Downwardly Mobile For Jesus

While growing up my wife attended a Presbyterian church in Flint, Michigan. She has quite a few fond memories of Christmas services, grandma singing in the choir, and helping in the soup kitchen. One memory, though, has haunted her into adulthood. She remembers one particularly cold Michigan winter day when she was helping in the soup kitchen. As she was setting up shop in the church's basement she noticed a line of people outside the church waiting for the food. She asked if they could be let in early just to get warm. They told her no. She asked if they could enter the main church building upstairs to get warm with the rest of the congregation. Again, no. So the message this church sent was, "We'll feed you when it's convenient for us, and as long as you don't mingle with the REAL churchgoers upstairs."

Now I know some of you reading this aren't 'religious'. That's fine. But I urge you to take another look at the life of Jesus. A lot of the CHURCH needs to take another look at the life of Jesus. For one, Jesus was homeless. He was misunderstood by his family, betrayed by some of his closest friends, oppressed by the religious leaders and politicians of his day, and didn't make a living wage. Sound like anyone you know? Sounds like MOST people I know.

I've worked a suburban church for the last several years, and this past winter my wife and I decided to leave the community we were serving in. Not because they were bad people. On the contrary, we met some life long friends there. But we just found that we're wired differently. We cried out for something deeper, more honest, and more dangerous than cookie cutter houses and pot lucks. We found that we were becoming more like the people upstairs than the people downstairs.

So we moved. It cost me a job, but probably saved my marriage. Now we garden and raise chickens. We spend $50 a week on groceries instead of $150. We talk to neighbors more. We live in a place that's more honest, and more dangerous. We live downstairs. What's my point?

Put on your apron. Pick up the ladle. Open the door.

Taking the bible study out of the church.

Last winter my wife and I were huddled up in our safe little suburban home on a particularly dangerous night. It was a snow emergency and not even BOGO panties at Victoria's Secret could get people out of the house. It was actually very peaceful, unusually quiet even for our neighborhood. So the sirens caught us off guard. You always feel a little more gravity in your tummy when you hear them get this close. We knew it was across the street so we did our American duty and gawked out the window. Three police cruisers, and ambulance and a fire truck slid down our road and parked directly in front of our house. We watched them buzz in and out of the house across the street, bumbling in the snow and violently pounding on Mike's chest under the flourescent lights through the open garage door. Once they loaded our neighbor into the ambulance, it took them nearly ten minutes to move teh firetruck which had blocked the medics in on our icy cul de sac. Later we found out from a friend of the family that they had to restart Mike's heart three times while they waited for the lumbering red behemoth to move. In the following days Mike was fighting for his life, given about a 30% chance of winning.

Enter: Doug. The following week I saw Mike's next door neighbor (my other neighbors across the street) struggling to get out of the driveway. I helped push their Saturn up the steep, ice-covered incline and paused to share a breath with Doug. Conversation went immediately to our unfortunate neighbor. "You know it's a shame no one came to get me the night mike had his heart attack", he lamented, "I'm a heart surgeon. I was home that night and had all of my gear upstairs."

Question: How many people living on your street have the unique ability to help when your life goes to hell in a handbasket? How would you know? Would anyone even notice you were suffering? Funny that in a world where we have the power to twitter people in Singapore, we don't have relationships with the heart surgeon, or the heart patient, next door.
I've been thinking about ways to reverse the isolation, the fear, and the illusion of safety that my wife and I endured in the suburbs. Working in a church for the past few years I'm familiar with the "bible study" as a social model. We call them community groups, or small groups, most of the time now.

What I'm wondering is, why does this have to be a uniquely religious experience? What's wrong with having the folks on Apple Valley Ct over for drinks and Scrabble? No office friends allowed! No church friends or fishing buddies or homeschool moms allowed! Get to know the people you share air with. Get to know their hurts, their gifts...and see if you might just get the chance to restart their heart some time.

1MoreWorkshop - Park + Vine June 1st

I'll be speaking at Cincinnati's green general store, Park + Vine on June 1st at 7pm. If you're in the area, be sure to stop by. I'll be speaking on food storage, gardening, sustainable living and disaster prep. Besides, where else can you get cloth diapers, fair trade organic chocolate, and spare bicycle parts?

Park + Vine
RSVP - 1MoreDayInfo@gmail.com

Swine Flu

The swine flu has a wiki page that seems very helpful and is updated often.

Also, you can track confirmed cases here.

