The Road To Antioch
Ruins in Turkey
Here is another old post that I found, for some reason I never published, and it’s very good, it’s still relevant. The one exception is that we will enter into full communion with the Antiochian Orthodox Church in August. I can’t find the original date for the article, but I think is was around december of 2012…
We’ve been on this journey for a long time, the road has led us to people and places, we would have never considered when we took our first steps. The path has taught us a great deal, we have found love in some very unexpected places, we have learned theology, some good, some bad, some terrible. We have run into creepy more than once, and left more churches mid-service than we care to admit.
Our goal (mine to start with, Michelle’s later on), was to find the truth at all costs. What that ultimately meant was going back to the very beginning, to the original deposit of faith and learning early church history. When you finally get there, and this is important, if you are willing to be honest with what you find and not try to read into early church history and writing. You are left with only a couple of options, there was only one church for a little over a thousand years. In the 10th century the one Church split into two halves we call East (Orthodox Church) and West (Catholic Church), which you choose is based on your calling.
I believe you can find fulfillment in either church, I believe both have full Apostolic succession (a line of bishops tracing all the way back to the original Apostles), I still find great beauty in the Catholic Church, just as I find a deep reverence in the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church.
The difference between the protestant world and the ancient faiths is one of depth, when I was protestant all I needed was my bible, churches where chosen on what I could get out of them, and how I fit into the worship of the church. We attended countless bible studies, raked over revelation more times than I can count (how many ways can you ms-interpret the number of the beast for crying out loud), and was lied to in so many ways by people who themselves, simply didn’t know any better. Scripture changed in meaning depending on who was teaching, and which translation was being used. Churches always centered around an individual Pastor and his interpretation of the bible, trained or not trained, made no difference. If it matched what we thought, then we where good.
There was, and is today, no depth in the protestant faiths. There’s lots of philosophy, scripture reading, and sophistry. But it’s all dependent on interpretation, normally of one individual. I spent 20 years in the Baptist faith, and while we sure studied the bible a whole lot, we never once talked about where it came from, how it was created, and who put it together. That was not just one Baptist church either, that was a string of them as we moved. I even ran into the King James Only nonsense that one finds in some fundamental Baptist faiths, and heard numerous renderings of why it matters from different pastors. But beyond the doors of the Baptist church I found the same problem, no one wanted to discuss theology, no one wanted to study the early church and it’s foundations. It was all bible study, all the time.
I sat down yesterday to talk with my Orthodox sponsor, and this very topic came up. She lived her life as a committed protestant, did countless bible studies, and ultimately found the experience left her questioning everything. As she started to look at the early church, and make her way into the Orthodox church, she discovered that what she “thought” bible verses said as a protestant, actually had a different meaning when viewed through the lens of the Orthodox church. The more scripture was discussed the more obvious it became that without the guidance of not only the church, but the early church fathers, history and the deposit of faith, it was easy to misinterpret what scripture really meant. The problem is worse when you understand how bibles and their interpretation have changed in the last 400 years. Once Martin Luther began the protestant movement (and not without good reason mind you), history, tradition and the deposit of faith (the teaching of the Apostles) became secondary. Each man could be his own pope, all he needed was a bible to read, and he was all set.
Now 500 years in, we can see the effect that Sola Scripura has had on the church. There have always been and always will be heresies, heretical teachings, religious sects and cults. But today even in mainline protestant churches, we have division after division. All it takes is someone not agreeing over any reason and a new church is born, with new members. I’ve witnessed it first hand, and I’ve commiserated with those who want nothing more than to live a holy life, and are torn asunder by this going our own way nonsense. The Anglican Church which was created when the King could not marry again because the Pope held to Catholic teachings, is now in a state of free fall. Ordaining women, practicing homosexuals and unable to take a stand on any moral issue. Parishioners are leaving in droves, and whole parishes are converting to the Catholic Church to find some stability.
Too many of the men set to preside as pastors over a congregation, have neither the education, nor the training to effectively manage the position. The lack of standard is appalling at times, and the faithful seem nothing more than lemmings willing to follow any teacher off the cliff of new and inventive theology, all while holding their bibles in a death grip claiming they have everything they need.
Depth…
That’s the issue, without the depth of history, the deposit of faith, and teachings of those who have gone before us, it’s easy to be led astray. There’s nothing quite a creepy as sitting in a service where the women all wear head coverings, rarely speak out, and all because someone misinterpreted what St Paul said to Timothy.
