“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).