So much to do and so much to think. What would life be like if there weren't so many random things pulling at us? Why do we say "yes" whenever we are asked whether we can do this or that? Automatically, often without even thinking. The pause that we should take. The breath that we should take while we think about what we have on our plate....
This wasn't a problem when people lived back on the farm. There was no question about what people were going to do with their day. They didn't use an alarm. They got up when it got light, and they got outside to get the water, milk the cows, and feed the other animals. No question how you are going to spend your time when you have a barnful of livestock waiting to be taken care of. Breakfast would happen after everyone had already be at the day for a couple of hours. There was no email or Instagram to distract anyone. No one grabbed their phone to text while they were waiting for the water to fill the stock tank. They would look out across the fields and think, about life, about the way the farm was running, about the family. They had a story that they were creating day by day, they didn't need "This is Us" or "The Voice".
The kids went outside to do the tasks that were appropriate for their ages. The little ones would do the weeding, carry in the laundry, and gather the eggs. It was a proud moment when a child was given a job that really needed doing. It meant that they were helping the family to work better.
The older ones would help with the cooking, sewing, fencing, feeding the animals, and on and on it went as they grew up. By the time they were 14 or so, they had spent their time becoming capable. Not in ways that were potentially going to pay off "someday", but in real, solid, material things that would be part of the living of life.
Moms didn't go to town to volunteer, they didn't go find "something to do" when the kids went off to school. They didn't take the kids from one "enriching" experience to another. They raised their children.
No one was going to teach them. Mom taught them.
Taught them to read, what ever was available. Usually the Bible. Taught them around the cooking, the sewing, the planting, the feeding, and the many, many other things that were a part of the rythym of the days and the seasons. Teaching that was just part of the way the world worked, so it made sense. You have to learn to read and write. Who is going to figure out what needs to be ordered from the seed catalog? Who is going to find the best way to sell the things that had been growing all year? Who is going to find out what the lambs need to cure hoof rot? You have to learn to do the math that will keep you from being cheated, that will help you figure out how much seed corn to buy so that you can plant next year. All the lessons were things that could be immediately applied, not things that were waiting for "someday" when you might need them, like Algebra.
Dads didn't have mid-life crises, because a whole lot of them didn't live to mid-life, and if you did live to mid life your whole world was in the farm and in all of what you had built. You had a place to be and things that couldn't be left while you tried to figure out who you were. You were a farmer, for better or for worse, and you had better sit on that land and make it something that you could hand down to your sons. So there wasn't golf, or poker, or yoga, or pornography, at least for most of them. There was work. Exhausting, backbreaking, heart-breaking, satisfying work. Building, growing, clearing, plowing, helping God with the creating. That kind of work makes you get up early, keeps your mind engaged all day, and puts you to sleep when the sun goes down. That kind of work makes a family a part of each other and a part of the land. That kind of life is what makes people say that the land will always be a part of them. There is something elemental about saying "yes" to a life on the land. It isn't for everyone, but it is a "yes" to being as real as it gets.
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