The protestant church is a ship without the rudder of history, the deposit of faith, and the guidance of the church fathers.
When we finally started this journey to a new faith, we looked for stability, something with roots. We never found it, and that’s because nothing in the protestant world goes any farther than 1511. Anything before that period is largely ignored, with the exception of a few chosen Saints like Augustine, who’s idea have been twisted first by Luther, and then later and more egregiously by Calvin. It wasn’t until the Anglican Church that we started to see some roots, but even there it only goes to the 1300’s at best.
When we finally ended up at the doors of the Catholic Church, we both where confused and concerned. But we worked through the issues, and ultimately became Catholic, if only for a short time. While I still believe that the Catholic Church is truly apostolic, the more I studied the early history of the newly founded Christianity,the differences I found in what Catholics taught versus what the church fathers said. Those discoveries are clearly listed here on the site, so I won’t go over them here.
But it finally led us to the door of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, that part of our journey took a year just to come to grips with how different the liturgy and practices are from what we have experienced, even as Catholics. Unlike our protestant background where everything revolves around how we interpret the bible, the Orthodox faith uses tradition, history, writings of the Church Fathers, and men incredibly well educated in sharing what scripture actually means. We don’t yearn to discover something new and inventive in texts that are now well over two thousand years old, and we don’t invent doctrine so that we can describe our theology. We use all the tools are our disposal: History, Tradition, The Deposit of Faith, Teachings of the Church Fathers, and Scripture to define how to live our lives.
In this we find stability, we don’t need a praise band telling us how to be happy in Jesus, nor does our Sunday worship rely on an impassioned sermon from the preacher. Those things don’t matter anymore, instead we are there to honor the Trinity, to give our worship TO God, to partake of the same mysteries that the Christians in Antioch celebrated over 2000 years ago as they did in the book of Acts. There are no lights, no stage, certainly no smoke machines. We don’t need to be hip and have a clever message to bring people in, in fact if you stop by, we will open our doors and our hearts to you, but we won’t pressure you at all. If you have questions we would LOVE to answer them as best we can, but we believe in free will, and that God gave us all the ability to choose for ourselves. You cannot be forced, or tricked into being Orthodox, you have to want to become Orthodox. We will do anything we can to help, but only if that’s what you decide.
When I was Evangelical, going door to door to sell the Gospel was the thing to do, just like the Mormons and JW’s. But as an Orthodox Christian, I’m not here to sell you on the merits of Orthodoxy. I’ll answer any questions, but you and you alone need to make the decision to go down this path to the Ancient faith. It’s a hard road to travel, once you realize how different the early church was, and how the Orthodox Church has maintained that same teaching, you begin to understand the magnitude of change that’s required. What is ingrained in us at an early age in the western world, will slowly and painfully peel away.
When I finally understood how much free will plays a part of Orthodox Theology, my heart soared, it was like being set free after a long imprisonment. Here, finally, was what I had been reading in the scriptures for so many years, and yet forced to submit to the theology of the western church. It makes the journey to Orthodoxy so much easier understanding that God gave each of us the true capability of free will, and despite how we have used it, still loves us unconditionally.
All I can say is that it’s all worth it, even the aesthetic lifestyle one slowly works into as an Orthodox Christian, becomes something more when you realize that the decision rests with you, as to how far you want this to go.
The road has indeed been long and painful, but finally we are at the end, Lent starts this week for us (the Orthodox use a different calendar for Easter), and hopefully with the blessing of the Bishop we will enter into full communion with the Orthodox church.
Why Orthodoxy?
Church of the Resurrection Jesus Christ at St Petersburg, Russia
That simple question has been the subject of dreams, discussions and a good part of my life for the last year.
There is no singular, or simple answer.
It’s more difficult to explain to friends and family, there is an unmeasurable amount of depth in the Orthodox faith. But putting that into words is difficult, because the worldview is radically different that any other faith I have ever experienced. I will mention the standard things that cause people to convert, but I’m also going to attempt to articulate the things that people don’t mention. And trust me, there is a lot they never tell you. I would love to say it’s all good, but there are some downsides to all this, and I would be less than honest if I did not mention them. While Catholicism changed me in a number of positive ways, Orthodoxy has completely turned my world inside out, I’m still trying to understand some of the things I’ve learned over the last year, and especially the last month.
