Wednesday 18 May 2016

Go with the flow

I often run out of puff ... today is one of those days.

Like everybody living in a busy world I have a million things circling around my head, a long list of 'to-do's' and the spinning merry-go-round of life keeps on turning.

I love my life. I am proud of how we live.

We try hard to live with intention and we try to make conscious choices all the time, and try to avoid  living on auto-pilot.

We are conscious and committed to learning  new and better ways to do life, to help make the world a better place, but the journey is slow and continuous.

Often what is important to us as a family, and me as an individual, is at odds with what our society tells us is important, It takes constant energy to stay true to what we believe, and to also let our knowledge and beliefs continually evolve and grow.

We have clear goals that we are working towards but sometimes it is tiring and feels like too much and not enough all at once.

In order to live the life I want, I require quite a lot of rest. It appears I need more rest than my husband, children and most people I know. But that is okay I think.

We live in a world where rest equates to laziness and I feel this. I often feel guilty about the amount of rest I need so I tell myself my body needs to rest on a biological or chemical level so my cells can keep doing what they need to do so I won't get cancer. Disclaimer this is based on no medical knowledge at all. This is just how I justify my need to rest, to myself ... so silly but it works so hey.

At the beginning of the year I chose a sacred word for 2016, a word that would help me set my intent for the year ahead, and after much prayer and meditation my word was flow.

This year I want to go with the flow more, listen and respect the rhythm of life, let go of constant expectation and to discover the joy in the moment.

I have not done this exceptionally well in every instance, I am still me after all with a lot of learnt behaviour under my belt. However I have honoured my 2016 sacred word and intend to do so even more as this year continues.

This morning I took some time to rest, and the word flow rested on my heart again. Despite the massive list of jobs I 'should' be doing, I went with the flow and listened to a fantastic talk by Tsh Oxenreider on the art of simple living, living holistically with your life's purpose.   I am super keen to read her book "Notes from a Blue Bike" which will require me to rest even more so I can read it. Yay!

Now, almost three hours later I think I am almost ready to brush my hair, clean my teeth, get out of my track suit pants and head into 'the real world' to complete at least three tasks on that pesky 'to-do' list.

I would love to hear your thoughts on rest and its value and importance in your life.

With much love
Justine x

Monday 16 May 2016

Time is the most precious gift

Our free range chickens and our first ripe orange in 2016
Time is possibly the one thing each and every person on earth has an equal quantity of.

The number of minutes and hours in each day does not change no matter how wealthy, how important, how old or how tall we are.

No matter where we live, how many children we have, the colour of our skin, our level of education, nothing changes how much time we have in each day.

The saying "The best things in life are free" is not entirely true because the greatest gift in life is time and it is priceless.

When somebody spends time with you, or takes time to do something for you it is costing them their time that they can never recoup.

No matter what they do they can never get that time back again.

Time is the most amazing and generous gift.

I saw something recently on Instagram that said "I have never bought anything with money. Everything I have was bought with pieces of time I sold from my life to a job that will never have paid enough when my time is up".

Time is this uber valuable commodity that we have limited access to, who knows when our time will be up, and we choose what we do with it each and every day.

The very first trees being planted in our orchard in 2012
Our little family dreams of living a more sustainable low impact life together, building this takes time.

We are trying to take time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. To live in peaceful dwellings, creating an undisturbed place of rest, sowing our seeds and letting our animals range free (paraphrased from Isaiah 32:16-20).

In hot old dusty Roma growing anything takes a lot of time, but we are certainly making progress and it is so deeply rewarding and it is a fun way to spend our time on earth.

We have helped and witnessed hundreds of trees grow, and we have seen many many hundreds die.

The sense of achievement we get when we harvest anything we have grown is overwhelming, and therefore must be shared on social media.

We eagerly await the day when we can share our produce with friends and family and when more people can come and share in this amazing place to draw near to mother earth.

The capacity to grow and eat our own food, a practice that would have been part of every Australian life until maybe a generation ago, is exhilarating.

We are learning new things, appreciating new things and witnessing new things everyday on this little journey of ours.

Like today for instance, when I went to buy a cauliflower from the supermarket and it only cost me $4, it blew my tiny little mind. For us to grow our own cauliflowers from seed takes many months and daily love and tender care and here is one for $4. If I calculated my time into the production of our half a dozen annual cauliflowers they would cost approximately ten thousands dollars!! If I had never grown a cauliflower it would not be possible to recognise how insanely cheap this was.

Time is a marvelous thing.
Don't take time for granted.
Time spells love.
Don't sell your time too cheaply.
When you say yes to something, you are saying no to something, or someone, else.
Time is limited.
Love is all that matters.
Time waits for no one.
Enjoy your time.
Recognise the true value of time.

I would love to hear your thoughts on time.
Much love
Justine x