"What do we gain by all of our hard work? I have seen what difficult things God demands of us. God makes everything happen at the right time. Yet none of us can ever fully understand all he has done, and he puts questions in our minds about the past and the future. I know the best thing we can do is always enjoy life, because God's gift to us is the happiness we get from our food and drink and from the work we do.
Everywhere on earth I saw violence and injustice instead of fairness and justice. So I told myself that God has set a time and a place for everything. He will judge everyone, both the wicked and the good. I know that God is testing us to show us that we are merely animals. Like animals we breathe and die, and we are no better off than they are. It just doesn't make sense. All living creatures go to the same place. We are made from the earth and we return to the earth. Who really knows if our spirits go up and the spirits of animals go down into the earth? We were meant to enjoy our work, and that's the best thing we can do. We can never know the future." Ecclesiates 3:9-13 16-22

We had a prayer meeting tonight. It was my first time to attend so I was in for a surprise. We start with a verse like the one mentioned above and then we have a mass prayer. Being from a strong liturgical background I assumed some form of organized prayer , what I got was truly a mass prayer where everyone prayed in their own language, at their own pace, about whatever was on the hearts. I had never experienced anything quite like it, all I could think about was the disciples speaking in tongues to the crowd. It was great.

I have been thinking a lot lately about power, greed, injustice, and violence. You might say I have been consumed by the concern about these problems and their presence in the world. When we read this passage tonight it struck me that things haven't changed, I have just been aware of them more recently.

It does not make it feel any better knowing that there are so many terrible things going on in the world and I can do little about them. However, there is some peace in knowing that I can do my little part, in my little community to make our lives a little more peaceful and a little more happy, and try to share and spread the love to those around me through work, food, and smiles. It is funny how food plays such a central roll in our lives, but only in the last 6 months have I realized how much it could effect us.

Peace and love

Mike

Rod's speech

Here is a copy of a speech that was given Booth the HTC last weekend. I enjoyed the speech and asked if I could post a copy on my blog. Enjoy.

HTC OPENING CEREMONY ADDRESS – Rod Booth, October 11, 2008

INTRODUCTION:

a) Welcome to the 36^th annual Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration of the Asian Rural Institute. We’ve been doing this every year since 1973 when this place was founded. My name is Rod Booth, currently a volunteer here at ARI.

b) My 1^st HTC was 15 years ago in 1993. I think we have some people here whose first HTC was 35 years ago! Who here was at the first? … How many have been to 10 or more? ….For how many is this their first? …. We welcome you all, and hope you will have a great day of new experiences, entertainment, and bargains!

c) Giving thanks for the harvest, as we’ve just done here, is as old as human civilization itself.

d) If I was home in Canada this weekend we would have the family together: there would be roast turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie. Our church would be decorated with vegetables and stocks of corn, pumpkins and squash – probably a few cans from the supermarket, which is where a lot of kids now think food comes from! My Sikh neighbours will be filling the air with aroma of curry and sound of bangrha music as they celebrate Baisakhi.

e) We had that Deuteronomy reading. For our Jewish neighbors this weekend is Sukkot, their harvest tradition. You saw all the different countries represented here in our ARI community. We are a multi-cultural, multi-faith community of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto – all of which have their own variations of harvest celebration. As you probably have your own family and faith traditions.

f) What joins us today is our common understanding of the critical link between FOOD and LIFE. Here at ARI we actually call our farm work Food-Life, and in this celebration we come to celebrate that link and express our gratitude for another year of harvest.

1) THAT ALL MAY EAT AND BE FILLED

a) In 2007 ARI hosted a symposium called “Peace From the Soil”. It looked at the problem of violence and war in our world and concluded: “Peace begins within and peace is possible when there is food on the table. Peace within a human being, peace of mind, and peace within a community, all require that basic needs are met so that there is security of life and livelihood, and the opportunity for physical, mental and spiritual health.

b) I’d say out of a lifetime in broadcast journalism, in refugee camps and marginalized communities in over 70 different countries, that peace is possible ONLY when there is food on the table. Which I think is the point of that familiar Bible story which was read for us, Jesus’ Feeding of the 5000.

c) If I had a text today if would be that one little line: “they all ate and were filled”. Biblical Scholars vary in their interpretations of that story: the conservatives say it happened exactly as it says – a miracle of reproduction; liberals refer to the little boy who gave his all (2 loaves, 5 fishes) and so shamed everyone else into opening their bag lunches - a miracle of sharing if you like! The disciples wanted to send the people away, Jesus wasn’t having any part of it; for him, in God’s world, ALL people deserve to be fed.