For my Catholic friends, I walked away from the Catholic Faith, because I could not find the evidence to support a number of Catholic Doctrines and Dogmas (you can find them in other posts here), and I felt conflicted because the more I dug into the church fathers, history and scripture the more I began to question what I was being taught. Finally I took a leap of faith and met with the Priest at the local Orthodox church, and that discussion started a long journey into the faith. If your not questioning what the Church teaches, then stay. I love Catholicism, I just disagree in certain areas, and it ultimately led me to the Orthodox church. I have also begun to realize that the schism in 1054, can no longer be healed. The issues run too deep, and there is too much at stake for either side to fully change. And it’s more than just the Papacy or the Filioque, it goes all the way to how each side see original sin, amongst other deep issues. That doesn’t mean we can’t get along, but the world views are just very, very different.
For my Protestant friends, there is a huge resource of rich Christian teaching that is not found in the Bible, in fact you should spend some time studying how you even got the bible you hold today. Because there is no heavenly printing press popping out RSV’s, ESV’s and KJV’s, there is a deep and rich history of early church involvement in what you hold so dear today. And until you understand the times, the men, the Saints, and the church that put it together, you really don’t know what you have in your hands. Sola Scriptura is not a concept that was even conceived of until the 15th century, and more importantly it’s not a concept that the Bible it’self teaches, the early church used tradition, and the deposit of faith to determine what books made up the bible we use today. And the current protestant versions that excludes the Apocryphal books, is a new invention started in the mid 1800’s in protestant Scotland. Which means that for almost 1500 years the church used those books as Scripture, but protestants so desperate to avoid any view of tradition they considered man made removed books THEY deemed unfit. So much for 1500 years of scholars and theologians who never had an issue with them.
So why Orthodoxy?, why after a year did we decide to finally enter into communion with the Orthodox church?
1. Apostolic Foundation, the church can trace a direct lineage back to the original apostles. It has held on tightly to the original teachings handed to it by the men who spent three years with Christ (also called the deposit of faith), and has resisted change over two millennia. We may not have a Papacy or a Magisterium like the Catholics, but we do have Bishops, Priests, Deacons and we can claim that we are the church that Christ started. We were united with the Roman Catholic Church until 1054, and once we separated, we held onto our teachings as tightly as possible. To me, this is the same faith that the Apostles and the first church fathers practiced.
2. Biblically Centered, every aspect of the Orthodox life is centered around scripture, the liturgy is fully based on scripture, as are the other services such as vespers and Matens, you will hear more scripture in an Orthodox service than any other church alive today.
3. Grace, Love and Mercy are the rule, and not an exception. This is something we had to learn on our own, the Orthodox church while very Ascetic in its every day practice (we fast weekly as part of the Orthodox faith, and have a calendar full of fasting times), it has no expectations that everyone will be able to follow those rules. There is a saying in the church, of ‘Mind your own plate’, meaning we are all sinners who are learning to be better at being Christ like. We should encourage each other in love, and show the same grace and compassion that Christ showed to sinners.
4. Deep, reverential, and love filled liturgy focused on Christ, God, The Holy Spirit, and the Eucharist. Known sometimes as the smells and bells, the liturgy in the church is taken very seriously by those attending. But there is no sense that if you don’t cross yourself here, or bow at a certain time you are doing anything wrong. The whole thing is about worshipping God, there is structure to be sure, but you can’t ruin it because you do something wrong. In both the Catholic Mass, and the Divine Liturgy in the Orthodox faith, the direction of the worship is different, it’s centered on not what we get out of it, but of how we can use worship to honor God. In fact in the Antiochian Orthodox church we are part of, you will only hear singing, with no instruments, because the focus is on worshipping the Holy One and not how good the band performs today.
5. Family and Community, merged in love. This again took us a long time to see, but we didn’t join a community in the classic sense of the word, we where adopted into a family, warts and all. The love we have been shown has humbled us in so many ways, while I was Baptist we used to greet each other with the statement ‘Brother’, but I knew very few of those people personally. It’s so incredibly different in the Orthodox church, there is no pretentiousness, it really is a family, made up of smaller family’s. And loving each other, without any judgmental aspects is the rule. It’s been a truly humbling experience to see this part of the faith.
