Ready for an Adventure?

The other day I sent out the following E-mail to a couple of my friends and family. The only response I’ve gotten so far (besides the one’s I knew were on board) was from my mother who said “LET'S GO FOR IT”. I wasn’t expecting to hear that from her, but I guess God works in unexpected ways. huh?

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Dear Friends,

I’ve realized that my priorities have changed drastically since moving into our house in Shreveport. When we’ve moved in we had no children, but were planning on starting a family, and I loathed yard work. Since then we’ve expanded our family by 150% and, though I still hate the Weedeater, I’ve gained a new perspective to “yard work”. Yard is no longer just a plot of grass that I have to keep pristine for someone’s, I don’t really know who, approval, but a field of possibilities. And work is more than just toil but a labor of love. Having grown up in the city I never put much thought into where my food came from. The store right? The concept that I can take this tiny fleck of a seed, put it into the ground, and it is designed to grow into this large plant that will supply food to my family year after year, it just blows me away!

Many of your have heard me speak several times over the last year or two of my dream to one day own a good sized piece of land and run a smalltime “hobby farm”, with a large garden, a few chickens and maybe a cow or goat for milk. Actually, one of my lifetime aspirations now is to serve a Thanksgiving meal completely (or as much a possible) raised/grown by our family. It’s crazy I know. I’ve also mused over the idea of everyone moving together and starting a “commune”. For clarification, not commune as in communism, nor in the sense of hold hands and sing to the mother goddess either, but commune as in a community of likeminded friends and family, all living within a few miles of each other, working, eating, and raising children together. The commune thing has always been tongue-in-cheek, in part because I had no other name for it, and because I never thought that anyone would be as crazy as us to want to move to the middle of no where and get back to the land.

The other day a good friend of mine called me up out of the blue, something he never does, and started asking about my “commune” idea and how serious I was about it. It told him I thought it would be awesome if all the people I cared about lived in the same area instead of spread out all over (literally) the world. He and his wife had been talking about the concept of getting away from all the craziness of the world and thought my idea sounded exactly like what they wanted. So after some discussion, we decided, with God’s blessing, to try and make our dream a reality, over the next 5, 10, or however many years moving toward this goal.

So why in the world am I telling you all of this? Well we thought that there might be other people out there, friends of ours, who were as crazy as we were and might like to join us. All of you at one time or another expressed some interest in my outlandish idea and I’m just trying to get a feel for anyone who would actually be willing to commit to a project such as this. Think about this, how would you feel about:

• A piece of land, however large or small, that you could call your own? Where at the very least you could throw a rock in any direction and wouldn’t be hitting your neighbor, or the neighbor two doors down for some
• A place where you could send your children outside to play, they could be gone for hours, and you would know that they are safe?
• A home where you have no hesitation leaving your doors and windows unlocked, or opened, anytime day or night?
• A neighborhood where you know everyone and each one of them is more than willing to show up to your house and help you whenever there is a need or crisis?
• Property that you can pass to your children, and children’s children, where they will have memories of growing up in a home that was filled with love and laughter, not just a house that acted solely as a place to get out of the rain?
• A community geared more toward teaching at home, not just reading, writing, and arithmetic, but biblical principals and values, not leaving it up to a 9-5 stranger?
• A place to escape, escape the constant bombardment of consumerism, escape the left-right bickering designed to keep us all in the dark while our real freedoms slip away, escape a world that is very quickly and literally, going to Hell?

I realize that this is a very idealistic vision and that it is unlikely that any of this will just happen. But if it is God’s will, and I do believe that this is in God’s will for us, then unlikely or not it will come to fruition. So if my idealistic fantasy entices you, then drop me a line and we’ll talk. I promise I’m not going to ask for your credit card or anything like that, just your willingness to be open to an idea that goes against the accepted norm.

Either way, know that we miss you all and hope all is well with you and yours.

God bless,

Chris, Holly, Xander, Lorelei, and Baby Deering