Watching Rick Warren’s Saddleback Civil Forum over the weekend where he asked some rather tough questions of Senator Barak Obama and Senator John McCain had be thinking about something that wasn’t even directly discussed.  Perhaps it was the show I saw on The Weather Channel on Saturday that talked about the new sustainability curriculums that are sprouting up at colleges and universities that put the thought into my head, but regardless I decided that it was time I committed a few of my own ideas into word form.

I believe that from the earliest times of man we have had a responsibility to care for and maintain the earth that sustains us and to provide for ourselves and our families as well as those around us who are unable to provide for themselves.  One of my biggest concerns about modern society is that we have lost touch with the earth in the most basic of ways.  We no longer grow our own food, instead preferring the speed of store bought and often flavorless convenience foods.  It isn’t only our wallets that suffer because of this, but our heath and well being.

I believe that if every person took the time to grow just one plant that produced something they ate, we as a society would learn to become more focused and centered.  We would become less dependent on large scale growers who produce inferior quality produce and we would become more healthy.  It starts at home and in my experience, people who taste home grown vegetables and fruit almost always immediately recognize the difference in flavor, color and texture even before they understand the difference in cost.

I believe that in order to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels include both foreign and domestic oil, we need to reeducate ourselves, forget a lot of what we have learned over the past few decades and return to the time-proven practices of past generations who cultivated the earth and grew their own crops because there was not other option.  Their gardens fed their families, not the local fast food drive through window and the frozen food aisle.  Eggs and poultry were raised at home and not kept in confining cages while being fed growth-encouraging hormones.  Milk came from cows who stood in open fields chewing their cud all day that were all too happy to visit the barn and trade some of their milk for a trough full of feed.

I believe that consuming less - whether it be commercially produced food, gasoline, plastics or anything else - is the true beginning to a green revolution and that one day people will come to realize that sustainable living is not just a buzz word but something that begins at home.

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Another beautiful Sunday morning crept through the blinds this morning and wooed me into the unseasonably cool breezes gliding in from across the lake.  As I fed the Koi I started thinking a lot about life as I tend to do on such lazy mornings as this.

Just a few days ago Lou Zaden, the effervescent owner of the ever-popular Lou’s Pub here in Birmingham died unexpectedly of heart failure in his favorite chair at home.  He was someone I considered a friend and my partner had known him virtually all of his life.  In thinking about the funeral service that we will be attending tomorrow morning, the fragility of life and the uncertainty of tomorrow have me bordering on the melancholy and my partner even worse off than I.

I have always wanted to be a father and to live on an isolated farm away from the hectic pace of today’s society and from the constant barrage of shootings, stabbings, robberies and other insanity that pervades every corner of the world today.  I am almost 36 years old (this coming Friday), and those two dreams that I have had for as long as I can remember are not any closer to coming true than they were five years ago. 

That means my dream garden is not growing and as the tender of that garden I am failing myself by not doing more to reach those goals.

My birthday gift to myself this year is to take better care of my mind, body and spirit.  I will refocus, center myself and map out a workable plan for the things I want in life and I will devote more of my time and efforts toward making sure that those goals in my dream garden begin to leaf, to bud and eventually to bloom.