The weather has been anything but constant this week. It kind of reminds me of the swings we have in West Texas. At the beginning of the week it was cold and wet. By Wednesday it was sunny and beautiful. It has started to get a little cooler but nothing like last week. They say that it will snow sometime in the next few months.

This afternoon we took a community outing and drove to the mountains for snow viewing. Most of the participants have never seen the snow. Everything went splendid and we had a great day... except that there was no snow. We drove to a conference center that is historically snow covered, but today it was nice and green. Instead of romping through the snow we got a tour of the facilities and a buffet style lunch. It was disappointing for all, but to every cloud there is a lining. We loaded back into the buses and headed farther up the road. After much winding and weaving we pulled into a parking lot and walked down a side trail to a 30 ft stretch of three day old snow. It was awesome. Madness ensued, snow was flying everywhere. I loved it, so much excitement for a small pleasure.

Speaking of snow, apparently College Station is inundated with it right now. Who would have thought? I keep getting asked about Texas and how hot it is over there. I can't help but laugh that our southern desert state is colder right now than it is here. I know why it is cold, and that it can get very cold, but trying to explain that to someone that has never been there except through movies and T.V. is difficult. For those of you who are reading this from a warm room in a snow filled play land, please enjoy.

I hope all is well, and that your lives are merry. Feel free to leave your love. Peace, Love, and deep fried food for all.

Mike

My Experience with Death

We sent 58 birds to the freezers yesterday. It took all day to kill, cut, and clean the two-year-old layers that inhabited the F2 pen.

I don't know how to explain how I felt during the blood bath. I don't think I have prayed that much in a long time. My head swam as my thoughts try to order themselves. I have always eaten meat, it is what I do, but I had never fully understood the depth of that choice until this moment, and it all came rushing up at once. The arguments for and against, the stories I’ve heard, the books I have read. Yet, none of it made sense, so I cut, that is what you do, you cut.

It is a strange thing taking a life so personally. I am standing there, in a slatted room, with a chicken in one hand, a knife in the other, my skin trying to crawl off my back, and a queasy feeling in my stomach. Butchering puts you face to face with your eating habits, shows you the cost of your life on earth, and questions your disconnected notions about food and where it comes from. Rationally I understand that in order that I may eat meat an actual animal has to sacrifice its life. Emotionally though, as the bird and I make eye contact, there is a deep regret. At this point I just tell the bird in a soothing voice that it will be over soon. I have been repeating this phrase as a sort of mantra all day as we caught the birds in their pen, transported them to the slaughterhouse, and pulled their compatriots one by one out of the crate.

The first round of chickens were the hardest. At ARI we do not chop of the head or wring the neck, instead we slice the jugular veins in order to bleed out the bird and minimize the damage to the meat. They say that it is humane, and the birds don't actually feel much. I don't believe them. Once the cuts are made (a process that involves inserting a blade into the neck behind the airway and severing the jugular veins along the neck bone) the birds are turned upside down and put into a metal funnel to allow them to bleed out. There is usually some "involuntary" muscle contractions as the bird’s body comes to terms with its fate. After some time we move them into hot water then a de-feathering contraption before plucking and butchering the rest of what is now very definitely a carcass. At the end we have something that looks very much like what you would find in your local grocery store.

By the end of the day I was drained. I had not realized how emotionally demanding the whole process was until it was over. I ambled up the hill to my dorm where I laid in my hammock for several minutes collecting my thoughts, pondering life and my place in the grand scheme. I was surprised by how often my thoughts turned to God during this process. It seemed that I was in a state of constant prayer, trying to come to terms with our entwined fates, the chicken that would be my dinner. Two days later, I am still processing my thoughts.

I don’t like to write stories that are sad or discouraging. I don’t want you to think that I am sad or miserable. I just wanted to share my experience, that you might see more clearly what I see, and understand more fully my experiences. Thank you for taking the time to walk with me in my journey. I hope that you are well fed and happy. Peace and Love.

Mike

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I don't have a whole lot of
time to write in this post so I have added some pictures to speak for me.

