One of my favorite anachronistic acts on the seed list is the one that costs nothing, requires no skill, gains energy, builds concentration, is free to everybody, is secular yet leans toward the spiritual, and is utterly at odds with the Machine: slow down.
I am encouraged by the discovery that I already do many of these things (and see many more that I would like to try)! Sometimes it is easy to look past all the good in one's life and focus on despair or discouragement, but so many people will read this list and think, gee, maybe I'm not doing so badly! I hold babies all the time and we banished our TV to the basement years ago!
Agreed, I had a similar experience when I read through peoples comments. At the same time I was stunned by some of them and realized that the continuum of unmachining reaches from "reducing apps" to "no fridge". All is not lost indeed!
Your comment made me think: perhaps that continuum and the diversity of suggestions is itself an indication of the good health of this effort across many households. Better that families should be creating these little family or local cultures of authenticity than that we should all be doing it exactly like each other in some sort of national beige unmachining which would, in fact, be its own sort of inappropriate flattening and control. How wonderful that we do different things! How wonderful that we in fact have this freedom, perhaps more freedom than we realized.
It's like a healthy microbiome -- so many different "good bacteria" at work!
Yes, over the last months Peco and I discovered through the wide variety of our readership that there are a myriad of people interested in "unmachining", from all backgrounds and walks of life, from professors and business professionals to homeschool moms and hermits. There cannot possibly be a "beige unmachining" solution that fits everyone.
I felt the same way, Dixie! I often get down on myself for all the things I'm NOT doing, but when I looked at all the kid related and religious life items, I realized that the way we've intentionally structured our life has a lot of these things baked in. I still have many things I'd like to work on, but sometimes it's good to recognize how much further along you are than you used to be. We continue to build our skill set and practice, and those little steps really add up!
Yes, I hope that you feel encouraged! The fact that you are homeschooling and spend so much intentional time with your children (which is actually a huge leap) - and butcher your own meat! - not to mention all the other practices you relate in your posts, also helps to sow seeds for your readers :)
It's easy to forget what the norm (not to mention the other end of the extreme) is like, I think, and to compare yourself just with another version of perfection.
Oh, I'm sure you're not smug, Helen! It was just a reminder to me that not managing perfection in this area doesn't mean we aren't gaining ground. It's easy to take successes for granted and only think about weaknesses, etc.! This was a good corrective.
It’s such a wonderful and encouraging list- to think that even if I am not the one called to milk goats or knit my own socks, there are people in the world (right here on Substack!) who are maintaining these important ways of living. None of us can do everything but all of us can do something.
This was so funny and true Kerri. Glad to hear you found encouragement and, who knows, you might find yourself sitting on the couch one day wondering what it would be like to knit socks (actually it's very tricky and I prefer simple projects like loop scarves, where I don't have to think or count:)
“Where I don’t have to think or count”- this is exactly the kind of crafting I like! Any suggestions on learning how to knit in the continental style (needles down)? I’m curious to learn after reading the Miss Silver mysteries (a kindred spirit to Miss Marple) where she says that it’s hard to go wrong with that style of knitting.
I learned to knit "Swiss-style", with the yarn looped around the index finger. When learning particular stiches I found it easiest to watch a friend or a youtube instruction video (see I am not against all tech:). The site tincanknits.com has excellent free patterns that are super simple. I have made around a dozen of this sweater over the years https://tincanknits.com/pattern/flax?g=12 and I also loved this shawl pattern https://tincanknits.com/pattern/grain?g=1. They have simple tutorials and all you need to do these is two types of stiches. Also just saw that they have these "Learn to knit patterns' https://tincanknits.com/collection/the-simple-collection#content. There, now you'll have to try it :)
I loved reading through these "seeds." After reading this post and previous one, I'm feeling even more encouraged to stick with my anachronistic habits and to perhaps add some new ones. I will happily continue using a planner and reading in public, and I don't ever want to connect my email (especially my work email) to my phone. Another "seed" that occurred to me as I read this post was taking the time to thoughtfully and carefully wrap presents. Gift bags are easy, but there is something much more satisfying about putting a gift in a box --if possible-- and taking the time to wrap it (paper, scissors, tape, ribbon, tag, etc.). It's a simple action that can be infused with great love, and it anchors me to a slower, more human pace.
