Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective edited & compiled by Michael Schut (Part V: One More Thing)

One last thing I want to share about this wonderful book.  Fairly early on in the book, a passage that really got my attention was the following:

We take vacations, but we work so hard throughout the year that they become indispensable to our sanity.  The conventional wisdom that economic progress has given us more things as well as more leisure is difficult to sustain.

(p. 35)

This passage appeared in an essay about how our modern work load has been increasing over the last few decades, and we have so little time left over after our paid gigs that it leads to serious health and social problems.  It had a number of great points, but this one about vacations really hit home when I first read the book about a decade ago.

At that time, I was fairly early on in my career and also building a family.  Because I was a pretty junior employee at a very old school company that was not generous or flexible when it came to employee time off, I got just two weeks of vacation each year.  I know many have it even worse, they have no paid time off.  But two weeks out of the year to make a life is just not enough.  Especially when you are an "exempt" employee where "overtime" is unpaid and just expected in great quantities.  Being a corporate slave is draining. 

To make matters worse, because of the inflexibility of our company's policies, we had to use our few, precious vacation days for things other than true vacations where we might recharge our batteries.  For example, early on in my career, I remember being horrified when I spoke to one of the only moms in our office, and she explained that when her kids got sick and couldn't go to school, she had to take vacation time to stay home with them.  There were no sick days, no personal days and no flex time.  If you were not physically present in the office, you were docked vacation days for the absence.  At that point, I was not yet a parent, but it depressed me to think that one day if my kids ever had any illnesses, we might never get the opportunity to take a family vacation together because I'd have no time off from work left over.

Another time early in my career, I had an uncle who passed away after a long, slow decline.  Our family is small, so I didn't think twice that I needed to be present for the funeral.  It was out of town but in-state about four hours away.  Ours is a family of teachers, so my cousins thoughtfully arranged for the funeral to be on Dr. King's birthday, which is a national holiday and all the local schools were closed for the day.  The thought was no one would miss work to be at the funeral.  Not so for me as it would turn out.  I was stressed to find out later that the death of my uncle was not covered under the company bereavement policy.  And our company observed few national holidays. Dr. King's birthday was not one of them.  So, they took one of my few vacation days that year when I had to miss one day's work to attend a family funeral.  With so few days each year, I always plotted and planned carefully when I'd use each of those days, so being docked a day for the funeral really threw a fly into the ointment.  It also just seemed pretty heartless.

In those days, my co-workers and I were compensated pretty well in financial terms.  Indeed, I was making more money that I ever imagined I'd make, more than my parents had.  I had always just wanted to do interesting work and make enough to keep a roof over my head, so this was not something I had sought.  But we had no lives.  We had no time to enjoy the money we were making.  We had homes that we rarely saw.  We could afford to fly to exotic locations, but only for a couple days at a time.

My husband and I love traveling and early in our corporate careers, we had no children.  We took advantage of the situation to go to as many interesting places as possible in our brief windows of freedom.  But this line in the book really hit home.  Despite never being able to stay anywhere for more than a couple days, I was excited about the trips we were taking.  However, this passage in the book opened my eyes.  Was I really enjoying the trips and the adventure of visiting new places?  Or were these trips a necessary antidote to the overbearing grind of the corporate treadmill we were on?  I began to think that I was working and not really living 50 weeks of the year.  Those 2 weeks of vacation were the only real living I was doing.  I just didn't have time to enjoy life the rest of the year.  What a depressing thought! 

I pondered this dynamic a lot.  I didn't just go into my boss's office immediately and quit to go be a vagabond.  But I did begin to work hard to find ways to carve out more of a life from then on out.  Life is short, life is precious.  Wasting it to put in ridiculous hours of face time was not what I wanted.

Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective edited & compiled by Michael Schut (Part IV: A Few Thoughts)

I've mentioned what an epiphany this book was to me at such a difficult time in my life.  My hectic work life was not leaving time for a real life.  I was overinvested, perhaps not in material objects, but in things of relatively passing importance like the outcome of a single election.  I was on a treadmill without a chance to breath, reflect or think about the big picture for more than a couple moments.  This amazing book helped me to take a step back and look at my lifestyle from a different perspective.  Here are a couple of the thoughts I had reading the collected essays and book excerpts in Simpler Living, Compassionate Life.

