Some may wonder why anyone would waste time milking a cow every morning and evening, seven days a week, twelve months a year, when one can easily go down to the local convenience store and buy all the milk, butter, cheese, and yogurt one could possibly want? Good question. I suppose I have asked myself that question many times, especially when I’m out at 6 am, at 5 below zero, trying to locate our Jersey’s teats through the mist of my breath.

Now, I could give a very idealistic and philosophical answer, but it’s really more simply answered by recognizing that, over the past 200-years especially, with the advent of every modern convenience, choices needed to be made as to whether doing something the old way was better or more satisfying or more time consuming, etc., than the new way. One doesn’t need to look very far, however, to see that, as beneficial and necessary as modern conveniences might seen, something is always lost in the move towards saving time, energy, and effort.

It used to be that to enjoy music in the home or community, people needed to take music lessons. Millions of people could play the piano, or the accordion, violin, flute, harmonica, guitar, and even tuba. Almost every community had a band or orchestra. Sunday afternoons were spent playing in or listening to the local band, or sitting around the fire playing in the family ensemble, or sitting at the keyboard enjoying Bach, Chopin, or Beethoven. But with the advent of radio, movies, television, records, tapes, CD’s, videos, MP3s, iTunes, Garageband, etc., the number of people who play their own music has drastically dwindled. Why go to all the effort to learn how to play it ourselves when it is cheaper, less time consuming, and maybe even more relaxing to just sit back with headphones and listen to our favorite downloaded MP3?

Why learn to carve wood when anything can be bought at the local China-outlet department store? Why paint with oils and brush, or draw with straight edge and pencil, when one can do it all with Computer Aided Graphics—or with your finger on an iPad?

Why walk when one can ride or even fly? Why read when one can listen or view or even take part virtually through computer? Why sew, darn, mend, or knit when everything we could possibly need to wear can be bought for pittance around the corner?

Most of what we know about the lives of people in the past came from their diaries, but who keeps diaries anymore when every “important” event of our lives is shared with the world instantaneously on social media?

The list goes on and on. I guess the answer lies in how we choose to use and focus our time, energies, and efforts. I truly do not think, nor am I advocating, that everyone ought to return to milking their own cow, woodcarving, playing piano, or walking to work. But I am advocating what so many others have tried to tell us: that as a society we have lost something essential when we so easily justify moving on to quicker, easier, and less self-energy consuming activities.

Over the last three days I milked the cow six times, which also involved feeding and watering the animals, I helped birth a baby goat, I made cheddar cheese, butter, buttermilk pancakes, cottage cheese, and ricotta cheese. I also enjoyed several very brisk and crisp morning walks in our woods out to the barn, I spoke often to our six sheep, Jersey cow and calf, two cats, two dogs, momma and kid goats, and our 2 chickens, and while sitting there milking, I had lots of time to pray, ponder, and grow in the virtue of patience.

For you see, the main thing we have lost as a society and as individuals, as we have unapologetically accepted the modernist belief in progress and all of its affects, is our ability to slow down, to wait on the Lord, and to listen quietly.

UPDATE:

Well, I wrote the above 13 years ago, and frankly, my muscles ache just to think what I was able to do back then! That wonderful Jersey cow, named Kristina, has long since passed on to that big pasture in the sky, and our new Jersey, named Anastasia, is dried up until her next calving. Since those sheep, our pastures have seen an assortment of other critters, and now we’re down to a half-dozen angus cattle. We’re back up to 16 chickens, though, giving us a dozen or more eggs a day, and who knows how many cats and dogs we have at any given moment.

The main thing, though, is how little I myself have listened to my own words these past 13 years. Just think about how far and fast, in just this past decade, our world has descended down the modernist progressive path. How, as a culture, we are even less able to slow down, wait on the Lord, and listen quietly. How, as a culture, the freed up time, talents, and energy we have reaped from our unexamined addiction to every new technology has, instead, been redirected into such meaningless, time-consuming activities, and too often into unanticipated, often immoral choices and lifestyles. And the entanglements we have brought upon ourselves, and our families, are almost impossible to break. Just think about how much money most of us spend every month on entertainment and communication services, that 25 years ago we never even imagined having, let alone financing. Of course, for most of us, the impact of these expenditures are assuaged because we’ve set them up as automatic withdrawals—we don’t even need to expend time, energy, and effort in paying for our entanglements!

And there is something particularly significant in all this: A year ago, after a ten year hiatus, our family began milking again. We had purchased a new Jersey cow, and I quickly discovered how, even after a few weeks practice, I could not physically milk her anymore like I used to! Not just because of the beginning signs of arthritis, but because my muscles have lost their edge.

Ever try to use any of the everyday tools of yesteryear? Ever try to cut down a tree with a two-man crosscut saw rather than a chainsaw? Ever try to dig a ditch with a shovel rather than a backhoe? Ever try to go back handwriting a diary after only using a computer for 10+ years? It’s nearly impossible to go back because the necessary muscles have either atrophied or never developed at all. I believe this is also true for the spiritual, emotional, and mental muscles of our culture. Generally, when we try to simplify our lives, we give up quickly, because it requires far more effort than we’re either willing or able to give.

Consider this provocative quote:

“A brute animal cannot form an idea of a table because the idea is spiritual whereas an animal is material and nothing else. Therefore, as often as a man makes a table, a chair, a barn, or anything else, he is acting in a way that proclaims him to be more than a brute animal. He is exercising that faculty which, because it distinguishes him from a beast, is more important than his body. As a maker of things, man functions spiritually and materially. Consequently, for the ordinary man to use things continually that have been made by a machine, or to work mechanically at a task that requires no exercise of his spiritual faculty, is to deaden that faculty and to make him less a man in the very thing which proclaims him to be a man and not a beast. This point looms large in a consideration of modern industrialism.”

This statement was written by a Catholic priest in 1940 in a book entitled Rural Roads to Security (pg.54), warning about the encroaching effects of industrialism. I wonder what he would say if he could visit us today 70 years later? Does this at least partially explain why the new “moralities” of our culture are more indicative of “brute animals”?

So what’s the answer? Well, that’s personal, of course, and given my previous 13-year record, I’m hardly the one to give advice. But I think at least one answer can be found somewhere in our efforts to break free, so that we can once again—or maybe for the first time in ours lives—slow down, wait on the Lord, and listen to Him quietly.

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt 6:7).

Do you have a place in your life where you can “shut the door” away from the entanglements and enticements of modern technology, or are we so entangled that we can’t even imagine life anymore without them?