Wonderful :) My mom was the master of thoughtful wrapping, teaching me how to make beautiful folds and bows. Sometimes we even used cloth and ribbon or printed paper with potato stamps (fun to do together with younger kids:).
Thank you, Ruth and Peco for putting this together. I'm surprised that I've actually implemented a few of these practices since my digital detox but am encouraged now to take up a few more in the coming year.
My wife's grandmother is absolutely insistent that I give her a Christmas list each year and that it be on Amazon so she can keep track of everything. Instead of fighting about this I decided to use Amazon for good and used the opportunity to acquire a canning kit. So after Christmas, I can finally learn to can food and make jams! Very much looking forward to being more weird in public and private!
Thanks Derek - glad to hear that it offered extra encouragement (to one of the Encouragement Brothers! :) Canning is a super useful skill; I am still trying to get my jams right as mine always turn out more like strawberry sauce (although it tastes great).
Joel, I had the same thought -- I'm thinking about giving the project of building one as a Christmas gift to my son (we always give one experience gift from each parent to each child -- this would be something he and I could do together).
Some great ideas. Not that only great ideas are worth considering. Simpler is almost always better, a sentiment at odds with modernity. Yet, the simpler need not be anti-modern: cf. the Amish, Quakers, and the modern survivalists. And, shifting back one or two generations is hardly an answer to 21st-century transhumanism. Just adopting older technologies is often not much more than virtue signaling.
The simplest act of sanity is an inward activity; it is thinking for ourselves instead of reacting to the crowd, either copying others' behavior or reacting mindlessly by behaving oppositely. Hannah Arndt warned, "It is more than likely that men, if they were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, would lose not only the ability to produce those thought-things that we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the answerable questions upon which every civilization is founded." (The Life of the Mind)
By the twenty-first century, we have nearly reached that point. Being constantly tethered to our electronic devices and or in crowds of others, we scarcely allow ourselves time to think--to be able to find meaning. Thus art--the production of beauty and meaning--has practically disappeared from our lives.
Printing this post now - I'm looking forward to reading it over the next week. Thank you for taking the time to compile and sort all of the responses! (Also, since reading your prior post, I have decided to hand write driving directions instead of relying on my phone's map to navigate. I have lived in my city for nearly 3 years now. I have a couple of issues: I keep using my phone GPS even to go to places I know by heart, also I still go to many new-to-me places these days. Having to take the time to write out the turn by turn directions was tedious and required me to give forethought to my route. But I did it (I think about 8 times)! I also, even though I had the directions on a little spiral notebook nearby, took many wrong turns going from A to B. Ugh! I realized how little confidence I have navigating on my own. And I also realized that I would now be needing to devote some mental powers to thinking about my surroundings instead of just zoning out and relying on my little machine to direct me. Only a week in and I can already see some of the hard/inconvenient yet good work that's happening in my heart and mind. I'm hoping to keep it up -- especially knowing I can come back to this list that represents so many other people eschewing ease and convenience for something richer. Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing Susie :) Great to hear that you put so much effort into finding your way (and hope that you did not get too lost). It takes practice but over time you'll develop a much clearer inner map. Merry Christmas to you and your family :)
Getting lost is one of the best ways to learn where things are. Sometimes I enjoy just trying to find my way to "I know it's right over there..." My kids are not a fan.
Lovely stuff. Just smiled at making, instead of buying, Christmas presents. Because I'm baking cakes for my neighbours this year, instead of buying them goodies from the supermarket. How malt loaf will go down with the rural Normans does remain to be seen, though haha!
