Receiving a Gift

About a week before Pamela and I moved from San Diego I had the privilege of driving out to the Anza-Borrego Desert for a night with a few good friends to watch the annual Perseid meteor shower. The four of us stayed awake for a few hours watching some spectacular shooting stars and talking. None of us had the illusion that we'd stay awake all night watching the stars, and since we were sleeping on the hard ground, we knew that none of us would sleep through the night without waking up a few times.
Before we went to sleep, my friend Peter gave us some advice: he said that when we inevitably woke up in the night, not to let it frustrate us but to open our eyes and watch the stars until drifting off again; to accept it as a gift. So that's what I did and I think it was some of the best advice I can remember ever being given. The night sky that night was so clear and beautiful, even without some of the biggest shooting stars I've ever seen. When I awoke that night and looked up at the stars I was filled with the deepest sense of gratitude.
Gratitude, I've begun learning, is probably one of the most profound religious dispositions I know. And it's implications are probably just as profound economically.
Last weekend Pamela and I went to the Oregon coast for her birthday and went on a short hike at Cape Perpetua. As we walked along in this beautiful forest overlooking the ocean, I was struck with the sheer beauty of the place. I had the thought that however useful that place may be, it is infinitely more beautiful. Any economic utility, any "natural resources", seemed to be far outweighed by the beauty. How wonderful is it that there are so many places in the world that are that way? Maybe every or nearly every place is (or once was) truly that way if only we had eyes to see. What a gift!
Thank you Creator of all and Giver of all good things!

Oregon

It's been a while since either of us have made a blog post and a lot has changed. The big one is that Pamela and I have moved to Oregon. Thankfully I'm pretty sure nobody uses this blog as the main way to keep track of our lives. Anyways, we're currently living with Pamela's parents in her hometown of Philomath and we hope that our being here can relieve Kent and Barbara somewhat as they care for Barbara's 89 year old father Ted who has Alzheimer's and also lives here. Kent started blogging about Ted and Alzheimer's a few months ago when Ted moved in; his blog is http://caring4ted.blogspot.com/
Our first few weeks here have been very busy as Pamela's sister, her husband, and our niece and nephew had been here as well and we'd been spending a lot of time with them.
On the job front I got hired to work at the farm stand at local farm called Heavenly Harvest and have been there for a few weeks. I may update more about that later. Pamela recently got hired at the local Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence (CARDV) and is very excited about it. I'll bug her to post more info about that sometime.
I'm hoping to begin writing on here more regularly about things I'm reading and thinking about. I have never consistently maintained a journal and hope that writing here will help me process and solidify things in my mind.
-Michael

Homemade Caprese Salad

Since about a year ago when Pamela and I went out to a nice French restaurant for a date and had the most delicious caprese salad, we'd been dreaming about making our own from homegrown tomatoes and basil and homemade mozzarella cheese. Well, a few weeks ago we finally did it! She even bought me fancy olive oil and vinegar from the Temecula Olive Oil Company.




The cheese making process wasn't too bad; it took about 2 hours and it was mostly waiting, but the consistency wasn't quite right so we'll try a different recipe next time. All in all though, it was a lot of fun, not a bad way to spend a Friday night. :)
-Michael

I Need Ideas!

So last week I was approached by the "Go Green" Committee at one of my jobs and asked to join. This really flattered me because it's a very big concern for me and maybe they saw that I ride my bike to work. Unfortunately though, my AmeriCorps year of service ends in just over a month so I won't be staying long. However, I would really like to contribute some good ideas for the committee while I can. So far there's pretty much just little stickers by light switches asking people to turn off the lights when they leave the room.
Does anybody have any ideas for how a typical office workplace can "go green"? It's challenging since we have a few offices throughout the city so we're pretty decentralized. It makes education/awareness trickier. But we have an Executive Director who would get behind a good idea, especially if it would save money.
-Michael

Our Best Discovery of 2010

"Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?"

-Wendell Berry

One unique aspect of the geography of San Diego that I've noticed and begun to love is all of the canyons throughout parts of the city. Growing up just an hour north of here I'm familiar with much of the landscape, but these canyons are new to me. In much of the city it seems like just about every inch of space is used for humans. Even if it's "green space" it's for the use of people, featuring neatly groomed non-native plants and grass needing tons of water; water that we import from hundreds of miles away. Green space is artificial and safe. But then there are these useless canyons that seem to be inconveniently right in the middle of everything. In most parts of the city they seem to be left undeveloped, raising property value and nourishing my soul whenever I see them.

However, Pamela and I live in the most densely populated neighborhood in San Diego which also has the least "green space". Here many of the banks are paved with cement to allow streets and houses to be built alonside them, and grungy apartments sit at the bottom of the canyons. Pamela and I both long to encounter nature so we often go on outings on the weekends to hike. When we don't have the time or will to drive somewhere, it can be tiring to not be able to escape. Then, back in January, on a walk in our neighborhood we discovered a trail that wound straight through the middle of an undeveloped canyon right by our house. We were astonished that we hadn't found it sooner and that it wasn't riddled with trash. Pamela immediately declared it to be our "best discovery of January". When we reached the end of the trail and discovered an additonal little path that led down to a small stream completely surrounded by lush trees and bushes, she upped the classification to the "best discovery of 2010." Easily.

The trail isn't long, but it's a sanctuary for us. On our walks we find respite from the noise, listen to the birds, watch for rabbits, and pay attention to the native plants. There are so many wildflowers still blooming. We pick sage to cook with, and yesterday I'm nearly certain I found fennel as well.

Fennel?

Topics of Interest.