First, I was living a particular lifestyle.  Though in my myopic existence, it had begun to seem so, not everyone was working insane hours to climb the corporate ladder and have a nice home in a golf course community.  I began to think more about my brothers and sisters around the world, around my country, and even around my own region, who did not begin to have the kind of access to material goods and pleasures that I did.  That reality check was helpful to see the humanity in those other people.  But also to recognize that I was not obliged to stay on this seemingly endless and ultimately pointless treadmill.  If others lived a different way, so could I.

Second, my choices matter.  This book opened my eyes about how our Western consumer lifestyles were using disproportionate amounts of the Earth's resources and there were not enough resources for everyone to live this same lifestyle.  Not everyone on the planet can drive gas guzzling cars and eat meat every day.  No matter how much economic development we achieve in the world, there is just not enough petroleum or arable land for such things to happen.  I haven't gone on to live a totally Spartan life.  I'm not wearing camel hair robes and feeding off locusts or wild honey.  But I have tried to drive more efficient cars and to drive less.  I've also tried to have our family eat less meat.  That is not going to be a panacea to all the world's problems.  But that is ok.  I want to at least be less of the problem.  I want to live in a way that is not as removed from the lifestyles others are living.

Third, gratitude is important.  I'm now more aware of my own privilege in getting the option of living a luxurious first world lifestyle or having the ability to cut back on my own consumption.  Wow!  How fortunate am I.  Most people around me don't even realize how different our lifestyle is from most on this planet.  And many people don't have the luxury of opting to cut back, deprivation is thrust upon them.

Four, time is what is most important.  Like anyone, I don't want to be homeless, starving or naked.  But beyond the necessities, unless you are independently wealthy, the more stuff we have, the less time we have.  Now I realize how important time is.  That is what is most valuable and we cannot make more of it.  It is definitely a finite resource.  Maximizing the amount of available time to enjoy the gift that is our lives and to get the most out of it by being present and grateful--that is what needs to be my focus.  Not worrying about things that in the end don't matter.

Finally, I also was comforted by the writers in this book that assured us that we don't need to leave our urban or suburban lives to live off the land.  That may sound romantic, but in the glaring light of reality that would never work for me.  I admit I'm a total wimp who wouldn't be able to cope without electricity and easy access to a grocery store.  But these authors are fortunately correct.  We don't need to grow all our own food and live in a hut in the middle of no where.  We can grow where we're planted--literally and figuratively.  Simplicity is about decluttering in both tangible and intangible ways.  It is a process, an ideal to work towards.  There are shades and degrees, it is not all or nothing.  It is not some dogmatic fad where you don't belong if you cannot jump in 100%.  You can begin today.  And I encourage you to do that if you haven't already!

Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective edited & compiled by Michael Schut (Part III: Random Passages That I Liked)

I am a reader.  I have earned several degrees, practiced a profession where reading was a mainstay, and then I spent the last part of my professional career as an academic where I read even more.  And on top of all those motivations, I also enjoy reading for pleasure. 

I've realized over the years that I'm a fairly kinesthetic learner.  I cannot just sit still and read.  To take in what I'm reading, I have to underline, highlight and/or make notes.  When I read a book or article, I like to flag what is most of interest to me and ideas I want to come back to. 

I took this approach when reading Simpler Living, Compassionate Life  for the first time years ago.  If you saw my copy of the book, it is marked up with a lot of yellow highlighting.

I am a fairly prolific highlighter, so I cannot share with you everything I flagged when reading the book.  But I'd like to share with you some passages that particularly got my attention and made an impression on me.  They are sort of a synopsis of not just this one particular book, but of the things that drew me to the concept of voluntary simplicity more generally.

My hope is that these random passages will whet your appetite and you'll read this amazing book as well.  In fact, I include page numbers so you can read these passage in their full context. 

