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CBB Interview with Marcus Grodi

CBB Interview with Marcus Grodi

Last updated on: October 4, 2015 at 5:30 pm by Pete Socks

CBB Interview with Marcus Grodi 2015-10-03T12:10:23-05:00 Pete Socks

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Marcus Grodi is the founder and president of The Coming Home Network International whose purpose is to help inquiring clergy as well as laity of other traditions to return home and then to be at home in the Catholic Church. He is also the host of the show The Journey Home which can be seen weekly on EWTN. Marcus is also the author of numerous books and recently I had a chance to discuss two of those books him. Here is our interview on his latest book Life from Our Land: The Search for a Simpler Life in a Complex World

PETE: I found your book, “Life from Our Land: The Search for a Simpler Life in a Complex World”, to be a fascinating read on how one’s faith can be effectively be joined to one’s stewardship of their slice of earth. What inspired you to write this book?

MARCUS GRODI: It actually began as letters and articles to my children and friends sharing what we were discovering along the way. The book is about my growing convictions in what continuing conversion truly means and requires. It involved seeing and hearing things in God’s Creation that had surrounded me all my life, but to which I was mostly oblivious–or should I say had been pushed to the back of my mind as I had over the years become subsumed by the pull of our modern progressive materialist culture. Now I’m determined by grace to extricate myself so that I can live more faithfully what I have had the privilege and audacity to preach for forty years from pulpits, television, radio, pulpits, and the pen. My hope was to help others before they had become as encumbered as me.

PETE: There are a multitude of lessons to be gleaned from this book. Of all that you have experienced in your adventure on your land, what lesson had the greatest impact on you?

MARCUS GRODI: This is hard for me to delineate, because there was and is so much that I am still learning. Maybe mostly what a failure I have been at living according to the words of Christ. But also how loudly God is trying to speak to all of us through both His books, Scripture and Creation, and through the guidance of His Church. I’m particularly overwhelmed by what I am realizing daily from enjoying Creation–and it is all about realizing that nearly everything in Creation was planted there to turn our attention upwards in gratitude to Him. For example, for most of my time on this land, I have focused on improving my pastures for grazing livestock. The demands of an expanding family, however, have made it necessary for me to at least temporarily divest ourselves of all livestock. Now we’re down to ten chickens, three cats, and two dogs–which my wife’s sister can take care of when we have to be so frequently gone. So instead of having pristinely livestock-manicured fields, I have a mowed walking path bisecting each field, which are slowing returning to their primitive state.

Over the years, I had grown to see wild flowers as mostly invasive weeds that needed to be eradicated to provide ample space for more nutritious grasses. Now I am becoming overwhelmed, not only by the beauty and diversity of the abundant wildflowers, ferns, mushrooms, and other plants growing naturally on our land, but particularly by the seasonal blooming of the flowers that before I had never noticed. Last month the fields we covered with purple ironweed and yellow coneflowers. This month, these are all gone, replaced by blue asters, goldenrod, red spice-berries, and orange honey-suckle. Not only has God given us the sun, moon, stars, planets, and seasons as the clockwork to provide order to our lives, but the timetable of nature witnesses to how God has so loving made our entire world a unity of life.

PETE: It seems these days more and more people are gravitating toward the simpler life by abandoning the hustle and bustle of what has become the norm in our world. What do you think is driving this simpler, less dependent way of life?

MARCUS GRODI: Actually, literature witnesses to the fact that there has always been people recognizing and responding to the call to simplicity and detachment. Most of our religious movements were responding to this call. I think the publishing power of the media in the twentieth century has not only made our culture more aware of this movement, but more enticed by it. What is different (in my opinion) about so much of the modern interest in returning to the land is that it is driven mostly not by gospel simplicity–i.e., trying by grace to live according to the teachings of Christ–but by false gospels: self-sustaining independence or saving “Mother earth” from the evil infestation of mankind.

Many people returning to the simplicity of independent rural living want the simplicity of their grandparents’ lives without the faith of their grandparents. And many (not all, of course) of those trying their hands at small farming are in fact already fairly wealthy independent young adults who are looking for more independent means to support themselves without the hassles (i.e., responsibilities and oversight) of corporate America. What I have tried to discuss in my book is how to find by grace the simplicity and detachment to which our Lord is calling us, but right where He has called us to live and serve, which might be in downtown Cleveland!

PETE: What reactions did you receive from family and friends as you embarked on your journey from city life to farmland?

MARCUS GRODI: Many expressed envy, as they envisioned us moving out to a more simpler and easier life–which proved to be neither simpler or easier! Others particularly thought I was crazy when I bought our first dairy cow! And they were right! The children of one family refused to drink the gift of a gallon of our cow’s milk because they insisted they only drank milk from a grocery store! But most have been supportive and have enjoyed their visits out to the “farm.”

PETE: It’s been about a month since I last asked you this question. This is a blog about books. What books are currently on your bookshelf to read?

MARCUS GRODI: I’m just finishing and thoroughly enjoying GK Chesterton’s distributist novel, Tales Of The Long Bow. I’m proofing a fine new book by my friend Kevin Lowry, Transformed: How Conversion Changes Everything, soon to be released by OSV. I’m also reading Patrick Madrid’s book. Scripture and Tradition in the Church, and a book by a wonderful Amish writer, David Kline, entitled Great Possessions : An Amish Farmer’s Journal.
.

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Other titles by this author:
What Must I do to be Saved?

Journeys Home

How Firm a Foundation

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