The Ave Maria Farm

“If several families, sharing this humble secret, buy old houses on the same slum block and fix them up, they will have restored a kind of Auburn right in the midst of their ruined city and begun the restoration of that ordinary, healthy, human thing, the neighborhood” (John Senior, Restoration of Christian Culture).

Greetings friends!

As you know, we have been gradually building an Orthodox community out here in Northern Texas centered around our parish life and homesteading. It may be far out, but one of my dreams has been to see our neighborhood bought up by friends and family — a sort of American, Orthodox village, if you will. Well, I just noticed a post that a beautiful little farm home and 5 acre lot – lovely setting just around the corner — just went on sell. Anyone interested? Shoot me an email: FatherKavanaugh@gmail.com

“It is time to go back to those conditions in which human beings can grow again… Simplify, as Thoreau said, not by changing governments — a change of collars on a dirty neck; not by denouncing IBM, Communism, the Catholic hierarchy, the Rosicrucians and Jews; but in a single, honest, unremembered act, as Wordsworth said, of kindness and of love. As the first significant act in the change of heart, really — not symbolically — smash the television set, then sit down by the fire with the family and perhaps some friends and just converse; talk alone, even one night a week, will cut your use of energy, and love will grow. Don’t force its growth. The hearth, like good soil, does its work invisibly, in secret, and slowly. After a long time beneath the hearth of a quiet family life, green shoots of vigorous poverty appear; you have become, in a small way, poor” (John Senior).

Author: Zach Boston

“And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. …[A]nd there was not a man to till the ground. …[T]he Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed… and the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. ” (Genesis 2: 3, 5-8, 15)

Labor and leisure.

Our modern world has utterly confused the proper places and even meanings of these concepts. The German Roman Catholic and Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper in his “Leisure As The Basis of Culture” points out that – in the exact reverse of the both the classical pagan and pre-Reformation Christian worlds – our world today places labor above leisure and has reduced leisure to mere amusement and relaxation in order to refresh the laborer to better perform his future labors. In his view, we live in a world of “total work” whereby everything is oriented toward work, and any exercise of our capabilities is conceived of in terms of work.

I’m highly sympathetic to the arguments made in Pieper’s book. Yet, the other day I was reading an interesting analysis of the work of both Pieper and of the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han – who presented views in his “Burnout Society” similar to those of Pieper – that offered a sympathetic but thoughtful criticism wherein their arguments, despite being roused in defense of a contemplative Christian life, may too greatly disparage labor in favor of leisure and so run against the brunt of the historic Christian tradition, which highly values labor.

This provoked the question as to in what the proper relationship between, and the place of, labor and leisure in the Christian life consist. Below is my own amateur attempt to answer that question.

What every church should be doing. Come join us this weekend! Enjoy the good life, and good eating!

“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)

Greetings all! It has been a while since this blog has posted. This is due to a joyous problem: Fr. Peter is quite busy with a growing parish, with his farm work, with discussions surrounding farming, homeschooling, and the Christian life on The Unfading Rose and Orthodox Homesteaders of America video discussion groups, and many other things besides! These are good uses of his time, but it has left precious little to spare for posting on this blog. He does not feel that he can dedicate the time necessary to keep this blog up, running, and posting on a regular basis but he does not wish for it to stop just yet. Therefore, he has asked me to both contribute to and edit this blog. This means that I will be both directly contributing posts to this blog and posting any writings from Fr. Peter whenever he has the time to send them. Additionally, Fr. Peter is hopeful that there will be contributions from other Orthodox Christian writers, homesteaders, and homeschoolers with whom he has made acquaintance. I will post these as well should this come to pass.

A little about myself. My name is Zach Boston. I live in central Kentucky less than an hour west of our beautiful Appalachian Mountains. I stumbled across this blog, was edified by what I read, reached out to Fr. Peter, and a friendship quickly blossomed. My official church affiliation is Anglican, with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). However, I have deeply studied and have been greatly influenced by the Orthodox Church. Consequently, I not only hold it in very high regard, but have come to share many beliefs with it and heavily borrow from it in my private piety. I have also developed a vision of the world with significant overlap. It was on the basis of this shared vision that the friendship and trust between Fr. Peter and myself blossomed. And I have been greatly flattered and humbled that he has entrusted so much of his blog to me. In working with and under his guidance, I hope to see this blog continue to express an Orthodox vision for how to live in the midst of our modern world, a world that in too many ways is at best parasitic upon – and at worst outright hostile to – a traditional, sacramental Christian way of life.