And in doing so, maybe you'll find your own passages in the book that impact you in some meaningful way.  Enjoy!

p. 26 "Americans comprise only 5% of the world's population but consume 30% of its resources."

p. 27 "While voluntary poverty can be a beautiful offering of one's life, poverty itself can crush not only the body but the spirit as well."

p. 27 "Perhaps the prophetic word that simple living has to offer materialism centers around justice and freedom:  justice that can be lived through reduced consumption and more equitable distribution of the earth's finite resources, and acting justly toward the rest of creation:  freedom that allows each of us to move from life-draining acquisitiveness toward a joyful, generous spirit that recognizes the worth of all God's creatures."

p. 27  "But in our driven busyness we do not take time to listen.  We no longer know who we are and the 'still, small voice' is lost in the cacophony of voices urging us on to the next task.  Lacking the ability to listen and follow God's voice and our own inner direction, we become increasingly susceptible to the marketing of the good life.  We lose touch with the understanding that who we are is larger than simply what we do.  Into this hyper-productive life walks simplicity.  Simplicity requires us to slow down, to consider how our lives reflect who we are and what we value. . . If the abundant life is more than just consuming, it is also more than just producing."

p. 34 "There is no doubt that some purchases permanently enhance our lives.  But how much of what we consume merely keeps us moving on a stationary treadmill?  The problem with the treadmill is not only that it is stationary, but also that we have to work long hours to stay on it... the consumerist treadmill and long hour jobs have combined to form an insidious cycle of 'work-and-spend.'  Employers ask for long hours.  The pay creates a high level of consumption.  People buy houses and go into debt; luxuries become necessities; Smiths keep up with Joneses. . . Capitalism has brought a dramatically increased standard of living, but at the cost of a much more demanding worklife."

p. 35 "The juggling act between job and family is another problem area.  Half the population now says they have too little time for their families.  The problem is particularly acute for women: in one study, half of all employed mothers reported it caused either 'a lot' or an 'extreme' level of stress.  The same proportion feel that 'when I'm at home I try to make up to my family for being away at work, and as a result I rarely have any time for myself.'  This stress has placed tremendous burdens on marriages.  Two-earner couples have less time together, which researchers have found reduces the happiness and satisfaction of a marriage.  These couples often just don't have enough time to talk to each other."

p. 36 "Serious as these problems are, the most alarming development may be the effect of the work explosion on the care of children.  According to economist Sylvia Hewlett, 'child neglect has become endemic in our society.'  A major problem is that children are increasingly left alone, to fend for themselves while their parents are at work. . . Hewlett links the 'parenting deficit' to a variety of problems plaguing our country's youth: poor performance in school, mental problems, drug and alcohol use, and teen suicide.  According to another expert, kids are being 'cheated out of childhood. . . There is a sense that adults don't care about them."

p. 38 "In the past I read books that told me how to get more done during the day, how to find that extra hour so you could study French or learn photography.  I would try to do as many things as I could at one time.  Now I focus on doing less and slowing down.  I try to stop rushing, to practice mindfulness, to practice meditation.  I keep working at it, but still I have that nagging feeling--hurry, hurry."

p. 53 "Our hard and very urgent task is to realize that nature is not primarily a property to be possessed, but a gift to be received with admiration and gratitude.  How differently we would live if we always sensed that the nature around us is full of desire to tell us the great story of God's love, to which it points."

p. 67 "All of us struggle with the place of money in our lives.  There are no easy answers.  Yet whether rich or poor, by either American or global standards, money is surely one of our culture's most prevalent and powerful idols:  promising that which it cannot finally deliver."

p. 67 "Idolatry, whatever its object, represents the enshrinement of any other person or thing in the very place of God.  Idolatry embraces some person or thing, instead of God, as the source and rationalization of the moral significance of this life in the world for, at least, the idolater, though not, necessarily, for anybody else at all."

p. 75 "Now consider our economic system (the 'Big Economy,' Rasmussen, p. 111), the dominant global economy as it has developed in Western culture (and spread through the world).  Rather than a circle, we might envision a line.  At one end, capital, labor, and natural resources are input.  Along the way 'things' are produced, advertising creates a desire for those things, which we then consume.  Along the way, some people reap profits.  But, also along the way, a lot of waste is produced. . . The Big Economy hopes that the Great Economy will somehow assimilate all waste, a hope we now know is futile; the waste generated each year in the United States would fill a convoy of 10-ton garbage trucks 145,000 miles long--over halfway to the moon. . . All inputs (including capital and labor, which are also ultimately dependent on a healthy world) come from the Great Economy, and all wastes return to it.  Yet the Big Economy refers to its effects on the natural world as 'externalities;' that is, these effects are not taken into account within our monetary economy.  Examples of externalities include water pollution, soil erosion, ozone depletion and toxic waste. . . These externalities profoundly affect people and places--in our own backyards and around the world. . . Although economic status plays an important role in the location of toxic waste sites, race is the leading factor."