6. A faith lived out, not just on Sunday’s. The Orthodox faith is not about attending a parish, in point of the fact the church building is considered part of the church, and not just a structure we meet in. The Orthodox way seeps into our homes, our marriages, every aspect of our lives, you live this faith, you don’t just attend it. I know that can sound scary. But it’s meant in a good way, because when you begin to understand the depth of love, you can’t but help be changed. And there are no expectations, no one is there to monitor you, but as you grow you learn that living the Christian faith in all parts of our life, is the only way to grow in our faith. The same can be said of the Catholic Faith, but it means more in the Orthodox faith, it becomes more ingrained into who you are.
7. Correct Theology, this is a personal item, but as I came out of the protestant church, and especially Calvinism. I spent a good deal of time working out biblically things like Soteriology (the study of salvation), and dug through the early church, the formation of the Bible, and the church fathers. I have found few things in the Orthodox church that concern me, but there are no areas where I theologically disagree. And that’s huge, in fact in some of my studies on energies and essence, I’ve had to go back to reset some of my thinking, because what I found matched with what I had researched. I had just put a western spin on it, and once I began to understand what the original church believed, I found my thinking was off.
8. Synergism, meaning God and Man working together. This concept is one that drives reformed Christians crazy, they are monergists, meaning that in their world view God is always in full control and free will is an illusion. But scripture does not agree, God certainly has foreknowledge (knowledge of things that have not happened yet). But I could never buy that a truly loving God, would limit free will, or that he did not make his creation truly free, it just doesn’t fit the model that we see in scripture. It’s a far more loving act for a parent to say, you have free will, and I will honor your decision fully. Over the years I came to believe that the Reformers had it dead wrong, and that God truly grants us free will, because anything else changes the very loving nature of God into something terrible. The Orthodox church believes that our salvation is not a one time event, it’s a process of growing, and learning and changing. That we live it out in our prayer, and that together with God’s help, we become more like Christ. It’s not meant to be an easy path, it’s meant to help us grow into something more.
9. Economy, meaning the handling or housekeeping of a thing, or in this case a rule. In practice, this is the rule of love, rather than the strict application of a rule. It means that some things can be set aside in order to help someone grow in the faith. For instance I see this in effect, when in the Orthodox church a married couple can meet with their confessor and discuss options around birth control, it becomes an issue between the three. Not one that is strictly dictated by the Bishop (although he could do that) or rule, this handling of things that fall outside the normal realm, by using love and grace as the guiding principle is something that is hard to explain. In contrast, in the Catholic Church if you purposely miss a weekly mass, there is a dictated consequence (mortal sin), and a determined outcome (no salvation, unless you confess your sin). The Orthodox church doesn’t work that way, the rules are there to help mold you to be more Christ-like, not to punish you because you didn’t meet the criteria. This is one thing that I hear from Catholics, who disagree with the Orthodox position on Contraception, they want solid rules and ideas that have absolutes. But love and grace are never absolute, they have a mystery aspect to them, applying a set of dictated rules never works when it runs into the reality of human frailty.
10. Tradition, the foundation of the church is based on what has been handed to them by the Apostles, and their successors all down the line, unbroken to this very day. In the Orthodox faith you will find icons, lots and lots and lots of icons. There are the Saints, they are there to remind us of the men and women who have gone before us and shown the way. There are the Angels, and then there is Christ and the Theotokos or Mary, the one who said yes to the Angel, the God Bearer. We keep these traditions, icons, feast days, handed down since the beginning, as part of what makes us Orthodox. Traditions help us to grow in our faith, but it also grounds us in the very teachings of those who sat at the feet of Christ, there have certainly been changes over the years. Some parts of the liturgy have changed with the times, but the core of what we believe and practice has remained steadfast for over 2000 years.
One thing that I can’t stress enough, is that the Liturgy is not about ceremony, I used to think that way. Until I realized that ALL churches, even the most open and free-will ones have some type of liturgy. Without it, you don’t have worship, but chaos, and no one benefits. It’s not about what we get out of it, it’s not about the music, or the preaching. It really is about worshipping God, plain and simple. In the Orthodox faith, vespers which is a prayer service done on saturday nights, is done no matter how many people are there, because it’s not for us, it’s to honor the creator. Think about that for a minute, even if no parishioners show up, the service will still continue. It’s a huge difference in focus from what we did when we where protestant where the bigger the crowd the better the show. Gone are the video clips, sound systems, and 10 piece band. We worship with what God gave us, our voices, our bodies, our minds, it’s not a performance, it’s gratitude for a merciful and awesome creator.