And it is this way of life, this holistic vision that this blog has and will continue to point toward and encourage. Against the wrongheaded divisions and goals of our world, this blog will focus on elucidating a comprehensive, organically unified, and good life. It will seek out the unity of prayer, work, education, and leisure in our lives and how these ought to look given our mandate and goal of theosis. It will speak to the proper unity of the human head, the human heart or nous, and of human hands. It will meditate on the need – and on how – to repair the ruptures between human culture, agriculture, and the natural world under our God-given command to subdue, have dominion over, and steward His good creation by cooperating with Him as He brings about the ultimate transfiguration of all things.

I’m immensely looking forward to what is to come for this blog and pray that it will, by God’s grace, provide some small contribution toward the renewal of Christian life that has been so greatly ravaged over the past half millennium or more, a ravaging which is only accelerating, in the Western world.

Ora et Labora:
Memories from Last Year’s Retreat at the Farm

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer” (Wendell Berry).

The day began with Mass in the biting cold, the moon above us, and the cattle lowing outside the chapel. It was peaceful…and wild. After a warming cup of coffee, we gathered by the barn to feed the pigs, tend to the sheep, and gather eggs. The day carried on as adults and children together worked the dirt, pausing only to pray the Angelus, heads bowed, and hearts focused on Our Blessed Lady. After work was done, it was time for Compline, and at last a refreshing meal by the flickering camp fire. Time changes when you spend consecutive days under the open sky. Eternity penetrates mundanity. The earth is charged with wonder.

Greetings! We are gearing up for our second Spring Retreat and Community Garden Planting at the Ave Maria Farm. If you are interested in attending please reach out by email: Father Kavanaugh@gmail.com

This will be an opportunity for prayer, fellowship, and hard work as we plant our community garden — putting St. Benedict’s philosophy to practice: Ora et Labora! Please feel welcome to participate in whatever manner you are comfortable and reach out if you have questions. Here is the itinerary and a few matters to help you prepare and have a great time.

“While everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds” (Matthew 13:25).

Prayer. Asceticism. Fraternity.

A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation between two men discussing cold showers. It immediately peaked my interest. I had the idea once, and, after a 5 second trial jettisoned it as fast as you can cry ‘help’! For some months now, these men had formed the habit of taking daily showers in glacial temperatures. There are a lot of benefits, they told me. It increases metabolism, improves blood circulation, burns fat and glucose, lowers stress, and gives you a dopamine kick that far out rivals an extra large coffee.

All are welcome to join the discussions. Learn more here: “The Unfading Rose: Raising Families with a Healthy Relationship to God, Nature, and Dirt”

“The Unfading Rose” is a discussion group for Orthodox Christians interested in homesteading, farming, grappling with technology, and the Benedict Option, who are aspiring to rediscover a balanced life centered on sacraments and nature.

Someone once suggested to me, with a slightly dismissive gesture, as though the issue was simple and obvious, “We can’t turn back the clocks.” That statement has long since intrigued me. What does it mean, after all? It is the kind of thing we all grow up with, a bit like saying, “You can’t have breakfast without toast.” “You can’t go on a country walk without a GPS, heavens no.” We breathe in ideas like this without ever questioning them, and they become hardwired into us.

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a blog. I’m afraid it has been a busy year, and I am struggling to keep up with some of my goals. To be honest, I have also dithered quite a bit about how much time I want to spend online at all. Nonetheless, I think I will start creating shorter entries here. Some topics need a lot of words to flesh out, but other times, a line or two is equally weighty.

Here are some words from a recent Paul Kingsnorth article: “Suffer Little Children.” Perhaps it plant a seed.

“It’s a sunny April day when I turn down a small side road near Lough Derg in County Clare on my way back from the morning school run. I’m not really going anywhere, it’s just that I pass this road every morning and I’ve never known where it goes. Sometimes I like to head down lanes and get lost. Getting lost is itself becoming a lost art. Somebody could write a book about it, if anybody still read books; but the art of reading is going the same way as the art of wandering aimlessly. If you want to know where something is today, you just Google it, and the little Satanic Rectangle in your hand obligingly offers up a characterless, inhuman little blue line to follow, precise to the last gigamillimeter, with the help of all the satellites spying on you every second from space. You don’t have to know how to read a map, or even where you are in the landscape. The Machine has your back.

Well, humbug to it. One reason I have neither a smartphone nor a satnav is that I like getting lost. I don’t want Elon’s Starlink to tell me precisely where I am. I reserve the right to know neither where nor who I am, for as long as I damn well like.”