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Spiritual Journey

101 Things in 1001 Days

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Anisa

So, I was insipred to do this by a combination of things.  First was Krista’s blog of 100 Things she wanted to do before she kicked the bucket.  The second thing was Jenn Leete kicking me in the butt to write my own.  Krista was inspired by another blogger, and she by another, and so on.  I followed the link trail reading quite a few lists, and some of them had this cool deadline thing, that I am going to adopt.  Doing it all in 1001 days.

So, here’s my mission, and my list, which will also be posted on the right hand side here.  I plan to cross things off as I go, so you all can keep track with me.  This has been a cool thing.  :)   

There are a many more material things on there than I’d like there to be (maybe I shoud add ‘Be less materialistic’ to my list!), but most of them revolve around the home & garden sections. Seeing as how this is where we spend most of our time as a family though, it makes sense to me.

This next part, I stole 100% from another blog, but I couldn’t think of a better way to state it. 

The Mission: Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria: Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why 1001 Days?  Many people have created lists in the past – frequently simple goals such as New Year’s resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organising and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

Some common goal setting tips:

1. Be decisive. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how you plan to achieve it.

2. Stay Focused. Any goal requires sustained focus from beginning to end. Constantly evaluate your progress.

3. Welcome Failure. Frequently, very little is learned from a venture that did not experience failure in some form. Failure presents the opportunity to learn and makes the success more worthy.

4. Write down your goals. It clarifies your thinking and reinforces your commitment.

5. Keep your goals in sight. Review them frequently, and ensure that they are always at the forefront of your thinking.

My Deadline: Friday, February 25, 2011

I’ve broken my list into categories, for my own sanity. And just incase you’re inspired to write your own list, you can find your own deadline here.

My List:

The List
  1. Finish the List
  2. Inspire someone else to write their own list
  3. Post the List on my blog for all to see.
Spiritual
  4. Find a church to attend regularly and attend it regularly
  5. Raise Henry to love and fear God.
Rick & Henry
  6. Help Rick find his passion & do it
  7. Help Rick work for the DOW or himself in the next four years.
  8. PLAY with Henry everyday
  9. Teach Henry to read, write, spell, and count
  10. Buy a bike trailer/stroller/sled.
  11. Buy Rick a new bike
  12. A new wardrobe for Rick
  13. Get a membership to the zoo
Relationships
  14. Write a letter to people in life that I feel have hurt me in some way. Do not send letter.
  15. Let go of issues re: above people.
  16. Send care packages to loved ones far away
  17. Visit Grandpa at least once a month
  18. Be nicer to my mom
  19. Reconnect to an old friend that I’ve lost touch with
Self
  20. Buy a string bass
  21. Join and play in an orchestra
  22. Write a book
  23. Don’t leave kitchen messy before bed
  24. Stop saying “like”
  25. Get braces.
  26. Buy a mountain bike
  27. Hunt an elk successfully at least one time
  28. Take a college class
  29. Finish my childbirth educator’s certification
Home
  30. Install shelves in the basement
  31. Get a dartboard for the basement
  32. Paint the interior of the house
  33. Have a refrigerator with a freezer drawer on the bottom
  34. Have a nice wool rug in the living room
  35. Install central air conditioning in my house
  36. Have an iron headboard & footboard for my bedroom
  37. Have a bed for Henry with drawers underneath it.
  38. Buy a front loading, energy efficient washer & dryer
  39. Remodel my bathroom using as much green material as possible
  40. Get new (to me) furniture for the living room
  41. Finish the basement
  42. A workshop for Rick
  43. Redecorate & create guestroom in the office
Garden/Yard
  44. Finish the fence
  45. Install an Invisible Fence for Josie
  46. Grow one of those ginormous pumpkins
  47. An outdoor kitchen with grill, sink, and mini fridge!
  48. Handmade picnic table (hint, hint, Rick!)
  49. Adirondack chairs & chiminea for the back yard.
  50. Build a brick patio in the backyard
  51. Install stone pavers on the current back patio
  52. Build a bat house
  53. Learn to can and make jellies, and preserves etc.
Business
  54. Be the 1st in the Bubble Goddess Founding Circle
  55. Get at least 6 clients enrolled in Gifts from the Goddess
  56. Get my Premier 12 Club enrollment completed
  57. Set BIG goals for my business
  58. Achieve those goals
  59. Not have to work in anyone’s office, but Rick’s or my own again.
  60. Hire an accountant
  61. Have BG pay for my family’s health insurance
  62. Have BG pay off the 4Runner
Financial
  63. Have zero credit card debt by Dec. 31, 2008
  64. Live at 3650 S. Grant Street until we buy land
  65. Pay off Rick’s student loans
  66. Buy a second (fuel efficient) car.
  67. Own land in Colorado
  68. Get life insurance for myself
Travel
  69. See the Aurora Borealis
  70. Visit my family in Tennessee every two years
  71. Visit the Minard’s at least every-other year
  72. Climb every 14er in Colorado
  73. Visit Santa Fe
  74. Drive Route 66
  75. Vacation in Yellowstone
  76. See the Channeled Scablands in Washington
  77. Attend the Cherry Blossom Festival In D.C.
  78. Travel the Oregon Trail.
  79. Take Rick on vacation in San Francisco
  80. Raft the Grand Canyon (four days minimum)
  81. Visit Alaska
  82. Visit Hawaii
  83. Travel Europe for minimum of a month
Other Stuff
  84. Make a sock monkey
  85. Take a scrapbooking class or two (or three)!
  86. Get my scrapbooks up to date
  87. Use the cookbooks that I have – twice a month make a meal from them
  88. Make (sew?) some things (quilts, bags, ???) to sell.
  89. Start an etsy shop and sell the things I’ve made.
  90. Go fishing and eat what we catch
  91. Own some very cool cowboy boots
  92. Own horses
  93. Bake bread weekly 
  94. Be able to live independent of the grocery store
  95. Raise beef
  96. Play a gig with my dad’s bass guitar
  97. Snowshoe more than three times a season
  98. Hike more than three times a season
  99. Have a live Christmas tree & plant it after the holidays.
  100. Snorkel in the ocean
  101. Send birthday cards to friends and family
Extra Credit (Long Term) – these may take more than 1001 Days:
  o   Volunteer as a 4-H leader when Henry’s old enough to join 4-H.
  o   Take a Disney vacation w/the Minard’s in 4 years
  o   Move our garage to the other side of the lot
  o   Remove the driveway, landscape the side yard.
  o   Buy or build a ranch
  o   Save enough money to pay for Henry’s college
  o   Run a bed & breakfast
  o   Live in/near Crested Butte
  o   Have a small greenhouse/garden shed.
  o   Run my home using 100% wind or solar energy.
  o   Have enough extra energy to sell back to the power company
  o   Be a good mother-in-law.
  o   Have enough money to get Henry braces if he needs them.
  o   Have a big front porch with a swing.
  o   Raise Bees
o Be less materialistic!

