Life from Our Land

Voices from every direction beckon us, even push us, toward better and faster technology, with the promise of more wealth, more pleasure, and, consequently, more happiness.

But have we become so bewitched by the siren song of material progress that we’ve lost the ability not just to achieve, but to discern what true happiness is? What criteria do we use to plan for the future, for retirement? At the end of our earthly lives, how will we measure our fruitfulness?

In Life from Our Land, Marcus Grodi discusses what he and his family discovered, mostly by surprise, after moving from the city to twenty-five acres of Ohio farmland. This move involved a radical shift in priorities for all of them, but mostly it helped them to discover some critical truths about our relationship to nature and to nature’s Creator that apply regardless of where a person lives. He offers wonderful reflections on his going-back-to-the-land experience as a metaphor for drawing closer to God.