We are terrible bloggers. I like to blame it on not having internet at home... but when you consider the amount of time I waste online at work everyday, it's really not a legitimate excuse. Anyway, by way of catch up here is a little list of things we WOULD blog about, but haven't gotten to.
Current Topics of Interest in the (Schnake-)Kolbas Home:

-Adventures in home-making: cheese making, yogurt making, bread making, granola making, home-made fallafel. papusas, pad thai... the list goes on...
-Adventures in gardening: green-horn mistakes and the benefit of starting out SMALL.
-Wendell Berry's the Art of the Commonplace essay collection. (hmmm are we noticing a bit of theme here?)
-LOST Season 3 (ok, so I wouldn't write a whole blog post about it, but it's definitely a current topic of interest)
-Exploring San Diego County hiking - successes and failures.
-Using non-gendered pronouns for God. Freedom and struggle within feminist theology.
-Paradigms of power within: the Church, the Food Industry, and the non-profit world.
-Dumpster diving.
-Plants of San Diego: Introduced species. Edible wild plants. And SOIL.

Unfortunately photography hasn't been among the topics of interest so I don't have any nice pictures to spice up this post... Since it is unlikely that I will ever get to the blog posts that could be written on each of these topics, feel free to ask me personally if any of them spark your interest! I'm better at one-on-one conversations these days anyway.
love,
Pamela

Just Getting Started.

There is a lot about Michael and my life that is just getting started: our marraige, our "careers," our home together. In all of these things Michael and I hope to live lives of simplicity, peace, and justice. However, that too, as with everything else, is just getting started. This is a post about what that looks like for us.


I believe that God has invited each of us to be made new, and to live into God's kingdom of peace and justice. However, this is not something that can happen all at once. Although I believe we are "empowered by the Spirit of God" to live in this kingdom of peace, there is also the reality that it doesn't come naturally, and it will be a long process, a journey of slow, but hopefully constant change, and frequent failure. I strongly believe that this life should be joyful, if not easy, and in that vein Michael and I have taken small steps toward simple and Just living instead of immediately trying to implement every single thing possible. This is humbling, and it means that we have to live with that uncomfortable element of ambivalence, but it also means that we know where we are heading and what we are moving towards without getting burned out or judgemental (since there are examples of people making bigger changes than we are).




(The farmers market flowers with daisies and ferns from our backyard that we used for our wedding are my "joy in simplicity" visual for this post.)

Here are a few little examples of how we are starting out.

Just Eating: There are a lot of things about our current system of food production that are unjust and unsustainable. A LOT. There are a lot of things we don't do that we know would be good, but here are a few things that we have chosen to be our starting point for food justice.

-Organic fair-trade coffee. We don't eat entirely organic or even, at this point, mostly organic, because it is a lot more expensive. But after passing several months between the two of us in Peru, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Argentina, where we personally knew coffee farmers and saw the affects of this industry on individuals and on land, we do our best to be consistent about supporting fair-trade organic coffee (rainforest alliance cirtified when possible). We plan to move toward more organic food especially based around certain products as we learn their particular importance.

-Making our own bread. We bought a bread machine for $4 at a Thrift Store. Making our own bread is inexpensive, delicious, and FUN. Once or twice a week we sit on our couch in anticipation of warm fresh bread. Then when the bread machine beeps we rush into the kitchen to slice off big pieces and smother them with butter and jam. Mmmmm... Plus, we are closer to our food production and use a little bit less plastic.

- Less meat and milk. Again, this is an easy choice for us. It is cheaper, healthier, and better for the environment and world food sustainability. Plus, I prefer soy milk to regular milk. And there are tons of wonderful ethnic meals that don't require any meat. My thinking is to try to find a balance of eating in a way that would be possible for every person on earth to eat if somehow resources were equally distributed. We have discovered that the less we eat meat, the less we desire it. Eventually we may head to a fully vegetarian diet, but right now I have to admit find a lot of joy in the occassional burger or chicken in my pasta.

- Starting a garden. This is very much a starting point. So far we have sucessfully grown... cilantro! Semi-successfully grown basil, rosemary, and the onions and sweet potatoes are looking good. Our composting experiement failed, as did the lettuce and broccoli. But it's been a fun journey and a learning process. Little by little we are going to figure out how to grow some of our own food, and it brings us joy. We also try to get a good deal of our produce at farmers markets, this is easy to do in San Diego and again FUN.

Other things besides food related:

-Michael rides his bike to work. He LOVES it. This is much easier to do living in San Diego. We live close to our jobs so as to not commute, and I personally think God helped us out with that one. I should ride my bike to work too... but so far I haven't motivated to start doing it, so I am giving myself grace and hoping to start soon.

- Another easy choice, because we just don't make a lot of money, was not having internet or TV at home. We're on the computer all day at work, so I really enjoy coming home and having a break from it. We recently started watching episodes of LOST that we get from the library... and are loving it, so we're definetly not up on any high horse about the whole TV thing, but we also enjoy knitting or crochetting, playing music together, reading, and getting outside often. We're just starting out on exploring how to promote peace through our liesure activities by being "creators and makers" (a method of opposing destruction and consumption, probably worth a post of its own). I am looking forward to finding new ways to do this.

- Refraining from buying new clothing in favor of second-hand and hand-me-downs. This was hard for me to commit to at first, but now it has just become natural and easy. I am really encouraged by that fact because I think it is an indicator of how the rest of this journey might go -- moving towards simplicity can sound overwhelming at first, but little by little these changes become integrated into your life and start being easy and natural, at which point it is probably a good idea to take a step further and try something new!


If any of you have ideas or examples of how you have joyfully engaged in simplicity and justice, we'd love to hear it!