THIS is what The Good Life looks like

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2009/04/deliberate-agrarian-update-for-31.html

A family is busy in the countryside.
Mother is making bread, churning butter, attending to hens and ducks…, preparing food for everyone.
Father is in the fields, ploughing the soil, cutting wood, fixing walls, providing sustenance.
Children explore and play and help and sit at the family table.
Grandma or grandpa sit in a chair by the fire.

Every day is long and filled with the activities of this family….The family in its farm is the family where it belongs.
A place of integration where work, play, childhood and age all share a safe and secure space.

[From anthropologist Hugh Brody]

That is the Good Life. That is what a truly healthy, God-fearing/following family looks like. Everyone working *together* tomake their way along the day to day life path. It takes each participant to get through the day. Mother, ChildrenN Grandparent...all working together, side by side, to make the family work, to keep the family thriving and happy.

Mother isn't lamenting the latest gossip online with a bunch of other cackling hens on Yahoo groups, list groups or (oops!) blogs. She is tending tothe daily needs of the family at home.

The children aren't parlayed off across bus lines to some brick prison of government brainwashing. They have respect and deep lovefor their family unit, which includes Grandparents who aren't shipped off to death wards at the local nursing home, or running the countryside in those ridiculous "Red Hats". They learn to be 'part' of their family by being 'in' the daily life of the family. Not zoned out with a cell phone text group and IPods. They know their worth as a part of their family...not because they are so-and-so's girl/boyfriend.

And Father, most importantly, is THERE, right there, day in and day out. There isn't some far-off lifestyle taking him from his family core. There isn't some pittance given him by some outside force so he can support -- and neglect, forsake, his family. He is HOME where he belongs. He is doing the only true job he has in life...guiding and leading his family. He isn't off 'finding himself' or trying to gain some level of worth based on people who mean nothing to his life.

And what happens to this family later on?

Dad and Mom are now those Grandparents. Their children are now those Dads and Moms. Their Grandchildren are nowthose children. They live together, they work together, and their futures are woven together tightly. Just as they have been for countless generations before.

Maybe you aren't an "agrarian" sort. Maybe you like those Yahoo groups. Maybe you believe your worth is intertwined with that outside job and paycheck. So be it. You've watched it happen, I'm sure. Each person off in their own world, doing their own thing. There's no definition of "family" in that life...unless you prefer some newly updated definition that says you are just the vessel to bring the next generation to life; the state takes over their raising from there.

It's not an easy life, that original vision there. It's easier to step away from what has been proven (over countless generations) to work and produce a sustainable next generation.

The 'easy life' isn't the 'good life'. It's the 'alone life'. You are alone now, even in your family setting; you are alone in your marriage because each has their own agenda to pursue; and in your golden years, you will be alone, or sent off with strangers.

Just a thought to roll around...