p. 78 "Worldwide, 40,000 children die of hunger-related disease or malnutrition every day.  If we Americans ate 10 percent less meat (it takes 12 pounds of grain to produce one pound of red meat), enough grain would be saved to more than feed those children (Robbins and Patton, May All Be Fed, chapter 2)."

p. 83 "Adam Smith did not write as a Calvinist theologian, but his view of the human being is not far removed from that of many Scottish Calvinist of his day.  They, too, were suspicious of expecting too much from human sympathy or love.  They recognized with Smith that most people's actions were basically selfish."

p. 88 " We have learned not to impose simple ideals naively on complex situations but to analyze them thoroughly and then find ways to move toward Christian goals within them. . . In our opposition to individualism and to nationalism, we affirm that we as individuals need one another and that nations, too, need one another, as we all need God."

p. 91 "American children under the age of 13 have more spending money--$230 a year--than the 300 million poorest people in the world."

p. 91 "The richest billion people in the world have created a form of civilization so acquisitive and profligate that the planet is in danger.  The lifestyle of this top echelon--the car drivers, beef eaters, soda drinkers, and throwaway consumers--constitutes an ecological threat unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps population growth. . .  Ironically, abundance has not even made people terribly happy.  In the United States, repeated opinion polls of people's sense of well-being show that no more Americans are satisfied with their lot now than they were in 1957.  Despite phenomenal growth in consumption, the list of wants has grown faster still.  Of course, the other extreme from overconsumption--poverty--is not solution to environmental or human problems:  it is infinitely worse for people and equally bad for the environment.  Dispossessed peasants slash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America, and hungry nomads turn their herds out onto fragile African rangeland, reducing it to desert.  If environmental decline results when people have either too little or too much, we must ask ourselves:  How much is enough?"

p. 97  "The basic value of a sustainable society, the ecological equivalent of the Golden Rule, is simple:  Each generation should meet its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations."

p. 100 "It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy should be cheap and plentiful."

p. 119 "To live eschatologically in this sense is not simply to enjoy hopeful images from time to time.  The hope for the Kingdom freed early Christians from concern for success or security in the present order. . . When God is understood as omnipotent, Christians have an assureance of ultimate success for their causes regardless of the most immediate outcome of the efforts.  But, today, we do not perceive God as forcing divine decisions upon the world."

p. 127 "One of the most often-mentioned ways to provide more work is to reduce the work week and spread jobs around.  This can be done in a way that both employees and employers benefit.  For instance, some companies find that people will accept a lower salary if their hourly wage goes up.  Since productivity tends to rise when people work shorter hours, both the people and the company would benefit:  there would be higher productivity for the company and a higher hourly wage for the people."

p. 133 "The aim of sufficiency is that everyone shall have enough of the things that are needed for a reasonably secure and fulfilling life. . . We are concerned first about basic needs: pure water, food and nutrition, clothing, shelter, health care, literacy and some kind of meaningful work to do. . . Individuals do not have identical requirements and likings in order to be happy.  But what any one person may include in the idea of what is sufficient for himself or herself is necessarily limited by the ideas of others about their sufficiency and the recognition that some minimal sufficiency for everyone takes precedence--whenever a choice is necessary--over anyone's right to enjoy a surplus."

p. 137 "Consumerism itself is the substitute, a most unsatisfactory, through addictive, substitute for that which makes human life meaningful and fulfilling--loving, caring relationships with one another, in which we accept and affirm our dependence on one another, and all the ways in which we may free each other for everything true and good and creative that each of us has in himself or herself to be or to become.  In short, consumerism is a substitute for community.  The abundance to which Jesus pointed was explicitly not the abundance of possessions.  It was the abundance of the restored relationship, the God-relationship.  It was the freedom to enjoy the community--the giving-and-receiving relationship with one another--for which we were created."