You will also find a great deal of piety in the Orthodox faith, people ending messages with things like ‘Pray for me a sinner’. Coming from a fundamental world, it can seem like a race to be the most humble, but in reality we are all sinners and we need all the help we can get. The piety that at first glance is so external, is really part of the Orthodox experience, I am a sinner. I do terrible things, and it’s only through prayer, and the difficult task of dealing with it (with God’s help) that I can overcome it, it’s a struggle and so I need to be remind myself and others that I am no better than they are. This kind of humility is found in the monastic life of Monks, and we would do well to learn from their examples.
The Orthodox faith for us, has been the destination of the last five years of looking, we would have no appreciation unless we had spend so much time in other faiths learning. Looking back we can see how we where slowly led to this point, and now that we are here, we are finding that things are not how we expected them to be. They are better and more difficult, which I suppose seems odd, but that’s being brutally honest. We knew this would not be easy, we talked about it for weeks before we even finally making what was already a forgone conclusion, that we belonged in the Orthodox church. And the great thing is she didn’t change to meet us halfway, she just opened her arms and took us as we where. She will change us, but it’s not through rules, or catechisms, it’s through love, grace and mercy. The piety that we are now beginning to experience isn’t because anyone is telling us we have too, it’s because we realize that without it, our growth would be stunted. The Orthodox church is the church that Christ left behind, it’s full of sinners, and full of grace, and it’s a mystery that we will live for the rest of our lives.
Please Forgive Me A Sinner.
A longer road less traveled
This is an old post that I found while doing some cleanup, it’s a reflection of my mindset a little over a year ago. Today I’m no longer straddling the fence, I’m not sure why I never published it, so instead of letting it waste away, I’ll share it instead.
Blessings…
-Paul-
When I started my journey from being apostate and living in the evangelical wilderness, back into the world of faith, I never expected it to take me all the way to the doors of the Catholic church. But a little over two years ago, Michelle and I attended our first mass, at what is now our home parish. We actually hid it from the children, because we didn’t want them freaking out until we had a chance to finish freaking out ourselves. The good Father who greeted us that morning, would later take my first shaky confession, and would witness tears of pain and joy, as I confessed my sins.
Now we are facing our first anniversary as new Catholics this Easter, we have been faithful to our parish and faith, and we have found peace in simply being Catholic. We are sponsoring an older couple who come from a pentecostal background, it’s been good to sit and listen to their concerns and know that we had to face the same questions. The road that brought us here has been painful at times, and for a while we were sure that we had finally found home.
However…
I never stopped looking for the truth, I knew that there was more, and the only way to find it was to keep digging until I had satiated my desire for authenticity and truth.
That has led me to a new place in my personal theology, somewhere I never expected to be. My wife is not there yet, and I’m not sure she ever will be, she doesn’t want to go back to the road. Too many painful events, memories, lost friends, and emotions. I agree with her, but I need, or more directly, Have to know where the truth is. As I have mentioned before I also have begun to look at the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and that has opened up a new world for me, one that quite honestly I didn’t even know existed for most of my life.
My theology has come to the point that I don’t think any church in existence today can claim full irrefutable authority or divine providence in matters of faith, certainly no evangelical church can make that claim. Much less the Orthodox or Catholic churches, even with doctrine that explicitly states otherwise, the history of each branch of Christianity tells a different story than the doctrine they present. I’m not trying to state that every church has faults, few would argue that point, rather my point is that no one body of believers has fully held the original deposit of faith handed down from the Apostles. Each has modified or changed it in some way, I’m not sure how you could expect any less. The world has not remained static, and each generation, and age faces new and more difficult challenges. This paired with constant attacks on Christianity from all sides (and often within), and modify doctrine becomes the only way to survive.
I no longer believe the dogma that the papacy is infallible when declaring dogmatic teaching. I know this will bother my Catholic friends, but the theology of infallibility was not even fully decreed as dogma until 1870 at the Vatican I council. And that after a long and bothersome history of the papal office expanding the role of the bishop of Rome, from a primate position among bishops (which is how the early church viewed the bishop of Rome), to the most powerful chair in the world. This expansion of power led to abuse and scandal, and was one of the key linchpins in the schism between east and west in 1054. Let me be clear that I’m not referring to papal cyclicals, doctrinal positions, or the personal human nature of the bishop of Rome. I’m specifically stating that the dogma declared by the Vatican I council is a position that cannot be supported from either Tradition, or Scripture. And despite apologetic claims to the contrary, it is clear from history and the writings of the church fathers that the original deposit of faith, was not seen as giving petrine supremacy to the bishop of Rome.