I love these lists but I question if any of these things in themselves make us more authentic. I think we need to be careful about these becoming performative rituals to prove something to others. When I was younger I believed the evil world would end in ten years. I felt overly responsible for baby seals being clubbed to death. I basically stopped eating because the modern world was so cruel. I was upset about pregnancy because I was contributing to overpopulation. All this seemed like resistance but it was a form of pride. Not saying everyone’s being prideful but I think we can beat ourselves up whether we buy plastic or not 😅
Thanks for adding your reflections Adrienne. I fully agree that these lists should not serve as "performative rituals to prove something to others". Toward the end of the post, we reminded readers it's important that we do not simply act to be contrary, but rather that we choose the practices that help us to "anchor our core meanings and relationship to technology". We summarized what this means for us in "The Pilgrims Creed", which is a framework that will speak to some (especially Christians) but not all. I hope that readers will be able to take away some encouragement and recognize that there are still others who try to make choices that are not dominated by technology. Thanks again for raising this reminder :)
Like everyone else here I struggle with modernity -- what to keep/what to avoid. I’m definitely including myself here. I may be just an old curmudgeon who hates following any tribe. lol. But I’ve seen complete consumers and back-to-the-land folks being bitter and miserly or generous and free. Idk where I’m going with this--oh well. I do admire your takes on things and your writing. Merry Christmas 🎄
Catholics call this "scrupulosity" and see it as the work of the devil to drag us down in our own self-recrimination rather than serving God and others. On the other hand, Pride is said to be the most mortal of mortal sins. There's this fine line to walk, between scrupulous self-recrimination and prideful self-righteousness. Even outside a Christian worldview, this seems like good psychology, and not something one ever masters.
Adrienne, I think the very idea that actions are performances is at the heart of the problem with modernity. One outcome of ubiquitous recording tech (ie. smartphones) is that people consider anything that happens in the public sphere to be 'performance' when maybe it is nothing of the sort. I find this frustrating because I feel it inhibits what I do and don't do in public. If anything, this idea- that any public expression or action is performance for the consumption of others- makes me more mundane in public; a kind of invisibility cloak.
This reminds me of when I almost married an Irishman from a tiny village near Limerick. He was lovably eccentric but ended up having a nervous breakdown because everything he did was put under a microscope by the other villagers. That was 30 years ago before iPhones. Maybe if I knew people were recording me I wouldn’t have been such a moron in my 20s 😂
I was thinking of this post, Ruth, as I was at a pediatrician’s visit with my baby yesterday. It was a standard well child visit. Usually, the pediatrician is typing things into a computer while she talks. As a result, you end up talking to the pediatrician while she isn’t looking at you - instead her attention is on the screen. This pediatrician did not turn on the computer. Instead, she had a note pad and looked at you while you talked. What a profound change.
I predict the sentiments in these "seeds" will become strategically important for many readers through the time we share together. It makes me so happy to know I am not alone in my choices against the Machine. Be happy and well everyone!
I have shared this article with our reading group with the intention that they read it and we could discuss the content over a post Christmas meal and meeting. It will be interesting for me personally. I will not even remind them on the night and just wait and see what happens. It could be wonderful or maybe a complete flop.
I would be very curious to hear how it went - it certainly would be a great conversation starter. There are wide-ranging practices on the list, and it should certainly not be taken as a "must check off all the boxes" list. Rather it should offer ideas, inspiration, and encouragement.
So encouraged to find many of my current practices on these wonderful and extensive lists! Thank you for compiling and sharing with us! Little by little, we hold onto hope amidst the noise and distractions. I'm very much looking forward to continuing and adding to my simple acts of resistance in the new year!
It was a fun -albeit incredibly laborious - process to compile the lists! I had not expected to receive so many responses, and especially so many that I would not have thought of. Glad to hear that you found added encouragement:)
Oh, what fun this is - thank you for compiling such a resonant list! Also, that quote from the Hobbit film...it's one of my husband's favorites, and we always find it remarkable that it's in the movie, not the book!
We have a family tradition of watching either LOTR or the Hobbit over the Christmas holiday. This year it was the Hobbit. We had just completed writing the post but I was hung up about finding a fitting quote, everything about seeds sounded so trite and obvious, so when we watched that scene later in the evening, we both just said "That's the quote!" It fit so perfectly:)
Also, I hope that the water has receded around your property. Merry Christmas to you and your family!
One of my favorite anachronistic acts on the seed list is the one that costs nothing, requires no skill, gains energy, builds concentration, is free to everybody, is secular yet leans toward the spiritual, and is utterly at odds with the Machine: slow down.
I am encouraged by the discovery that I already do many of these things (and see many more that I would like to try)! Sometimes it is easy to look past all the good in one's life and focus on despair or discouragement, but so many people will read this list and think, gee, maybe I'm not doing so badly! I hold babies all the time and we banished our TV to the basement years ago!
All is not lost, friends!
Agreed, I had a similar experience when I read through peoples comments. At the same time I was stunned by some of them and realized that the continuum of unmachining reaches from "reducing apps" to "no fridge". All is not lost indeed!
