We Choose the Country

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”- John Muir

On my nightstand is a the book, Our Vanishing Landscape by Eric Sloane. He does these pen sketches of the rural American landscape. The more I read the book the more I want to bring back the past. I want to conserve the rural landscape. I want my children to have the same experience with the farm, land, wood groves that I grew up with. I snapped this picture above a few weeks ago when the hay was being bailed, it captures a deep memory of my brother and sister running through our fields.

For Easter, I purchased the Rural Life Prayerbook , which has a publication date of 1956. Again, there are these pen sketches of rural landscapes of family farms. There is this one picture of a father with a fishing pole and his kids running to him and the mother on her way. One child is kneeling in front of a crucifix praying. You can see the family home in the background, a pond, and a farm field. That picture had me. I had to build it. I had remaining shelves that my wife's grandfather made, and so with a few extra PVC board left over from doing window installation I did my best representation of the pen sketching. It's not perfect. It's not symmetrical. Would I build another sometime? Probably.

I am writing this post to make the point that families have to value creating a home over a house. Homes are messy. Houses are neat, museum like. Homes are land centered. Houses are transitory sleeping stays. Homes take years to make. houses are bought..."key turn ready." In short, we have to reclaim home life. We have to send the kids outside more. We treat Sundays as a Holy Days of Obligation (which they are). We have to stop choosing the travel teams and start choosing the spouse, child over "going out." It seems people only know how to be with their family if they not at home. Pope Benedict said it best, "The Rural Family must regain its place at the heart of the social order."

We Choose the Country

We Believe That:

Farming is noble Christian occupation. The farm home is most suitable place to rear a Christian family.

The good Earth is the greatest material gift of God to man.

We Know that:

In this vocation we country people work closely with God in producing the essential elements of life.

By making ourselves aware of the special graces and opportunities of this way of life, and by cooperating with them, we and our families can most readily give glory to God and grow in holiness and happiness.

The Earth returns greatest honor to God when through our care and labor, it brings forth an abundance for our family's needs and those of society, for this generation and for those to come.

We Proclaim That:

We will strive always to appreciate and hold fast to the spiritual values of or vocation and to prevent the materialism of this age from blind us to them.

We will model our homes on that of Nazareth; by working, learning, playing, and especially praying together we will strengthen our faith in God and our mutual love and unity; we will fulfill our obligation to be good neighbors, faithful parishioners, loyal and active citizens.

We will regard our land has God's land; as stewards of His bounty we will conserve and improve it so that it will increasingly continue to give glory to Him.

We Pray That:

through God's grace we may have wisdom and strength to grow constantly in the virtues necessary for holy rural living;

Faith,

Hope firmly founded in knowledge of God's wisdom and providence,

Love,

Patience with the slow deliberate cycle of seasons and years,

Forititude,

Temperance,

Compassion,

Mercy,

Zeal.

Catholic Rural Life Prayer Book. "We Choose the Country," 14-16. 1956.