2) SO HOW ARE WE DOING ON THAT SCORE?

a) Not so Good. In 1996 the world’s governments pledged to reduce the level of world hunger by 50% by the year 2015. Well we’re more than half way there, and the numbers have gone UP, not DOWN. More of the world’s people are hungry in 2008 than was the case in 1996.

b) 12.6% of the people living on this earth, 854 million of them, suffer from malnutrition – 30 million of them die of it each year.

c) We added another 50 million to that total in 2007 alone when the price of the three basic food staples, rice, wheat and corn, all doubled - pricing those foods out of range for millions of the world’s peoples.

d) In Mexico, where tortillas are a staple of life, people are going hungry because their corn is being sent instead to America to make fuel for automobiles!

3) AN UNSUSTAINABLE GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM

The bottom line is that we have evolved a world food system based on the consumption of two non-renewable resources:

a) The first one is oil – which has also managed to double in price within the last year. Dean Freudenberger who addressed our AFARI annual meeting last June warned that the vise-grip connection between agricultural productivity and fossil fuels is a ticking time- bomb. “Whether its the fuel that runs the tractor, powers the irrigation systems, dries the grains, ships to markets, or manufactures the fertilizers (which incidentally have tripled in price in one year) – modern Westernized agriculture is resting upon a base of cheap, available fossil fuel. It’s not a question of “if” but “when” this fuel becomes so expensive that the entire system will implode”. There is reason to think that “when” has already arrived.

b) But the second non-renewable resource which we are consuming is less obvious – it is the world’s supply of arable soil … that essential ingredient in which we grow all the food for man and beast alike.

c) More than half the earth’s surface (7/10) is covered by water, only 3/10 is dry land.

One of those10ths is too hot, a second is too cold, leaving only 1/10^th of the earth’s surface that is arable for range lands or cropping. How do you feed 7 - heading on 10 - billion people on that?

d) And there are three critical things we’re doing to that arable 10%:

1) - We’re paving it over. My country is no different from yours. 50 years ago Tokyo to Yokhama was a mix of villages, towns and farms. Today it is one endless city … all who live there dependant on someone else, somewhere else, providing them with food. - Japan now imports more than half its food needs.

- China is buying up farmland in Africa which it will crop to feed its people. Not good news for Africa’s already undernourished millions.

- In my country greedy developers work with equally short-sighted politicians to remove ever more land from the Agricultural Reserve.

2) - We’re abusing it through mono-cropping. 150 years ago when my mother’s grand- parents sod-busted the Kansas prairie, the buffalo grass root system went down 16 inches in the ground – holding water, nutrients, everything needed to sustain life. They made their first house out of those sod bricks. Then they and everyone else plowed it up to plant wheat. Then came drought, then winds, and that good fertile soil literally blew away.

- Even today for every bushel of grain the US Midwest produces, it looses two bushels of top soil. Every 20 minutes the equivalent of 50 train-cars full of top soil washes down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico.

3) - We’re killing it with chemicals. In Thailand last month I visited one of our ARI grads who after he inherited his father’s commercially-farmed paddy field, it took him 10 years of composting and vermiculture to reclaim the land sufficiently to grow anything on it.

I - In Kenya I visited an ARI-trained farmer who was doing integrated organic agriculture. All around him his neighbors had bought into the government/fertilizer company mono- cropping program growing corn. The price of corn fell, they could no longer afford the company’s seeds or its fertilizers, and their reliance on pesticides and herbicides had killed many of their soil’s essential micro-organisms.

4) CARING FOR GOD’S CREATION

a) One of the things you learn here at ARI, with its emphasis on organic, integrated agriculture, is the incredible interconnectedness of the whole of nature – of which we humans are but a part.

b) I think we’ve missed the point of that Psalm we read earlier in this service: how we’ve been given dominion over the works of God’s hands. We’ve tended to think that means the world is ours to dominate and control. We’re having to realize that the real issue is our responsibility for being good stewards of God’s creation. We’ve been given our skills and ability to CARE FOR the Creation, not to destroy it.

6) CONCLUSION

a) It’s because ARI believes that, teaches that, lives that, that I and the others who volunteer to be part of this community do so happily and willingly.

