"The Chicken Coop Warriors"

Yesterday I spent the day making a chicken coop for my sons family.  My son is not blessed with practicality in things of the building nature or maintenance; so brilliant in many other things and his favoirite saying is that "You major on the things that you are good at and leave others to do what they are good at", and so there I was with all of the things that you need to make a Chicken Coop.

I was ably assisited by our cousin Rick and together we turned a picture off the web, a few handwritten specifications on a scrap of paper into a chicken coop; of sorts.  We did not have all new materials but we bought a few basics and then raided their back yard where there was quite a bit of detritus from previous generations to use.

We made a frame of hardwood, and really struggled with cutting it with a saw that would have struggled with hard butter and we kept complaining that if we had known we would have brought 'The Cousin's' electric saw and it would have made it so much easier, however it gave us something to complain about and we finished up blaming as many people as we could for not having it, however next time we will remember and have it completed by lunchtime instead of late afternoon.

So! we had our frame and wire but we needed a hinged roof and so we found a piece of alluminum channeling and some roofing iron that we cut, not very straight I might add, for the roof and the sides of the shelter end of the coop.  We then found some old pailings that had been discarde and so they made up one side of the coop.  Of course we struggled with putting the staples into the hardwood, but eventually with a few bruised fingers and a bit of embarrassment as we struggled, we had it completed.

It is not perfect, and as we looked at it in its almost finished form it seems that our tape measure was different on each side, and it looked a a little out of allignment to most people, but to some it was the pinacle of creativity and ingenuity.  As we put all the tools back we could see the obvious imperfections as we compared it with the picture from the web.  However we had such a good time doing it that we both agreed that the chickens will never notice, that one side of the coop is longer than the other.  The chickens possibly would not have a great concern that most of the materials, were old and second hand, possibly with a few previous lives in some other construction, and they are unlikely to be very critical of what we have created for them so that they will simply do what chickens do in the first 'Fletcher's Family Farmyard Chicken Coop'.

Isn't it easy to want everything to be perfect when there are times we just have to do as well as we can from what we have.  There are so many people that I admire and am envious of the skills that they have, but all I have is what I have and my responsibility is to make the best use of the skills that I have.  It is true that 'there is nothing new under the sun' and our chicken coop is a prime example but so is my life, and all that I can do is pass on to others what I have recieved.  I am but a small link in a chain that spans many generations.

However I know that I can do better and be more effective in all the things that I am involved in.

Our next Chicken Coop is going to be so much better when 'The Cousin' and I do it again, because we now have experience, we will be able to improve out of sight on the one that we built.  I do not have the luxury of saying in 'my next life I will do whatever..." but I can improve what I have now and how I relate to others and support them in their journey.

The Chicken Coop Warriors will strike again

Golden Moments

It has been a puzzle for me for many years why there are times when everything is going well, you know the feeling “God’s in His Heaven, all’s well with the world” sort of stuff, and then without warning things seem to go astray and on the face of it there seems to be no rhyme or reason. A few years ago I was at a garden show with some of my family, they were very keen to see some of the vegetarian cooking demonstrations but, being a foodie philistine and a committed carnivore, this was not the highest item on my agenda and so I went and had a coffee, again, and on the back of a program for an organic vegetable steamer I started writing about these high and lows.

It was Socrates who said that the unexamined life is not worth living and I sometimes think that he went a little bit over the top for most people but he did have a point. It’s a shame that he did not put it into the positive vein by saying that the examined life if lived well can bring about a great deal of enjoyment; at the time and in the remembering and so it was for me on this Saturday afternoon at the National Arboretum in Coventry UK.

It was a great time to actually just sit, think and remember some of the parts of my life that in the everyday run of life seem to get lost and as I wrote about these perceived ‘Golden Moments’ a pattern begun to emerge that really made me sit up and start to take this quest a little more seriously than I have ever done before. Here before my eyes I saw what seemed to be the building blocks of creating a future of golden moments lasting long into the future. Could there really be a clue here for the future? Or maybe just an answer for some of those up and down experiences that I seemed to dog my life.

As I sat and scribbled I came up with some ‘Golden Moments’ in my life that I look back to and really enjoy the memories. This was not an extensive list and there were times that did not get a jersey although I remembered with a great deal of satisfaction and emotion. Sometimes they were brief moments but there were some that lasted over a number of years like bringing up my family with my wife, the years as a Salvation Army Officer, different places that I served, and a number of events in my ‘new life’.