As you can see to the left, it is getting cold, evidenced by the monkey warming himself by the heater. I got to visit a school last week and play games with 2 classes of 4th graders. Did you know that they have unicycles at Japanese schools? It is an integral part of their recess time. We hiked up to a waterfall this weekend, it was the third largest waterfall in Japan. While we were there we spent some time in a tunnel waiting for an elevator to go to a lookout. After the lookout we hiked across the river and then up to the top of the falls. There were some great views of the farmland around the river that fed the waterfall. Good times were had by all.

Since Thanksgiving is not a national holiday in Japan, a group of us will be celebrating our own version of a Thanksgiving feast Saturday night. It is good to have a group here to share time with over a roasted turkey. Unfortunately due to a scheduling error on my part I am foregoing an opportunity to go rock climbing, but I know the rock will be there a lot longer than the home made chess pie.

Since it is Thanksgiving my roommate and I made a video for you last night. It is not high quality but it is the second such video I have produced. I hope you enjoy it. With that I will leave you to view some pictures and the video. Keep checking back, I would like to discuss some of the spiritual aspects of this journey. I hope you are all full and happy.

Peace and Love
Mike

The participants just got back from a two week tour of Western Japan so there has been much music and merry making tonight. We played guitar for about two hours before everyone ran out of energy. There is a Tom Wait's song called I Don't Wanna Grow Up, and it has been stuck in my head for some time now. Towards the end I looked up the above mentioned song and played it for the group. When I played the recording some of the folks asked if it was me singing (Tom Waits has a very raspy voice, as if he was raised on Whiskey and Cigarettes, and apparently so do I (aka my AC/DC voice)) So I decided I should just sing it and claim the song as my own.

It is rainy here at ARI and the trees are dripping water. This morning I was going to try to travel to Utsunomya to the Anglican Church (a 40 minute train ride, and the closes to ARI.) I could not find the directions and I was running late so it was suggested that I wait until next week. Instead I spent some time with my BCP and went searching for sermons from familiar priests online. I settled on a sermon by Father Mike formerly of San Angelo and currently located in Arizona. He used a story about his daughter's early arrival into this world to discuss preparedness and the coming of Advent, very nice. I then found a podcast that my good friend Ryan Kuratko was involved with, it was a post from December last year but it was great to hear his thoughts on Mary's reaction to the news that she would have a baby. These words of wisdom, coupled with a conversation with my roommate about church and community, were very comforting to a young Texan so far from home.

This afternoon we went rambling through the woods around ARI and into town because it was too wet for bikes. I found an old logging road and followed it up into the hills. I decided to take a non-path back and spent some time bushwhacking my way to civilization. It reminded me of my time in British Columbia and my heart was happy. I have been doing some personal study on simplicity and attitudes we can adapt for our life that will help us be more aware of our connection wide web of nature. It has been an enlightening mental journey and I have been able to evaluate my natural patterns and perceptions of life from a distance. I am learning a lot about my life and how I want to fit into this world. One of the books I am reading was published a few decades ago, but its discssions are very relevant to todays issues. It is called Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, a study of economics as if people mattered. It talks about our recent engrained acceptance of greed and jealousy as nescessary components of a "healthy economic system," and the current assumption that unlimited growth is possible in a finite world. Heavy implications but the alternatives he brings up are enlightened and promising.

Because the participants were gone for two weeks I got to spend a lot of time in the kitchen "training" for the winter when we would have to cook more often. This weekend I introduced several of the community member to the now world famous Heavy Cake. Of course as luck would have it I burned the whole thing by putting too much trust in the oven. After some doctoring and a heavy dose of icing we salvaged most of the cake. One of the volunteers was so impressed he thought the burned layer was actually a third type of chocolate. Good times. Last night I made southern style biscuits from the Perini cookbook and they went over very well with scrambled eggs. I am making my way through the kitchen and learning a lot of the standard dishes, mainly miso soup, scrambled eggs, sauteed veggies, and rice. I have gotten some good response and mild acceptance, so I consider it an overall success. Food is obviously a big part of our lives here so it is fun to be involved in all aspects of the process.