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Categories: 101 in 1001, Spiritual Journey, what not | 8 Comments

Crunchy: Redefined

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Anisa

So, today marks day five on working on this post… by far the longest I’ve ever worked on a single blog entry (originally posted as “Define: Crunchy”).  Two days ago, I started off talking about how I lost a potential friendship over religion and politics.  The forbidden subjects. 

And then I proceed to wind my way into something that basically said I’m politically somewhere to the left of the Republican party, but in no way am I a Democrat either… only I did it in this weird train-wreck of a blog entry that I agonized over for the entire 5 to 8 hours I had it published on my site. 

So after pulling the post off the blog to rethink and edit it into what I intended it to be originally, this is what I have come up with.  And my thanks do go out to loyal friends like Rach & Genny who encouraged me to be myself, despite barfing my political and religious stances all over the world wide web. 

For me, an organic, holistic lifestyle flows naturally from my Christian beliefs.  It’s an extension of my religion, which includes taking care of our bodies and the earth.  I believe that women’s bodies are capable of giving birth without a doctor or hospital, that we can be healthy by eating good food and not having to take loads of processed vitamins, that we should respect the earth and be good stewards of it for our children’s sake. 

I generally consider myself to be a Republican, though, I admit the party has it’s faults, and many of them are not minor.  I take major issue with many of the Democratic views as well, especially on certain controversial issues, and I would not give myself the titles Democrat or a liberal.  But I can comfortably say, I am a “Crunchy Con.”  I’m a conservative that firmly believes that we can and should as a society, go back to our roots, live simpler, work less, be happy and take care of our families and communities. 

I feel that Rick and I have been striving for this lifestyle for quite a while now.  With our big garden, and chickens, and cloth diapers and our little house.  But not until I picked up Rod Dreher’s book recently, did I know that this lifestyle had a name. 

The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to RootsCrunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots.

