06 22 11 Values Are Important
Cindee and I have grown accustomed to having a glass of wine together at the end of the day. It has become something of a ritual, allowing us to spend time together and talk as we unwind. It seemed natural, as we have talked more and more about recycling, to also talk about reusing wind bottles. We decided to try our hand at wine making.
Our first attempt was a merlot wine kit we bought from a local vendor. The process seemed simple enough, and our ceramic stove fireplace came with a small wood storage chamber built into the brick façade, that turned out to be perfect for storing the carboy (what vintners call the fermentation vessel). All went without a hitch, and we soon had about 30 bottles of wine aging in our cellar. We even went so far as to put labels on a few bottles and hand them out to family at Christmas. It was really quite fun.
Finally, the day came to open the wine. Cindee and I poured each other a glass and took a sip. The wine was terrible! Yes, we managed to drink a glass, but neither of us could see ourselves substituting this poor wine for the (rather cheap) store bought wine that had become a part of our evening ritual. We now had 23 bottles of bad wine aging in our cellar. What to do? Make vinegar?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however—or in this case in the taste buds. Besides, permaculture teaches that there is no such thing as garbage. Every waste product is a resource for some other life enhancing process, and such was the case for our wine.
As it turned out our neighbor, John, has chickens that produce way too many eggs for John to eat. And John thought our wine tasted as good as any other. Soon Cindee and John had worked out a deal: one dozen eggs for each bottle of wine. They had reinvented the barter process of marketing! And fresh eggs, by the way, are better than most store bought eggs.
Actually, John had more customers for his eggs. Some traded homemade jam, others had surplus produce, but John’s eggs were in demand. We have discovered that there is really something of a barter economy has long been uderway on our hill. Inf act, the neighborhood recently established a neighborhood group site on Facebook for negotiating barters. Since we live in the Prudhoe Bay subdivision, they called it the Prudhoe Bay Neighborhood Barterers, making all sorts of trades easier to negotiate.
Building a su
stainable way of life requires participating in, and building relationships between people in ways that sustain them. As it turns out, nearly everyone has something to share, whether it is a surplus garden commodity, a friendly ear that listens, or a skill that someone else can use. Learning to share what we have, and building friendship while we are at it, builds up the local community, causing all of us to participate more in the richness of life.
Spiritual life is about building up relationships wherever we find them. It is in pursuing this value of building-up relationships that spiritual growth begins to happen. The holy writings from my faith tradition pick up on this value again and again from many different angles. Yet, in this day of economic, political and environmental anxiety, it is easy to begin believing that pursuing happiness means a more selfish, me-centered pursuit, rather than a we-centered (or an all-centered) pursuit. But that is not the biblical wisdom, nor is it true in experience. Happiness is more abundant, and the sense of fullness in life is more abundant, when we value and find joy in sharing together.
By the way, or next batch of wine is aging. We sampled some early wine, and it is better than the first batch. If a bad wine helped us make friends, and get eggs, I wonder what will a pretty good wine produce?
1 Thessalonians 5:11
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
John 10:10
(Jesus said) I have come that they might have life, and have it in abundance.
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