p. 146 "The radical critics of capitalism and promoters of Spartan rusticity among the advocates of the simple life would be well advised to acknowledge that material progress and urban life can frequently be compatible with spiritual, moral, or intellectual concerns."

p. 147 "Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading.  As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums.  It requires neither a log cabin nor a hairshirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar."

p. 148 "One of Gandhi's American friends once confessed to the Indian leader that it was easy and liberating for him to discard most of the superfluous clutter in his life and his household, but he could not part with his large collection of books.  'Then don't give them up,' Gandhi replied.  'As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it.  If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you.'  This means that simplicity is indeed more a state of mind than a particular standard of living."

p. 155 "Our freedom from sin allows us to serve others.  Before, all our serving was for our benefit, a means to somehow get right with God.  Only because the grace of God has been showered upon us are we enabled to give that same grace to others."

p. 167 "Consumption patterns of the 'Northern' countries and the 'Western' countries are obscene by global standards, yet there is no apparent end in sight to the guttony. . .Nevertheless, the underlying economic logic of an economy based on unlimited growth remains largely unchallenged in public discourse. . . The reasons for this have as much to do with arguments about social justice as they do with shameless consumerism. After all, growth has become the only means that late capitalism has devised to cope with the increasingly evident problem of inequity."

p. 182 "We are trapped in a maze of competing attachments.  One moment we make decisions on the basis of sound reason and the next moment out of fear of what others will think of us.  We have no unity or focus around which our lives are oriented.  Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insance attachment to things.  We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic.  It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality.  We crave things we neither need nor enjoy.  'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.'  Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over.  We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. . . Hoarding we call prudence."

Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective edited & compiled by Michael Schut (Part I: Overview)

In the prior post, I explained that disappointment about the outcome of an election led to a serendipitous visit to a religious bookstore where I happened to come across my first book on voluntary simplicity: Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective edited & compiled by Michael Schut.  I think I should say a bit about the book.

The book is a collection of essays and excerpts from longer pieces by various authors.  I have to admit that a lot of them did not really take root.  Many were over my head.  I'm a pretty well-educated person and I read a lot.  But as I read the book, many of the essays and excerpts seemed to presuppose background knowledge I did not have.  Some seemed to presuppose a fairly in-depth understanding of voluntary simplicity.  Others were out of my reach because they seemed to have been written for an audience who had graduated from seminary, which I have not.

Nonetheless, I persevered.  It was a really low point spiritually for me at that point in time.  And I somehow sensed that this particular book had something to teach me that would be important to help get me to a better place spiritually.

I tried to read one essay or excerpt each day as a daily devotional.  Some days this was interesting and fruitful; the reading gave me food for thought.  Other days, I got very little out of the reading and I was bored/lost. 

Nonetheless, after completing the book, there were some big picture things that stuck with me.  Our middle class way of life in the U.S. is luxurious compared to how most of our brothers and sisters live around the world.  If we scale down even a bit the level of luxuries we Americans enjoy, we will not die and we will not suffer deprivation.  Indeed, scaling down somewhat can actually lead to more abundance.  The more luxuries we insist on having, the more we typically have to work.  But by scaling back--or simplifying--we can work less and have more time.  Time is the real treasure in our life.  It is finite and precious, no matter how we try to forget or deny that.

I Owe It All to Dubyah

Ok, so time to get back to the beginning and explain how I came to embrace the concept of voluntary simplicity. 

Honestly, a decade ago I had never heard of such a thing.  If I had heard the phrase, I would have had no ability to define it.  At that time, I was a well-educated, professional working insane hours, married to a professional who had his own insane hours at his job, and we had a lovely home in a gated golf course community in the suburbs of a major urban center.  I was fairly early in my career, and my husband and I were both busy on the treadmill of the corporate world.  In the little free time we had, we were busy with a bunch of church activities and trying to maintain our home.  There was little time to stop and breath--let alone think about the big picture.  We were just trying to keep our heads above water with all that we had on our plates.

Then the 2004 presidential election was held and I was devastated by the results.  (Ok, my conservative friends, this is the time I warned you about.  Stay with me, keep reading despite the next several paragraphs.)