Last week, after some consultation, we decided we should put up a rope swing. In keeping with the Austin Greenbelt style my roommate and I decided it should be over a drop so you could really get the feeling of air under your feet. So we found a good sturdy tree overhanging a hill, and in less than half of an hour we had a very sturdy swing set up. We have only used it a few times and gotten a weary acceptance by the staff. Now that the participants are back we will see how it goes, I think they will enjoy it as much as I do.

Faith is a funny thing here. ARI is built and largely funded by religious groups. Every day we pray before meals and in the mornings, there is a very boisterous prayer group on Monday nights, and a shuttle to churches close by on Sundays. Most of the participants have faith traditions, some more fundamental than others. My peers, the volunteers, are a typical young adult crowd with mixed opinions and hesitant affiliations. It is fun to discuss religion and ideas of faith with the community members. We have a variety of opinions and experiences. I have shared when asked and tried to keep my mouth shut re it was prudent. It is sometimes difficult to feel like a missionary in this dormitory environment, and I often find myself saying "ok I am here, tell me what you want now." As could be expected the answer is hard to discern and mostly interpreted as love your neighbor and try to be nice. So here I sit, thousands of miles from home with with my veggies and chickens, doing what I can. I can only trust that I am supposed to be here and that by living my life and sharing it with others, I will contribute something to the lives of those that I encounter.

I hope you are all well, and that your lives are full of joy and good food. Peace Love and Merriment.

Mike

One Month

Well, I have been here for a month now. I was trying to decide when I would call it a month officially. Thursday was the end of the fourth week, Saturday was the first day of the new month, Sunday was the anniversary by date, but by the time I actually got around to posting a blog about it I was already into month two and behind schedule by a day. Some things never change.

I feel like I am growing and learning here. I am thinking a lot and asking myself all kinds of questions. There are so many amazing and varied things in this world, and so many people with different ideas and dreams. Our community is diverse but we all have the same concerns about our families, our communities and the future. We are all separated from people we love in a new home trying to learn to live together. Some of my fellows are getting reports from home about turmoil or unrest. There governments are split or under attack, or even attacking. When they leave this place in a little more than a month they will have to go home and to hostile governments and business interests that don't have any love for rural leaders that would encourage the masses to stand up for themselves and take back their lives and their food. Or their countries are split in a struggle for power, a struggle that is leaving their families in harms way. But while we are here, we are safe and inspired. I pray that these wonderful people will be able to take what they have learned here back home with them and share the love and compassion that they so ably display here.

Our weather is changing, and the temperature is dropping. We have harvested a lot of food and begun planting some of our winter crops. The food is wonderful and warm. I always look forward to meal time.

Speaking of food, I have had some culinary adventures both inside and out of ARI. I have eaten fried crickets served as a snack during dinner. We regularly get a side of baby fish in a crunchy sweet sauce, the was a restaraunt where you pick sushi from a conveyor belt, fresh sashimi at my roomates house, fish guts served in a kind of gravy, cow guts that are regularly served with beer to cure hangovers, the largest bowls of Ramen noodles I have ever seen , and a myriad of variations along these themes. To tell you the truth I haven't find much that I don't like to eat. I am getting especially adept at using chopsticks .

This weekend we got to go fishing at a little river aout 40 minutes away. We used little worms from the bottom of the rocks as bait and caught 31 fish in about 45 minutes, I have included a picture of one of the largest of our catch. We brought them back to ARI with us and they got cooked up with some of our farm raised fish and served a dinner, whole.

As a recap for the month, I have gotten very acquainted with our chickens, harvested rice, climbed three mountains, started learning Japanese, gone fishing, visited Tokyo, dried my clothes on the roof, soaked in an Onsen (hot spring) , adopted three bicycles, eaten crickets, and eaten sushi from a conveyor belt.

Thank you for all of your support. I hope you enjoy these little updates. I will add more pictures later. If you click on the pictures it will take you to a full size version and my online photo folder. Peace, Love and good food for all.

Mike

"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.