It’s a political book written by a journalist from the National Review. The back of the hardcover edition reads: “When a National Review colleague teased writer Rod Dreher one day about his visit to the local food co-op to pick up a week’s supply of organic vegetables (“Ewww, that’s so lefty”), he started thinking about the ways he and his conservative family lived that put them outside the bounds of conventional Republican politics. Shortly thereafter Dreher wrote an essay about “crunchy cons,” people whose “Small Is Beautiful” style of conservative politics often put them at odds with GOP orthodoxy, and sometimes even in the same camp as lefties outside the Democratic mainstream. The response to the article was impassioned: Dreher was deluged by e-mails from conservatives across America—everyone from a pro-life vegetarian Buddhist Republican to an NRA staffer with a passion for organic gardening—who responded to say, “Hey, me too!”

From there Dreher was encouraged to write the book about “How Burkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican party).”

I’ve just started reading the book, but it’s been amazing to find camaraderie in such a diverse group of people.  From what I’ve read (and I’m not finished yet), it feels like the author has been extracting my own thoughts on the world and America and putting them down in his book.  It is certainly worth reading, whether you consider yourself Republican, Democrat or somewhere in between. 

With chapters on food, consumerism, home, education and the environment, Dreher addresses many of the ways Americans have neglected ourselves and our families with our strides towards efficiency, technology, and convenience.  He calls the GOP on the carpet.  Often, it’s party that so regularly spouts religious and conservative ideals, yet conveniently forgets those ideals as they head into the Super Walmart.  Something many of us are all guilty of.

Dreher speaks of being conservative in a whole different way.  Of actually conserving the things that matter.  And not just bowing down to the almighty dollar.  The economy is important, but not more important than life, family, etc.  He challenges the idea that acquiring goods and services at the lowest possible price is a fundamental social value.  He questions how one can be a traditional-values conservative in a society which finds and expresses it’s identity through the consumption of products.  He denounces destructive materialism which often causes capitalism to come before conservatism.

In the chapter on Home, this is abundantly clear as he addresses the lack of community and isolation in suburb living, sacrificed to the sprawling homes with vaulted ceilings, detached garages and big screen TVs. 

The chapter on food was amazing.  And eye opening even for a “gun-loving organic gardener” like myself.  And for the record, if Rick didn’t shoot it, or we didn’t grow it ourselves, or if it’s not free-range & organic, we will not be eating it.  It’s amazing and frightening what has been sacrificed in the food industry to get meat into the stores faster and cheaper.  “Conservatives tend to ask how we can be more efficient, not how we can be more effective.  You can be very efficient in the wrong thing.”  And the government regulations make it almost impossible for the little guys to make it.  We need them more than ever.

Dreher talks about the Slow Food movement and interviews small local ranchers and farmers.  And I have to admit, it is more than encouraging and attractive to me to hear the way these people left their corporate jobs to do what felt right to them in their soul, despite the regulations. 

A Crunchy Con Manifesto

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”

My favorite quote so far: “You know, once you start asking questions, it’s a slippery slope. Those questions lead to these conclusions, which set up new questions that lead to these conclusions.  Conservative, liberal, or whatever, I think people who are starting to change their lifestyles and the way they eat are people who realize that you shouldn’t believe everything you’re told now, that you really should investigate it on your own.”

Categories: Recommended Reading, Spiritual Journey, Urban Homesteading | 1 Comment

Restore, support, strengthen and establish…

Posted on June 27, 2007 by Anisa

Xylem: Xy”lem\, n. [Gr. xy`lon wood.] (Bot.) The woody tissue of a plant that provides support and acts as a conduit for water and nourishment.

Last week, Rick and I attended the Wine and Cheese Fundraiser & Silent Auction to support Xylem Family Resource, a non-profit organization ministering to families from pre-conception to raising children through adulthood.  WoW! 

The event was a lot of fun.  We snacked on cheese (yum… I love cheese), sipped some wine, and bid on various items in the silent auction.  I felt very restored, just getting to have a date with my handsome husband! 

I was bummed at being outbid on an adorable copy of “My First Message: A Devotional Bible for Kids”(just when I thought I had it, another woman got her bid in during the final seconds… drat!), but we walked away with a couple of cool gifts for a few of my pregnant friends. 

This organization is so cool.  I would love to work for them after I get my childbirth educator’s certification completed.  Rick and I left discussing whether we could give to them more regularly this year.  I love that it is Christ centered, and that it’s existence is purely to support and strengthen families. 