In 2004, I was deeply concerned about the direction in which our country had been going.  In the course of the first term of George W. Bush, we'd suffered devastating attacks on our country.  Instead of using that traumatic tragedy to build on the solidarity felt for our country domestically (and internationally), our president and his advisers stoked fear and exploited it.  They exploited our feelings of vulnerability and promulgated untruths, which resulted in imprudent military actions that caused us to be quagmired in two long wars on foreign soil.  Instead of showing international leadership and maintaining the moral highroad, we had become a pariah nation whose credibility was shot.  My husband and I both worked in the energy industry at the time, and consequently felt certain (due to our professional insights) that the invasion of Iraq had been a thinly veiled attempt to secure better access and control over that nation's petroleum resources.  It was never about WMDs.  It was demoralizing to us that most of the country--who were not in the energy sector--did not realize this or call the administration on their charade. 

I had never been a big fan of John Kerry.  Another Massachusetts liberal running for president?  That didn't seem like a winning ticket to me.  But in my mind, he was better than the alternative.  As a Christian, I take Jesus's teachings very seriously and the reckless engagement in wars of questionable legitimacy were alarming to say the least.  In the late summer and early fall of 2004, it appeared that Senator Kerry had a strong shot at winning the election, and I was hopeful that he might turn things around despite the horrible mess our country had gotten itself in. 

Even on election day, things seemed to be going well.  Then came Ohio.  Apparently, Senator Kerry did well in the urban areas, but in rural communities there had been an unprecedented drive to get people to the polls.  That year, Karl Rove and his team had exploited voter initiatives on same-sex marriage in many states to encourage conservative voters to get to the polls despite their waning enthusiasm for President Bush.  In essence, they exploited another type of fear--homophobia--in order to squeak past Senator Kerry in key states. 

And sadly, it worked.  When the results became final and Senator Kerry conceded, I was incredulous and deflated.  I couldn't believe that we were stuck with another four years of one of the more disastrous presidencies in recent memory.  I couldn't believe that the military quagmire would show no signs of improvement.  It might even get worse.

And as a Christian, I was also distraught that the way the election was won ended up crystalizing even more in the minds of non-Christians the concept of Christian homophobic bigotry.  We were not known for our love, but our hate.  We were not sharing God's love with a hurting world, but judging and condemning in ways Jesus warned us against.

As a Christian, I couldn't believe God would let all this happen.  (OK, my non-religious friends, this is the time I warned you about.  Stick with me for the next few paragraphs even if you don't agree with my faith perspective.)

I had felt so certain that the offensive wars, in which we were engaged, were a moral outrage that God would remedy with a domestic regime change.  A decorated soldier with a distinguished history of public service and the backing of so many military leaders.  Surely this was God's plan to help end the wars and the anguishing human suffering it engendered.  I had felt confident that God's apparent plan would work out.  Then Senator Kerry conceded and President Bush declared victory.  What the heck happened?!!?  It was surreal.  There must have been a mistake.

I was so distraught.  I remember closing my office door--despite our "open door" policy--and listening to Senator Kerry's speech in secret so none of my Republican co-workers would hear.  I just sat there in disbelief as tears rolled down my cheeks.  I even left work earlier than normal.  I just couldn't focus on anything and couldn't hold back my tears.  I didn't know what else to do, so I went to a Christian book store not far from my office. 

I didn't really know what I was even looking for.  But I already was kicking myself for having thought that I could so easily discern God's plans and that he cared as much about politics as I had.  I was already vowing that I should not get so invested in secular politics, but should renew myself spiritually.  Among other things, I vowed to start reading the Bible more regularly.  But I also had a vague thought that maybe at the Christian book store, I might find a book to help me mend my broken heart and allay my concern for our nation.  I wandered up and down the aisles.  Nothing was really calling out to me.  But then I saw a book that somehow caught my attention.

The book was called Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective edited and compiled by Michael Schut.  The cover was off-white with medium blue font.  There was a photo of a straw hat, flowers and some worn leather clogs.  Visually it was very pleasant and soothing.

The back cover included praise from people I had not yet heard of: Elaine St. James, Jim Wallis and Vicki Robin.  The back cover also included a summary that began:

Not enough time?  Money?  Peace?  Can less really be more?  What really matters to you?  This powerful resource can help you find the questions that challenge you, and the answers that help. . . A diversity of voices and a helpful study guide make this an effective tool for individuals and groups ready to consider alternatives to the high-price, high-stress 'Good Life': the riches of simplicity and compassion.