So why did these times stand out for me? What made me remember them over all the other things that have happened? What was it that always makes me look back and feel that warm comfortable feeling, sometimes of loss, sometimes of pain but always cherished and good memories that I sometimes feel that I just cannot lose. Without them I would be the poorer and just a spectator in life rather than a participant.

As I searched for words the building blocks became quite evident for me and off the page leapt some common denominators that marked these 'Golden Moments'. There is nothing really new about all this but sometimes we forget to look at the big picture of our lives and simply focus on the negative and so the negative takes over and that is what it becomes. Many successful people have always promoted the fact that ‘you get what you focus on’ and how true it is for so many of us. Three common denominators came to the fore for me in this little reverie in Coventry. I do not propose that this is an extensive list for everyone but we will all, if we go through this simple exercise come up with different denominators but there will be common denominators for your Golden Moments.

For me as I expanded on these good memories there were three criteria that seemed to stand out among all the others. There were other things that happened but it seemed for me that these three helped me to create my own future. I am fortunate that there is good alliteration to help me remember them but they were
Competence
Community
Commitment
Are they easy to remember or what? So when I look to the future; ease of remembering these is very important to me when I get a serious attack of ‘CRAFT’.

Now when I talk about Competence; it is all about my perception not what other people thought of me. I have never claimed to be above a sparse average but I felt that I did a good job and performed all the functions that were required of me. Having said that there would have been some who would have despaired of me and I remember someone telling me ‘you will never get on because you are an agitator’. But despite this comment and others I felt competent at what I was doing; possibly because I was a ‘good’ agitator.

Community was a vital component in all of these Golden moments and what I learned in my home Church from age 11 to when I went off into the big world was the importance of Community. Even though I could be a bit of a larrikin, this Church family wrapped my in love and acceptance. I was a larikin, and I was good at it but the Church loved me through it. As I have gone through life I have seen the importance and healing of sad individuals when they find the acceptance of a community that they can be part of. It has for me become one of the most important words in our language and wherever I have been I have tried within the responsibilities I have had to create it in the people around me. It is something that we all crave whether we know it or not.

And finally, Commitment. This is something that could be talked about for a long time and it is a big subject that in some instances has possibly legal ramifications for both sides but in the way I perceive it, it revolves around a commitment to a future ‘something’ that is so much larger than we are. This came to the fore when I thought about the Golden Moment of raising my family, that in a sense goes on to this day, even though there is now another generation, but I am committed to them no matter what that future may hold.

So what does all this memory, good memories, have for my future? In an age when it is really easy to look at mistakes and errors and correct them, or not, as the case maybe, it does seem easier to focus on the negative. One of the reasons so many organisations are stuck in a rut is that they keep trying to get people on the same page so that progress can be made 'together' and much valuable time, energy and resource is spent on trying to correct the negative, whereas other progressive organisations ‘Move with the Movers’.

What has all this self introspective navel gazing meant? For me it has identified why these Golden Moments were golden and in the future I simply need to put these three things in place and I can have more Golden Moments, almost by default.

I want desperately to be ‘Competent’ in all of the things that I am involved in, be it my employment, my voluntary involvement and in my life, that also means personal issues as well. I simply have to be a competent human being.

I want to be in a ‘Community’ that I love and respect and who also love and respect me as well. That is not all that hard as long as I love and respect them first. Networking 101 has taught me that you should never expect anything unless you have given something first.

I want to be ‘Committed’ to something. Not just for a salary, or an easy life but really committed to making a difference in the world. This can be through a cause, ‘save the whale or the planet’, the future of a relationship, or simply to live a life that will make a difference to the people I have contact with on a daily basis. For many of us this could simply be rekindling a previous committment in a new place, a new setting, with new people; possibly who need us more than ever.

What does all this mean for me?

Like most of us I have had the ups and downs of life but this exercise has allowed me to look back at the Golden Moments and have possibly developed a tool to make more golden moments in the future, for me and those around me. I could reverse all this and reproduce all those really bad times, but I am quite sure that the Golden Moments are a better option for me.

What does this mean for you?

I have absolutely no idea. Cyberspace is a great place to hide but when you look at your life in the bathroom mirror every morning that really counts. You might like to tell me all about it so that we can all celebrate together.