The Orthodox churches who share the same deposit of faith from the Apostles, certainly have never seen the papacy as universal in the same sense that the Catholic church defined it in 1870. That’s not say that the petrine doctrine found in Matthew has no significance, in fact it’s evident from the early church writings that the early churches looked to Rome and specifically the papacy as the guardian of doctrine. But it was never viewed in the same way that the Catholic church has defined it, and certainly not as Vatican I dogmatically decreed it.
This is not to say that I don’t believe in the primacy of papacy, or the magisterium. I think both are critical to protecting the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church, Michelle and I have found stability in knowing that the structure of the Catholic church is not open to the whims of the changing times. At the same time, this very attribute of protecting orthodoxy creates a situation where the church can seem lethargic when reacting to a quickly changing world. So there’s good and bad, but we see it clearly as a positive. And I do dearly love the Catholic church, I love the liturgy, the aesthetic practices, the clergy, the structure and the grandeur of the whole thing. It’s safe, consistent and reliable, even if the people are not.
But I would be lying, if I was to tell you that I think it’s perfect. I cringe when I read apologist or others who feel the need to claim full inerrancy of the dogmatic or doctrinal teachings of the church, because when you take dogmatic teaching like the assumption of Mary, you can’t defend the position without playing the ‘on faith’ or ‘it’s a mystery’ get out jail card. There is nothing substantive in the writings of the church fathers, nothing in scripture on the topic, and the Orthodox have never seen a need to dogmatize the assumption. It’s really christian legend, and I’m not saying that it couldn’t have happened, just that if you are going to make something part of your dogma, you should be able to clearly and concisely argue your position.
So what about the Orthodox church?, my exposure so far has been scholastic in nature. But even with that type of limited exposure I have found that there are divisions among the various Orthodox churches, and you can find Orthodox churches that are exceedingly strict to the western palette, and ones that conform more to the needs of a modern society. The one thing that I find attractive is that in all my reading, the Orthodox do their best to protect what was handed to them by the Apostles, and aren’t afraid to admit when they are standing on less than solid ground. I do admit that I find that kind of frank honesty missing in Catholic apologetics, where the answer is always absolute, it’s only rarely will you find someone willing to admit that some doctrine is simply not very defensible.
So from my position, no one can claim full authority. Even with Apostolic succession, you end up with two institutions that haven’t gotten along since 1054, both showing a clear succession from the Apostolic traditions to today. That doesn’t mean they are bad, or wrong, my point is more subtle than that. It means that until the two can join together and speak with a united voice, neither can really be considered the one true church.
I am, for lack of a better term, stuck in the middle. I love the Catholic Church, I don’t think it’s perfect and I don’t buy into all of it’s dogma, but I’m reticent to leave because I find so much beauty in what it is and what it does. I find that the Orthodox faith makes so much more sense, and on matters not relating to Rome, they seem to be so much more reasonable. I’ve learned more about being Catholic from reading Orthodox authors than I have Catholic ones, there are exceptions, but they are pretty scarce.
Ashamed…
It’s Pascha week in the Orthodox church, we celebrate our Easter much later because of the calendar we use (the OLD one if you really need to know). There is a service every night this week, and multiple ones over the weekend, with a huge Celebration at 2am Sunday morning, where we run around ringing bells and declaring that Christ has risen. A BBQ and Picnic on Sunday and Monday…
It all sounds wonderful…
But it’s freaking me out…
Why you ask would something so worthy of celebration be a cause for concern?
What in the world is wrong with you?
I am asking myself that same question, and at the moment I have no good solid answers. I have some ideas, and can recognize some of what is eating at me, but I don’t have a full grasp yet on the situation. I think it goes something like this:
I get up early, hop in the shower, feed the animals, eat breakfast, run to work. Work on a very large and complicated project, run home, try to finish:
Unpacking.
The Shop’s Electrical.
The Freezer outside that needs moving.
Unpacking the pod of tools and equipment.
Putting up a gate so we can get some sheep for the pasture.
Cleaning out the Chicken Coops.
Unpacking my office.
And those are the ones I can remember, we are still on hold with the other house, so that is always on our minds. My Daughter is graduating high school this year, and starting college, she has a new boyfriend I have to meet and check out now (man do they grow up fast).