Your comment made me think: perhaps that continuum and the diversity of suggestions is itself an indication of the good health of this effort across many households. Better that families should be creating these little family or local cultures of authenticity than that we should all be doing it exactly like each other in some sort of national beige unmachining which would, in fact, be its own sort of inappropriate flattening and control. How wonderful that we do different things! How wonderful that we in fact have this freedom, perhaps more freedom than we realized.
It's like a healthy microbiome -- so many different "good bacteria" at work!
Yes, over the last months Peco and I discovered through the wide variety of our readership that there are a myriad of people interested in "unmachining", from all backgrounds and walks of life, from professors and business professionals to homeschool moms and hermits. There cannot possibly be a "beige unmachining" solution that fits everyone.
I felt the same way, Dixie! I often get down on myself for all the things I'm NOT doing, but when I looked at all the kid related and religious life items, I realized that the way we've intentionally structured our life has a lot of these things baked in. I still have many things I'd like to work on, but sometimes it's good to recognize how much further along you are than you used to be. We continue to build our skill set and practice, and those little steps really add up!
Yes, I hope that you feel encouraged! The fact that you are homeschooling and spend so much intentional time with your children (which is actually a huge leap) - and butcher your own meat! - not to mention all the other practices you relate in your posts, also helps to sow seeds for your readers :)
I'm glad you had the same experience!
It's easy to forget what the norm (not to mention the other end of the extreme) is like, I think, and to compare yourself just with another version of perfection.
Yes, I almost felt smug seeing how many "old-fashioned" habits I've kept!
Oh, I'm sure you're not smug, Helen! It was just a reminder to me that not managing perfection in this area doesn't mean we aren't gaining ground. It's easy to take successes for granted and only think about weaknesses, etc.! This was a good corrective.
All is not lost! I love this cheery refrain.
It’s such a wonderful and encouraging list- to think that even if I am not the one called to milk goats or knit my own socks, there are people in the world (right here on Substack!) who are maintaining these important ways of living. None of us can do everything but all of us can do something.
This was so funny and true Kerri. Glad to hear you found encouragement and, who knows, you might find yourself sitting on the couch one day wondering what it would be like to knit socks (actually it's very tricky and I prefer simple projects like loop scarves, where I don't have to think or count:)
“Where I don’t have to think or count”- this is exactly the kind of crafting I like! Any suggestions on learning how to knit in the continental style (needles down)? I’m curious to learn after reading the Miss Silver mysteries (a kindred spirit to Miss Marple) where she says that it’s hard to go wrong with that style of knitting.
I learned to knit "Swiss-style", with the yarn looped around the index finger. When learning particular stiches I found it easiest to watch a friend or a youtube instruction video (see I am not against all tech:). The site tincanknits.com has excellent free patterns that are super simple. I have made around a dozen of this sweater over the years https://tincanknits.com/pattern/flax?g=12 and I also loved this shawl pattern https://tincanknits.com/pattern/grain?g=1. They have simple tutorials and all you need to do these is two types of stiches. Also just saw that they have these "Learn to knit patterns' https://tincanknits.com/collection/the-simple-collection#content. There, now you'll have to try it :)
Thanks! I look forward to it. I do have some needles and yarn just sitting around somewhere!
My friend was a goat farmer and whenever he had WOOFers he would teach them to hand-milk a goat. Good life skill
I loved reading through these "seeds." After reading this post and previous one, I'm feeling even more encouraged to stick with my anachronistic habits and to perhaps add some new ones. I will happily continue using a planner and reading in public, and I don't ever want to connect my email (especially my work email) to my phone. Another "seed" that occurred to me as I read this post was taking the time to thoughtfully and carefully wrap presents. Gift bags are easy, but there is something much more satisfying about putting a gift in a box --if possible-- and taking the time to wrap it (paper, scissors, tape, ribbon, tag, etc.). It's a simple action that can be infused with great love, and it anchors me to a slower, more human pace.
Wonderful :) My mom was the master of thoughtful wrapping, teaching me how to make beautiful folds and bows. Sometimes we even used cloth and ribbon or printed paper with potato stamps (fun to do together with younger kids:).
Good point! Wrapping with fabric, ribbons, twine, sprigs of green and berries, lace, hand printed paper is satisfying too!
