There are few places left in this world where we can escape the influence and din of progress and technology. Voices from every direction and perspective beckon, even push, us forward toward more, greater and faster technology, with the teaser of more wealth, more possessions, more pleasure, and, consequently, more happiness and contentment. This is how the present American dream is now defined, and every investment broker and political candidate promises that if we trust them, we also can trust that one day it will all be ours.
But have we become so blinded by the material, industrial, progressivist culture in which we live that we've lost the ability, not just to achieve, but to even discern what true happiness and beauty is? What criteria do we use to plan for tomorrow, for the future, for retirement, and when this life is over, are we anything more than just fertilizer to give back to Mother Earth what we have so irresponsibility taken from her?
And in the end, with all the opportunities we've had in this life, what is important? What lasts? Has our culture's enticement to always look for an easier, labor saving means to do every1hing left us a flabby, flaccid culture?
In this book Marcus Grodi discusses what he and his family discovered, mostly by surprise, after moving from the city to 25-acres of rural Ohio farm land. This involved a radical shift in priorities for all of them, but mostly it helped them discover some critical truths about life, simplicity, detachment, about our relationship to nature, and to nature's Creator, that apply regardless of where a person lives. He offers wonderful reflections about life from this going back to the land experience as a metaphor of authentic conversion and drawing closer to God."
