I have nothing profound to say.  I used to have the luxury to read and blog for hours.  I could organize abstractions in my head and then communicate them in a way that entertained and stimulated my readers.

     That luxury is gone from me now.  Work has replaced it.  Lauren and I build our home on our weekends and during the week, I work 10 to 14 hour days.

     The temptation for me is to think that there are two kinds of living: the contemplative and the active, Il Penseroso and 'L Allegro, as Milton would have it.  Life and material necessity have driven me to the field and to toil.  I am tempted to think that my mind is now less active than my body.

     All of these thoughts, however, are false.  They are the alluring call of discontent.  They are complex because there is a brilliant ideology inculcating them.  I know that such an interpretation of my circumstances is untrue because it would corner me, it would ostensibly victimize me into being discontent and unhappy.

     We know, however, that circumstances are indifferent and irrelevant.  Obedience is always possible and blessed.

     We know also that my mind is part of my body.  The stimulation thereof is no less sweet in the field than it is with a text.  The field is a text.  I read it everyday to see if it will yield the pasture to sustain the lambs and the cows.

     My mind is no less fed by food than by propositions.  I know that the meat from the industrial slaughter plant and the irradiated, dead milk from infected cows will sap my energy and leave my mind and body vapid and ill.

     It is a cruel trick for a human to feel that relearning how to grow and prepare food is a blue-collar, lesser concern than the cloistered luxury of contemplation and the deceptive ease of shopping at a grocery store.  To confuse convenience with prosperity is an illusion.  To subsequently equate freedom with convenience and ease is crafty tyranny.

    Convenience and ease create dependence and precipitate the loss of the ability to be truly independent.  To be the master of your own material existence, that is freedom.  To raise, slaughter, prepare and consume your own meat is independence.

     Do not be deceived.  Your right to affordable, quality food in the supermarket is not a right all.  It is coached in the language of entitlement so that you think it is in your best interest.

     We heard this after 9/11.  We were told to go and consume.  Our great retaliation to the terrorists was to go to the mall to spite them.  Shop, buy and trade, and you will be a freedom fighter.  Go, you courageous American, and fly in an airplane to prove to those bastards that you do not fear them.

     This lie functions only to lull you into impotence.  To rob you of your God-given dominion over his creation and turn it over to those who would exploit it for filthy lucre.

     All of these structures of consumer comforts serve only to lift the burden of sustaining life off of our shoulders and thus transform us all into children.  We do not know what it means to be responsible to produce our own food.  The Lord's prayer suddenly becomes obsolete when our daily bread can always be found on the supermarket shelf.
 
     The worth of a man is placed in the management of his debt.  Of course, it is not expressed this way.  Rather, our phraseology conceals how shallow this standard is.  We say instead that owning a home is a mark of maturity.

     Is it?  Is it really ownership if you pay an institution every month for the privilege to inhabit your own home.

     Does this not sound more like a monarchy?  How is a mortgage any different than a property tax?  Instead of the government, we pay the bank.  Recently, the banks and the government can scarcely be distinguished.  The Federal Reserve determines your worth by inflating or deflating the currency with which you exchange your material goods.

     The fruit of your labor is exchange value, not food and sustenance.  It is an abstraction whose pith is measured by a few men telling you how much you can sell it for.  We think that by determining an hourly rate or by setting a price on goods we sell that we control the value thereof.  But the unit of exchange, the dollar, is not under our control.  Our food, consequently, is given to us rather than being produced by us.  We are all reduced to beggars, being alloted our rations if we bring enough green food stamps, a welfare state indeed.

     We are estranged from the work of our own hands.  It is mediated to us by fiat currency.

    A revolution would serve to delay the implosion of this empty value strategy.  The lasting remedy, however, that can see fulfillment in this life, I have yet to fully grasp though I know from whence it springs: The resurrection of Jesus.

When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
Col 2:15.