Honestly, I did not fully understand at the time what all this meant.  But it sounded good.  It sounded like exactly what was really ailing me at the time.  It wasn't just my disappointment over the election and my concern about our nation's questionable wars. 

I had been on a treadmill of stress and competition at work.  I had so little life outside my job.  This was not what I felt I really wanted, but the "high-price, high-stress 'Good Life'" was what everyone in our social circle was chasing.  You went to college, went off to work in the corporate world, bought your lovely home in the 'burbs where you could show off your furniture and play golf.  If everyone else is doing it, it must be right.  It never occurred to us there might be another path.

The reality was that my husband and I didn't even play golf and had no desire to begin doing so.  We did not particularly care about having a fancy house.  Initially, we'd just wanted to be comfortable in a home we would enjoy.  It wasn't about keeping up with the Joneses.  But whenever our neighbors had a party, I'd feel that we weren't keeping up and needed to spend time on getting closer to the ideal in the magazines.  However, we never really had time to do that.  We were always working.  And when we did get a couple days off, we liked to travel and see different places.  We enjoyed experiences, not so much things.

We'll get more into all that later.  But the bottom line is I owe my epiphany to Dubyah.  Had I not been so disgusted with his first term, and so devastated by his winning of a second term, I would not have been inspired to embark on a spiritual renewal.  I would have continued reading the Bible only sporadically instead of devoting myself anew to a daily study of Scripture.  I also would not have felt inspired to go to the Christian book store that fateful day.  That post-election disappointment and sadness were what prompted me to look for a book on a spiritual topic that would help me find a new path in life.  One that was much more grounded in my true values and ultimately much more sustainable.

The Preciousness of Time

One of the things that most impressed me about Ms. Strobel's book was her point that life is short and time is the most valuable resource we have.  We all hear such sentiments, but most of the time we merely pay lip service to them.  We're so busy running around in the busyness of our lives and checking off things on our never-ending to-do lists.

However, now that I'm firmly entrenched in my 40s, and my kids are nearing the threshold of their teen years, the reality of the preciousness of time has become clearer to me.  I can't put off spending time with my kids reading or teaching them important life skills.  That report for work frankly won't mean squat in 10 years.  But it would be a real travesty if I didn't make time to listen and be fully present when my kids asked, "You know what, Mom?"

And there are other things I still want to do with my life.  Things I'd like to do or at least try, and places I'd like to see.  I can't put those things off indefinitely.  Who knows how long I'll be on this planet.  There is a local community newspaper that I like to read.  Among other things, it has obituaries of residents who have died.  Most are in their 60s, 70s or 80s.  Occasionally there is one for a child or young adult, but fortunately those are pretty rare.  However, it is not as rare to see an obituary for someone my age or not far off.  None of us are guaranteed even another day of life.  We can't procrastinate with the big things of life.

I feel a little dense that it has taken until my 40s to really begin to get this.  I glean that Ms. Strobel is much younger than me.  And she had her critical epiphanies in her 20s.  Jeesh, I was just ramping up the busyness of my life in those years! 

But ultimately, it is not a competition.  And I am so grateful for the life experiences I've had up until this point.  They have taught me much.  Moreover, I am so incredibly excited about this next phase of my life.

Inspiration

Our family loves books.  The public library is one of favorite places ever.  We go there at least once each week.  Usually, I spend most of our visit in the kids' section helping my daughters find books they want to read.  In the past, I did not necessarily have time to look for something I wanted to read on my own.  But in anticipation of this huge crossroads in my life, on a recent visit, I picked up several nonfiction books on topics I want to explore more in coming months. 

One book was Tammy Strobel's You Can Buy Happiness (and It's Cheap):  How One Woman Radically Simplified Her Life and How you Can Too.  (How can you not be drawn to a title like that?!)  Over the years, I've read a lot of books on simple living.  They were all fascinating and helpful in their own way.  But one thing I particularly appreciated about Ms. Strobel's book was how down-to-earth and honest she was. 