- It’s why a staff who work long hours for modest pay, continue to do so faithfully.

- Its why participants from all over Asia, Africa and the Pacific, come each year – leaving behind for 9 months family, loved ones, jobs – working and learning so they can take home skills that will help their own people to better, more fulfilling lives.

b) And its because of that that so many of you come year after year to participate in this Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration and to lend your support to the work of ARI, helping to make this a world in which we can truly “live together”.

c) God be with us in our rejoicing, and may we be with Him in caring for the world he has entrusted into our keeping.

Time to Catch Up

There has been much goings on since my last post. I will try to start posting regularly in order to address things as they happen. As it is for now you will have to suffer with a rough outline of the last week.

The Thanksgiving Celebration went off splendidly with large crowds, great weather, and a lot of food. At final count I was involved in 7 performances including some impromptu country songs to start off the second day. We raised some money for a local library and the profits from food sales are going to help with projects for next years celebration.

As I mentioned earlier we have had several new additions to the farm. Our third sow has had a litter of piglets, apparently there are two more in waiting. I got to see the newest litter when they were only a few hours old. I want one.

Yesterday the Japanese chapter of Second Harvest dropped off some expired food for us to feed to the pigs. Second Harvest is a program started in the US to minimize food waste at restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers markets by collecting the edible left overs and passing them on to less fortunate people who can put them to use on the dinner table. It is a very neat program which I would encourage you to check out.

This weekend we had about 15 Americans at ARI 10 of them were members of the American Friends of ARI (AFARI) which is a support organization based in the states that does a lot for fundraising for ARI, there were two English Teachers and a few volunteers. It was kind of crazy we were almost the majority nationality, second to the Japanese. One of the Americans is a former employee of ARI and is now working with a non-profit in Seattle. We have had some great conversations about non-profits and entrepreneurial management so they can be self-supporting.

I have started reading a book called Small is Beautiful written in the 60's about the effects of our current economic model. I have only read a few chapters but the concepts he discusses seems well thought out and sincere, I might have more about some of those ideas in later posts. I also read a book on American Militarism.

On Wednesday I went to my first Japanese class! It was a lot of information very quickly, but I feel like I can do tis. Once I figure out how to order things to be sent here I think I am going to order Rosetta Stone as a supplement. The native speakers here are also very helpful and work with me in my meager efforts.

The two weeks I have spent here so far have been wonderful. I can't believe all of the activity that has happened. I promise I will update more often. Thank you for following along. Don't forget to leave some love. Peace Love and Godd Food to all.

Mike

Old McDonald

In previous posts I might have made reference to Food-Life Work here at ARI, for foodlife I am assigned to the chicken houses. We have two chicken houses, each with around 200 chickens, and we recently got 200 chicks (minus two that were tragically smooshed in a tragic newspaper accident,) which makes about 598 chickens at ARI. So every morning I am greeted by a face like this: well about 200 faces, and they are all hungry, very hungry. This morning I was in there before the food turning the floor (think compost) and they surrounded me and held me for ransom until the food came. The chickens can be very persuasive.

This weekend is our big Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration and we are all very busy. The HTC is an open house we throw for the community in celebration of this years plentiful food. So we are expecting between 750 and 1000 people to come through each day. All day we have been getting tents ready, cooking food, practicing for our performances, and decorating. There have been lots of new volunteers for the weekend and local community members bringing in food and items to sell. I have now met little old church ladies from Japan and let me tell you, they are the same as the little old church ladies from back home, smiling helpful, burdened with thrift goods and they come en masse.

Tomorrow morning I have a feeling that the top is going to blow off here, it will look like a volcano erupted and we are all going to be running around trying to put on the final touches before the guests arrive. My day will start at 5:30 in the kitchen, someone needs help grinding something and I got to volunteer, as such things go.

On another note, along with the chickens we have two cows and lots of pigs. One of the mama pigs (pictured here) had 15 piglets a few weeks ago, and another mama pig started having babies last night, as far as I know she is done now but I don't know the final count.