Oh, haha - I just finished replying almost the same thing :)
I wish you a happy, blessed Christmastime, Ruth! I’m so glad to have found you on Substack. See you on the Camino in a couple years? ;) ♥️
All very good ideas!
Thank you, Ruth and Peco for putting this together. I'm surprised that I've actually implemented a few of these practices since my digital detox but am encouraged now to take up a few more in the coming year.
My wife's grandmother is absolutely insistent that I give her a Christmas list each year and that it be on Amazon so she can keep track of everything. Instead of fighting about this I decided to use Amazon for good and used the opportunity to acquire a canning kit. So after Christmas, I can finally learn to can food and make jams! Very much looking forward to being more weird in public and private!
Thanks Derek - glad to hear that it offered extra encouragement (to one of the Encouragement Brothers! :) Canning is a super useful skill; I am still trying to get my jams right as mine always turn out more like strawberry sauce (although it tastes great).
Have a wonderful Christmas!
So many great suggestions here. I’m thinking of starting a Little Free Library at my place next year thanks to your suggestion.
Excellent! It will have to be one of your posts then, with building plans and pictures included:)
Thanks for all your wonderful writing this year Joel and Merry Christmas!
Joel, I had the same thought -- I'm thinking about giving the project of building one as a Christmas gift to my son (we always give one experience gift from each parent to each child -- this would be something he and I could do together).
Some great ideas. Not that only great ideas are worth considering. Simpler is almost always better, a sentiment at odds with modernity. Yet, the simpler need not be anti-modern: cf. the Amish, Quakers, and the modern survivalists. And, shifting back one or two generations is hardly an answer to 21st-century transhumanism. Just adopting older technologies is often not much more than virtue signaling.
The simplest act of sanity is an inward activity; it is thinking for ourselves instead of reacting to the crowd, either copying others' behavior or reacting mindlessly by behaving oppositely. Hannah Arndt warned, "It is more than likely that men, if they were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, would lose not only the ability to produce those thought-things that we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the answerable questions upon which every civilization is founded." (The Life of the Mind)
By the twenty-first century, we have nearly reached that point. Being constantly tethered to our electronic devices and or in crowds of others, we scarcely allow ourselves time to think--to be able to find meaning. Thus art--the production of beauty and meaning--has practically disappeared from our lives.
Printing this post now - I'm looking forward to reading it over the next week. Thank you for taking the time to compile and sort all of the responses! (Also, since reading your prior post, I have decided to hand write driving directions instead of relying on my phone's map to navigate. I have lived in my city for nearly 3 years now. I have a couple of issues: I keep using my phone GPS even to go to places I know by heart, also I still go to many new-to-me places these days. Having to take the time to write out the turn by turn directions was tedious and required me to give forethought to my route. But I did it (I think about 8 times)! I also, even though I had the directions on a little spiral notebook nearby, took many wrong turns going from A to B. Ugh! I realized how little confidence I have navigating on my own. And I also realized that I would now be needing to devote some mental powers to thinking about my surroundings instead of just zoning out and relying on my little machine to direct me. Only a week in and I can already see some of the hard/inconvenient yet good work that's happening in my heart and mind. I'm hoping to keep it up -- especially knowing I can come back to this list that represents so many other people eschewing ease and convenience for something richer. Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing Susie :) Great to hear that you put so much effort into finding your way (and hope that you did not get too lost). It takes practice but over time you'll develop a much clearer inner map. Merry Christmas to you and your family :)
Thank you, Ruth! Merry Christmas to you and yours as well.
Getting lost is one of the best ways to learn where things are. Sometimes I enjoy just trying to find my way to "I know it's right over there..." My kids are not a fan.
Haha - my husband often does this (our kids are likewise not fans), but it's new to me!
Lovely stuff. Just smiled at making, instead of buying, Christmas presents. Because I'm baking cakes for my neighbours this year, instead of buying them goodies from the supermarket. How malt loaf will go down with the rural Normans does remain to be seen, though haha!