Keep your head on this one, but keep aware. Also, if this dies out, don't let yourself get comfy this summer. The H1N1 could resurface this winter with a vengeance. The CDC has SOP for pandemic flu outbreaks that includes quarantine from 90 days to 6 months, or however long it takes for them to stockpile vaccine. Do you have 3-6 months of food IN YOUR HOME? Or, you could wait for FEMA to roll up to your house with a care package of peanut butter. ;)

1MoreTip #2

Pace Yourself To Brace Yourself

With two kids, two jobs and a ton of volunteer work, my free time has been reduced to ten minutes on the toilet reading the newest Cheaper Than Dirt catalog. So adding anything else to my schedule (or budget) would be like riverdancing on a house of cards. When my wife and I meet new people who are interested in preparing for hardships or disasters, or just in becoming more self-sufficient, we often see a look of mixed panic, despair and frustration. Once people are aware of the need to change their habits of voracious consumerism and dependence, they become overwhelmed with the amount of work they feel they have to do. This is exactly what we are trying to help people ALLEVIATE!
I spent the first 14 years of my life eating whatever I wanted. At age 12 I clocked in at 247 pounds. Once I realized that this lifestyle needed to stop, I tried everything I could to fix it overnight. Deal A Meal, Jenny Craig, Slim Fast...you name it. What worked? A complete lifestyle change accomplished over a long period of time. By age 19 I had dropped 90 pounds of fat, gained muscle and cured myself of asthma. Point: you spent your entire life getting used to being dependent on the system, so take it easy on yourself as you learn to do things a little differently.
Example: one of the greatest tragedies of our time is debt, personal and national. If you find yourself finally wanted to get rid of your lifestyle of debt, it's gonna take some time. My wife and I follow Dave Ramsey's plan, but there are a lot out there that work for a lot of people (Crown Financial, Good Sense, etc). Three years ago a credit counselor told my wife and I that our only options were bankruptcy or extra jobs. Already working full-time and not wanting to stiff my already po'd creditors, I decided to take it slow and figure out a better way. SO, like I changed my body, I found a system that slowly changed my habits and chipped away at my debt. We ended up paying off ten credit cards and loans in 16 months (over $12,000) without making a single extra dime, and without filing bankruptcy.
Moral: keep working hard, but give yourself grace. If food storage is your thing, pace yuourself and put away what you can when you can. If debt elimination is your priority, find a system that works and stick with it over time. If gardening is what your passionate about, Don't plant more than you can manage at first. Start with a couple boxes, or even just a couple containers and increase each year. The goal here is to readjust your mindset, gain skills, and LEARN TOGETHER.

1MoreLink

http://www.sesamestreet.org/ready/

Sesame Street has a preparedness curriculum. Freakin' sweet. Soon I'll be able to ask my three year old for advice on ultralighting my BOB.

1MoreLink

Be sure to check out the links section of this group. This is where I'll be posting most of the resources I think you might find useful. Everything from square foot gardening to zeroing your AR15. Here's a shameless plug for my wife's new blog about Urban Homesteading. Lot's of reports about our adventures gardening and raising chickens.

http://www.theurbanoutpost.blogspot.com/

1MoreTip #1

What if there were a flood or ice storm like we've seen several in the past few months and you had to remain in your home for several weeks? What if gas prices this summer were to cause a trucker strike and grocery store shelves were bare for over a month? Could you make it on what you have in your house right now?

Get a notebook and open your pantry. Roughly group your food on hand into meals and see how many days you could make it stretch. If you're like most Americans you'll have about a week's worth of food in the home. Here's a great way to start a small food reserve, courtesy of TheSurvivalPodcast.com:
Clear off a shelf in your pantry. This will be your food storage collection area. On your next few trips to teh store, but multiples of a few of your common items (two cans of tuna instead of one, four boxes of cereal instead of two). Remenber: store what you eat normally, so you don't have and (ahem) surpises if you ever have to depend on your stored food. Now, put the duplicate items on your empty pantry shelf. When the shelf is full, put it all into a Sterilite container and throw in in the basement. This is a great way to get a few more weeks of food in the home without spending a lot of extra money and time.

You can also apply this technique to things other than food. Make a first aid supplies collection shelf in the bathroom, or a water bottle collection area in the basement. Doesn't hurt to have a few flashlights/batteries, candles and even reading material if you're holed up in the house without power for an extended time. My family was without power for a week last year and the local Krogers were closed from the outage as well. We were grateful to have a little extra food on hand but didn't realize how hooked on TV we'd become!