more to it's roots. They are trying to make the farm more environmentally friendly. They share work and resources, and seem to get along pretty well. They are a community whose main goal is to promote peace. I don't think that is a bad goal, but I got the sense that they were content to live a simple life, just think nice thoughts and live a peaceful relaxed life. My main problem is I see that as somewhat lazy. Now here in Irvine I am confronted with this community thats main goal seems to be to live the good life. Everything is clean and new and in order. You don't see any cars older than 10 years every yard is well cared for, everyone is busy and in a hurry. I'm starting to feel like the writer of Ecclesiastics, "vanity, vanity, rich and poor, industrious or lazy, the same fate comes to all"(my paraphrase). I know the people here are too caught up in unimportant things, that was driven home at Legoland yesterday. I watched a woman get on a ride with her son and go on the entire ride and get off while on her cellphone. I think my problem is I can identify more with these Californians than the Koinonians. I really want to say that their simple life is wrong, but I can't. I don't want to live that way, I really like all my things. I have to do some more thinking on this, later though, I have to go play with my grand kids now. Let me leave you with this quote that I wish I had never found.

"When an honestly mistaken man is confronted with the truth, he must either cease being mistaken, or stop being honest". Author unknown

Back on the left coast

We left Koinonia farm Friday morning, we went into Americus and toured the Habitat for Humanity Global village. They have some actual huts and shanties that people live in in some of the slums of the world setup in a little village, then you go to some examples of the kind of homes they help build to replace them. If you are ever near Americus Georgia I recommend that you visit. The houses they build are pretty basic, I doubt you could get many Americans to live in them, but compared to what they were living in they are quite a step up. We left there and hit the road heading west. We drove out of Georgia, across Alabama and Mississippi and stopped for the night just across the Mississippi river in Louisiana. D'Linda only wanted to drive 6 or 8 hours a day, but I didn't mind the driving, and didn't want to just sit somewhere. I remembered that I wanted to stop at The Grove Church in Chandler AZ, we figured out the time it would take and I figured we had about 7 hours to spare, so we could even stop and get some sleep. We headed out early and got halfway across Louisiana before it got light. We made it to Fort Worth about noon and found a Costco Gas. We had missed them, we had been using them until we hit Houston on the way east, but they don't have any in the Deep South. We also picked up a couple of audio books there. We listened to one across most of west Texas, it is pretty boring scenery there and it helped. We stopped for the night about 150 miles east of El Paso. I woke up about 1:30 and didn't think I would be able to get back to sleep so I figured it would assure us of making Chandler before 11:00. I put in the other book and headed out. We made it to western New Mexico before I started getting tired so we pulled into a truck stop to get a little nap. The wind was blowing pretty hard there and it had been work keeping the motorhome on the road. We still had a couple hours to spare so I took a nap. I woke up and went into the restroom, when I went in the wind was still blowing, but it wasn't that cold. I didn't think I was in there that long, but when I came out it was colder and starting to snow. I didn't think it would last long so I decided to head out. We only made it two exits before we had to pull off, it was snowing so hard the wipers couldn't keep up. There went our two hour cushion. We headed out again, but we were going slower because of the wind and we were afraid it would start snowing again. By the time we made it to Tucson we had decided we weren't going to make it to Chandler in time so we went to Costco for gas. The weather cleared up and it was beautiful the rest of the day. We drove up to Mesa and went to a big flea market, then to Suncity and spent two nights in Karen's (D'Linda's good friend) mother's driveway. We left there just before dawn and made it to Andrea's house just before noon today. The girls were excited to see us, and it is great to be here. I'm not sure how long we'll stay, but we checked the weather back home and it says rain for as far as they can see, so we might stay for awhile. I will write more about Koinonia soon, but I'm still trying to sort out my thoughts on it.