Sounds like a wonderful neighbourly act! I would certainly enjoy it (unless there were lots of candied fruit in them which I don't like:)
I love these lists but I question if any of these things in themselves make us more authentic. I think we need to be careful about these becoming performative rituals to prove something to others. When I was younger I believed the evil world would end in ten years. I felt overly responsible for baby seals being clubbed to death. I basically stopped eating because the modern world was so cruel. I was upset about pregnancy because I was contributing to overpopulation. All this seemed like resistance but it was a form of pride. Not saying everyone’s being prideful but I think we can beat ourselves up whether we buy plastic or not 😅
Thanks for adding your reflections Adrienne. I fully agree that these lists should not serve as "performative rituals to prove something to others". Toward the end of the post, we reminded readers it's important that we do not simply act to be contrary, but rather that we choose the practices that help us to "anchor our core meanings and relationship to technology". We summarized what this means for us in "The Pilgrims Creed", which is a framework that will speak to some (especially Christians) but not all. I hope that readers will be able to take away some encouragement and recognize that there are still others who try to make choices that are not dominated by technology. Thanks again for raising this reminder :)
Like everyone else here I struggle with modernity -- what to keep/what to avoid. I’m definitely including myself here. I may be just an old curmudgeon who hates following any tribe. lol. But I’ve seen complete consumers and back-to-the-land folks being bitter and miserly or generous and free. Idk where I’m going with this--oh well. I do admire your takes on things and your writing. Merry Christmas 🎄
Merry Christmas to you as well!
Catholics call this "scrupulosity" and see it as the work of the devil to drag us down in our own self-recrimination rather than serving God and others. On the other hand, Pride is said to be the most mortal of mortal sins. There's this fine line to walk, between scrupulous self-recrimination and prideful self-righteousness. Even outside a Christian worldview, this seems like good psychology, and not something one ever masters.
Interesting distinction! Catholic thinkers can be so mercilessly precise.
Yep. Extremely well-said, Nathan.
Thanks!
Adrienne, I think the very idea that actions are performances is at the heart of the problem with modernity. One outcome of ubiquitous recording tech (ie. smartphones) is that people consider anything that happens in the public sphere to be 'performance' when maybe it is nothing of the sort. I find this frustrating because I feel it inhibits what I do and don't do in public. If anything, this idea- that any public expression or action is performance for the consumption of others- makes me more mundane in public; a kind of invisibility cloak.
This reminds me of when I almost married an Irishman from a tiny village near Limerick. He was lovably eccentric but ended up having a nervous breakdown because everything he did was put under a microscope by the other villagers. That was 30 years ago before iPhones. Maybe if I knew people were recording me I wouldn’t have been such a moron in my 20s 😂
I was thinking of this post, Ruth, as I was at a pediatrician’s visit with my baby yesterday. It was a standard well child visit. Usually, the pediatrician is typing things into a computer while she talks. As a result, you end up talking to the pediatrician while she isn’t looking at you - instead her attention is on the screen. This pediatrician did not turn on the computer. Instead, she had a note pad and looked at you while you talked. What a profound change.
I predict the sentiments in these "seeds" will become strategically important for many readers through the time we share together. It makes me so happy to know I am not alone in my choices against the Machine. Be happy and well everyone!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to you and your family as well!
I have shared this article with our reading group with the intention that they read it and we could discuss the content over a post Christmas meal and meeting. It will be interesting for me personally. I will not even remind them on the night and just wait and see what happens. It could be wonderful or maybe a complete flop.
I would be very curious to hear how it went - it certainly would be a great conversation starter. There are wide-ranging practices on the list, and it should certainly not be taken as a "must check off all the boxes" list. Rather it should offer ideas, inspiration, and encouragement.
So encouraged to find many of my current practices on these wonderful and extensive lists! Thank you for compiling and sharing with us! Little by little, we hold onto hope amidst the noise and distractions. I'm very much looking forward to continuing and adding to my simple acts of resistance in the new year!
It was a fun -albeit incredibly laborious - process to compile the lists! I had not expected to receive so many responses, and especially so many that I would not have thought of. Glad to hear that you found added encouragement:)
Oh, what fun this is - thank you for compiling such a resonant list! Also, that quote from the Hobbit film...it's one of my husband's favorites, and we always find it remarkable that it's in the movie, not the book!
We have a family tradition of watching either LOTR or the Hobbit over the Christmas holiday. This year it was the Hobbit. We had just completed writing the post but I was hung up about finding a fitting quote, everything about seeds sounded so trite and obvious, so when we watched that scene later in the evening, we both just said "That's the quote!" It fit so perfectly:)
Also, I hope that the water has receded around your property. Merry Christmas to you and your family!