I find it odd that we can’t find a church where we feel… well, I was going to say comfortable, but I’m not really looking for comfort in a church.  We can’t seem to find a church where we feel like the hearts of people there are trying to worship God and minister to the community, regardless of the community’s beliefs, backgrounds or economic status.  And where the singing is good.  (I’m so not into the being entertained feeling I get from all the contemporary worship services we’ve been to, and the traditional ones always seem so dead.  Are there no churches who just sing to the Lord??) 

Maybe I’ve been looking for a church where we will be restored, supported, strengthened and established, but as Peter says, God himself is the one who does this…  so then, where are the churches that God is working in?  Hmmm…

Anyway, back to the odd feeling…. I find it odd that we can find no church that we feel God is truly working in, but I keep stumbling on things outside of the church, like Xylem, where that feeling is abundant!  Maybe stumbling is the wrong word… we aren’t stumbling on them, God is putting them in our path.  And, boy am I glad! 

After the auction closed, we got to hear a few people speak about the organization and how they have helped the community last year.  I think they will be doing amazing things to strengthen families in the community in the coming years as well!!

The God of all grace, who has called you to eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you.   ~1 Peter 5:10  

Categories: Childbirth, Spiritual Journey | Leave a comment

E Pluribus Unum

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Anisa

So last night, I stayed up late watching a PBS special on Lewis & Clark.  I love their story.  I love the idea of journeying across an unknown continent, seeing things that no one around you has ever seen, has ever imagined. 

I love that they went on the Voyage of Discovery for their country.  That Lewis was called by Thomas Jefferson to explore the United States, and that Lewis chose his friend William Clark as his traveling companion. 

Lewis and Clark took 40 people with them (the Corps of Discovery), and only lost one companion on their two and a half year journey.  By the time they reached the Pacific, they were like family.  Even York (Clark’s black slave) and Sacagawea (a Shoeshone and a woman) were given the oppertunity to vote on where the group would spend the winter.  This was long before slaves would be emanicpated and about 100 years before women would be given the right to vote by our governement. 

Unfortunately when they returned to St. Louis, their commaraderie dissapated, and Lewis fell into depression, eventually taking his own life. 

But I find their story facinating.  It’s inspiring, and extemely patriotic (well, except the suicide part).  I love that they were so democratic on their journey.  Lewis and Clark could have easily ordered the Corps to go where ever they pleased.  Instead they voted.  Every single person had a say.  I love that they went all the way to the other side of the country, trading with native peoples, learning, seeing new (to them) species.  They litterally traveled almost 10,000 miles on foot and by boat.  WOW! 

After the return of the Corps of Discovery, Thomas Jefferson predicted that it would take 100 generations to populate the United States.  Americans did it in only five.  I love our spirit as a nation! 

So, after the show I went off to bed (after doing a little childbirth education reading), and I started to think about my friends.   They are all spread out from me…. Jenny in Texas, Doreen in California, Juliana in Connecticut, Richard in Hawaii, Amy in Kansas, Jen in New York… I’m beginning to feel a little abandoned here in Colorado. 

It’s interesting how important friendships are.  I believe that God did not intend for us to be alone (He gave Adam, Eve for this very reason).  I think the Voyage of Discovery could easily be parabled into a spiritual journey. 

This is how the roles would line out… God would be Thomas Jefferson, telling us to go out into the world.  And we are the Lewises and Clarks.  The smart ones invite our friends along (after all, who could conquer all that wilderness alone).  And somewhere on the journey the friends become our family.  So when we get to the Pacific in the middle of the winter, we love each other and are no longer “slave or free” we are one family.

We need each other, just as Lewis needed Clark and the other members of the Corps of Discovery, especially the ones who many would think were needed the least (where would they have been with out Sacagawea?).  Out of the many members, was formed the Corps of Discovery.  Simialrly, out of many Christians is formed a church (Christ’s body). 

It’s intersting what happened when the expidition was over and the Corps broke up.  Many of the members got married and settled on the land given them as a reward for the journey.  Clark was given a government position, and kept York on as his slave (who, by the way was the only person who did not receive a reward).  Clark even documented beating York after their return for asking for his freedom.  Eventually Clark gave it to him after a number of years.  Lewis never married, and as stated before, ended up commiting suicide. 

I find this so facinating because as a unit, the Corps did amazing things for their countrymen and the future generations.  But when the group broke apart, they failed.  I think it’s a great example of why God wants us to be with a body of people. 

E Pluribus Unum… latin for Out of Many, One.

Categories: Community, Spiritual Journey | Leave a comment

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