Ms. Strobel admits she is not a perfect minimalist.  She loves buying books and indulging in chocolate.  She and her husband took on debt to downsize to a tiny home.  She shares in the book how she fretted this financial step backwards made her a fraud or hypocrite. 

But I love how Ms. Strobel is very forgiving.  Perfection is not the goal, which she reminds her readers often.  That is a tough lesson for us to learn in modern America where our culture sends us the opposite message all the time.  One screw up and you are out of a job, will be sued or will ruin your kids' lives.

Working towards an ideal like voluntary simplicity takes time.  You may never get to the ideal anyhow.  That's why it's an idea.  And everyone's circumstances are different.  Learning to slow down, stop all the busyness to enjoy a higher quality of life.  That is what counts.  No guilt trips if your circumstances put you in a home or a job that meets the needs of you and your family but may not be as simple as you would ultimately like.

Ms. Strobel's book describes her journey in simplifying her life, and also tells the stories of people she knows.  I like that.  We learn from hearing each other's stories. 

Some of what I read was familiar.  I had been through experiences like those of the people described in the book.  For example, Ms. Strobel talks about her miserable early career in the corporate world.  She was on what Sonja Lyubomirsky calls the "hedonistic treadmill" in her book The How of Happiness.  Many of us deal with the stress of our hectic lives by buying something, which is only a temporary salve and distraction, but ultimately leaves us unfulfilled.  Moreover, when we're on that "hedonistic treadmill," we often make things worse in the long run.  We spend from our savings or go into debt such that we are trapped in our miserable, overly demanding jobs to pay for the stuff we're buying but don't really need.

As much as I admire her and her book, let's get something straight:  Tammy Strobel and I live very different lives. 

She is married and has a cat, but no human children.  I'm married with two human kids and two canine ones.

In their journey to simplify, Ms. Strobel and her husband eventually went carless.  They now bike all over the place.  That ain't ever going to happen in my life!  I don't even aspire to it.  I live in a sprawling metropolitan area where cars are king and the heat is life-threatening in the summer.  We'd be more than inconvenienced if we had no car.  We'd rarely be able to go anywhere and our lives would be in danger!

Ms. Strobel and her husband also moved to a tiny home consisting of 128 square feet.  That ain't ever happening in my life either.  Again, I don't even aspire to it.  Even if we doubled the square footage and looked at a 250ish square foot home, that would not be attractive.  We have active children and we spend a lot of time together at home.  It would not improve the quality of our lives to be so pressed for space.  I'm not going to make our kids give up all their toys.  And unlike Ms. Strobel and her husband, if someone in our family wants alone time, we cannot just venture out for a walk or bike ride by him or herself.  Our kids are too young for that.

Pointing out these differences are not a criticism of Ms. Strobel.  Not in the least.  Our family dynamics are different.  What works for one family may not work for another.  Ms. Strobel acknowledges that in her book.  Simplifying is not a one size fits all sort of thing.

Even though I'll likely never live the "radically simplified" life that Tammy Strobel writes about in her book, I found much that inspired me in her words. 

Many bits of inspiration were actually concepts that I'd read about in the past, but had lost sight of over time.  (I've had a particularly intense professional life the past few years and my kids have gotten older, which means their needs are more complex.)  In that sense, Ms. Strobel's book was a great reminder of past lessons I'd learned but forgotten to some extent.

But I also learned new things in her book,  On pp. 10-11, she writes about Tim Kasser's book The High Price of Materialism.  She sums up Professor Kasser's findings: "In short, materialism distracts us from two main facets in life that actually make us happy--strong relationships and doing work you love."  I loved that summary. 

Strong relationships and doing work you love.  That's what it is really all about, isn't it? 

For so long, I've spent most of my waking hours doing work for my paid gig.  Much of it had become drudgery and full of office politics.  It was draining.  There were aspects I liked very much.  But over time, it seemed like those became less and less a part of my job.    

Meanwhile, I feel like to some extent I've missed some of my kids' childhood.  Mommy was always so busy, so much to do for her paid job.  There are only so many hours in the day, and I didn't always have a lot of time to spend with my kids.  I'm anxious to not miss any more.

As I go through this journey, I'm going to try to return to this summary as my priorities.  Building strong relationships and doing work you love.