…our rockers?  But hey, I never wanted a sedentary life anyway. <g> We have been asking some hard questions lately.  Questions along the lines of "this is your life, are you happy with who you are?"  Would you be happy to be this in 20 years?  Is it possible there is more? How far outside the box are we willing to think to get there? 

Well, the short answer is mostly.  We have lots to be thankful for. We have a good life. It comes with a hefty price tag though in terms of time and money. (ie debt)  We suspect God does not applaud that part.  Nor are we thrilled with the part that requires Dad to be gone for most of his children’s waking hours. Thinking inside the box left few options. Happiness requires a mortgage, a computer, a car payment, and a lot of classes and lessons right? We don’t know how to do (fill in the blank) therefore we couldn’t possibly (fill in the blank) right?  It seems that there are folks out there who would disagree.

This conversation will take some time. It requires us to look at housing and lifestyle in different ways. It comes with a hefty learning curve.  Who knew simplicity could be so challenging? In this day and age, when most of us are incapable of providing our most basic needs, the idea of meeting those needs ourselves asks a lot of a person. Not more than people have given for all of time however.

I realize this post begs more questions than it answers. I have already shared my ambivalence about the screens so I will have to tackle it in small portions. Here are a few sites to get started:

Off Grid Living  asks how much of your chosen life is nourishing you as a human being? Are our choices nourishing us or simply putting food on the table.  Not that putting food on the table is a bad thing.  We have 9 people of various sizes who happen to be quite fond of food put upon their table. ; )  But our choices determine whether we are thriving or merely surviving. 

Tyra and James at innerexplorations have written an ebook called the Treasures of Simplicity. If you have looked around the ranch blog at all you could probably deduce that anything with a name like that would send a little rush through me. I printed off the whole document and we read it aloud on the way to pick up hay last wknd. Here are two people who took the challenge to make nourishing choices seriously. In the process they found out more about themselves and the world than they expected. Their reflections about institutionalized housing and non-instant gratification are worth considering. I am not as big a fan of Jungian psychology as they however. Sift, as usual.

The pictures remind me of the very first homeschool book I read some 18 years ago, Homeschooling for Excellence by the Colfaxes.  They made the news back then when their four homeschooled boys got scholarships to ivy league schools.  They, too, had stepped off the corporate merry-go-round and bought raw acreage in Northern CA. Together with the boys they carved out a homestead with their hands and built not only a home, but a life.  They have a follow-up book called Hard Times in Paradise which details the homesteading itself and the evolution of the homeschool phenomenon.  I am picking up this second title soon.