So, life is in full swing here and we are rolling along at full tilt. I want to leave you with a few of the thoughts that have been floating through my head, the idea that we are built for work, and only through work can we be truly fulfilled. If there is no toil how then can you appreciate joy? I think at times we feel bored or anxious because our bodies are lacking the satisfaction of work. As I work during the days here I can reflect on the merits of labor. It occurs to me that by growing our food and working this land we are taking part in an inherent act. I try to think about how this could be applied in a normal life back home and can't get beyond the fact that it should be applied back home throughout my life. The gratification I get from working to produce the food we eat is amazing. There is a song here that was written by a volunteer in 1988 I think it speaks well to us, here is an excerpt "Until the day we can feed ourselves, we never will be free." I leave you with those thoughts, do with them what you will. Peace and Love and good good feelings.

Mike

HAHA

Well, this weekend is a big weekend, the annual Harvest Thanksgiving Festival here at ARI. We are spending the entire week getting ready for two days of food and entertainment for the community. We are cleaning the property for an open house, harvesting food and preparing lists for the regional dishes and desserts we will be cooking, and of course rehearsing our singing and dancing for the stage shows. I have been here for 4 days and tonight I was pulled into my fourth act for this weekend. So far I am the vocals for Hotel California, a guitar player for a skit, a dancer in our rendition of Footloose, and an "interactive" curtain holder for a skit. We stayed up until midnight playing guitar in the dorm getting ready for Hotel California, and today we practiced Footloose for at least an hour, I was pulled down there under the impression that we were just going to try it and next thing I know they are talking about stage cues and partners. Such is the life I guess.

I am having a lot of fun. The community here is so welcoming I feel like I have been here for weeks. I am learning some Japanese and hope to go to my first official lesson tomorrow night, it might not be as hard as I initially expected. There is a library in the main building with a surprising collection of books. I met the librarian on Friday and told her that my mom is a librarian and I loved reading. She couldn't believe I love books, who would have thought? Well I checked out a book called Small is Beautiful, a Japanese phrase book, and Addicted to War about our countries militarism. They are proving to be provocative books.

Sunday morning I was woken up at 4:50 and invited to go climb a mountain. I piled into a small car with four others and we drove an hour into Nikko National Park. By 6:15 we were on our way up the trail. As we climbed it was explained to me that we were actually going to climb three peaks that day. It was great, besides being very tired I got to see some amazing views. The area we were in had already started changing colors so the foliage was beautiful. Have you ever noticed how the trees in Japanese gardens always look so manicured? Well, apparently that is how God does things in Japan because everywhere there were these georgeous trees that looked like someone had been tending them for years, it was enough to inspire some magnificent gardens. The third peak we climbed was an active volcano complete with steam vents spewing sulfur into the autumn air. At the top you could very clearly see the 200m (notice the metric system being used here) crater left over from the last eruption. After all the climbing up we rode an air trolley back down the mountain (think James Bond when jaws bites through the cable in Europe.) That day left me very drained, but I have recovered well.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers. I am calling it a night. I will keep you posted.

Peace and Love,

Mike

I feel like so much has happened in the last three days that it is overwhelming me, so if I don't put it down now it will never escape the recesses of my mind. I finally made it, I am in Japan!

The travel was long and arduous, I won't bore you all with details but it involved 3 planes, a train, a bus, and a van and totaled almost 24 hours. I arrived in the evening after dinner worn out but excited. The first night was hard because I knew I should sleep but my internal clock was broken, so I stayed up with several of the other guys from my dorm talking and getting to know one another. The next morning I had the option to sleep in until breakfast but I was scared I would not wake up on my own. So, I decided that the best option would be to wake up at 6:30 and work a full day with the rest of the group. The ARI schedul is pretty consistent and follows this pattern:

6:30 Morning Exercises
6:45 Cleaning the buildings
7:00 Food Life Work 1hr
8:15 Breakfast
9:00 Group Meeting
9:30 Morning Activities (read work)
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Afternoon Activities (see above)
4:30 Food Life Work 1hr
6:30 Dinner
9:30 Night Patrol (Community Buildings locked)
repeat

The guys in the dorm usually have an impromptu gathering upstairs talking late into the night with classic rock playing from one of several laptops.

So, my first morning at ARI I was cleaning toilets at 6:45 then feeding chickens at 7:00. It was a great start. However it got better after that. I arrived in time for the Rice Harvest when the whole community comes together to harvest. It was great fun but very tiring. This gave me an opportunity to meet a lot of community members that I might not have met so soon had we all been working under the normal schedule.

I am going to have to cut this short, they are closing up the computer area for the night. I will add more tomorrow. I love you all, have a great day, and don't forget to leave your love in comments, they make my day.


Peace and Love
Mike