Kids' Recreational Sports Leagues

So here in the 'burbs, there can be a lot of social pressure to spend money in ways we don't need or want to.  I promised I'd share some real life examples.  Here is one that I constantly find frustrating.  It comes in the context of the recreational sports leagues we sign our kids up for.

Let me back up by saying that my husband and I were never jocks.  But we appreciate the role of athletics in helping kids to grow and learn.  Beyond giving them exercise to be healthy, organized sports teaches them all kinds of great lessons.  Team work.  Perseverance.  Setting goals.  Leadership.  Hard work.  Slow improvement over time.  Empathy.  Respect for others.  For these and other reasons, we have long had our kids in community sports programs for soccer, basketball, volleyball and swimming. 

The cost is typically not that bad because they are run by the cities where we've lived and we get a resident discount.  For the most part, these have been great experiences.  Our kids have learned a lot each time. 

But there are hidden costs in many cases.  Most are socially instigated by other parents.  Let me share some examples.  If you are a parent, this may be familiar to you.

(1) Team Photos.  As I was never in organized sports as a kid, this one caught me off-guard.  But every single team my kids have been on has had a designated picture day.  We all have to get to the field or pool an hour or more early to wait around and then get our picture taken.  There are typically group and individual photos.  The first few times we ordered a modest package of photos.  We did this for two main reasons.  First, we had more income in those days and it wasn't that big a deal to us.  Second, everyone else was doing it and we didn't want to look cheap.  Note that neither reason involved wanting the darned pictures.  We can take our own darn pictures, thank you very much.  I never like cheesy, staged photos anyhow. 

But one year, during the height of the Great Recession, I noticed a single mom of one of my daughter's teammates was holding her kid back, he was the only one on the team not participating in photos.  From some basic stuff the mom had previously shared, it didn't take a genius to figure out they didn't have a lot of money.  Professional photos from the soccer season weren't in the budget.  I felt profoundly sad that that mom and her child seemed to be embarrassed to be the odd ones out and their lack of funds was the cause of that.  That was the last time we ordered the photos from one of my kids' sports teams. 

We still always dutifully show up for the team photo, but we don't take the individual photos.  We could afford them.  But there are always opportunity costs with every purchase.  There are other things I'd rather do with our money than buy overpriced, staged photos. 

And normally I am second to none in my admiration and support of small businesses.  But I take exception when it comes to the professional photographers that take these team pictures.  All the parents feel guilted into buying a package.  It is an extortive way to make a living and doesn't provide much (if any) social good.

(2) Snacks.  I don't know if it has always been this way, but ever since my kids began participating in organized sports, there is an unwritten rule that the kids must be rewarded with a snack after the game.  Heck, sometimes, the unwritten rule says they also get one at half time!  The only exception seems to be swim team.  But that is probably only because food is not allowed by the pool.

Occasionally a coach will strongly recommend that the snacks be fresh fruit.  But usually the parents buy whatever they want and the snacks are highly processed, high in sugar and/or fat.  The kids get cookies, potato chips, snack bars, etc. to eat.  Along with sugary punch or sports drinks. 

We live in a hot climate, so I'm down with orange wedges or grapes at half time.  But anything else, I find wasteful and counterproductive.  There is a childhood obesity epidemic.  A lot of the kids on the sports teams are a bit pudgy. Occasionally a teammate is obese and has trouble even participating. 

In light of the reality, I don't know why we insist in filling kids with empty calories after they just burned some off.  And the snacks are typically processed and sold in wasteful packaging.  Just one team's post-game snack creates a lot of trash, most of it not even recyclable. 

But this is one modern tradition that I cannot get out of gracefully.  Everyone is expected to sign up to bring snack at least one game of the season.  So, I grin and bear it.  And I at least try to watch sales and get the most economical snacks I can find.

(3) Coach's Gift.  Towards the end of the season, invariably some parent takes it upon him/herself to organize a taking up of money to buy the coach a gift.  Our family tends to like to bake some homemade cookies for our kids' coaches as a more personal, less expensive gift.  Sometimes that works to gracefully get out of the group gift.  And other times, the coach has been so exceptional and the suggested donation is low enough that we chip in.  But often, the organizing parent has a particular item in mind and it is premised upon everyone chipping in a fixed amount that is higher that my husband and I think appropriate. 

It is not that we are ungrateful, far from it.  Volunteer coaches have one of their own kids on the team.  They don't volunteer to get a trophy or plaque or gift card.   I think we should always show our heartfelt appreciation for those who volunteer their time for the good of the community.  But I resent pushy parents telling others they "have" to kick in a certain amount to buy the coach a meaningless piece of junk he/she is likely going to throw in a neglected corner of his/her garage (or in his/her garbage can) before long. 

Indeed, this whole tradition is part of a wider modern phenomenon of gift giving that I find toxic.  Holidays have been distorted and others have been invented just to promote gift giving.  We are now always giving people gifts to the point that the act loses its significance.  Moreover, some come to view them as an entitlement.  Someone recently asked me, "What did your family give you for Mother's Day?"  I wasn't sure how to answer, we don't give gifts at all holidays like that.  My kids and I instead volunteered to cook a special meal for some homeless families at our church.  It was a glorious day.  Our project and the time with my kids made me very happy.

(4) Trophies.  So many people these days mock the current generation of kids and young adults because they are being raised or were raised in a culture where prizes have become meaningless.  Everyone gets a prize for showing up.  The modern mindset is that to distinguish some as better than others would hurt some kids' feelings, so everyone gets a science fair ribbon or a sports trophy.  I have a lot of sympathy for those who are disgusted with this modern approach.  But I can tell you that here in the trenches, it is mighty hard to buck this trend. 

My oldest daughter has been participating in organized sports for 7 years now.  We have an entire shelf in our home library just covered with trophies from all the teams she has been on.  She is no Mia Hamm or Brittney Griner.  She tries her best and has improved over the years.  But we're not betting on a sports scholarship for college.  Yet she has more sports trophies than we can store.  Each one was something that every player in the whole league got for just showing up.  On the last day of each season, the league organizers have to lug boxes of the darned things to the games. 

Alternately, some leagues don't provide the trophy, but invariably some parent takes it upon him/herself to organize the purchase of trophies for everyone.  My husband and I always try to resist.  It is hard because invariably we are the ONLY family not chomping at the bit to buy another trophy, and typically there is a group discount that no one gets unless 100% of the players buy a trophy. 

This season we had an experience that really blew my mind.  The parent organizing the trophies for one of my daughter's soccer team asked at the beginning of the season if parents were interested in buying one to be handed out at the last game.  My husband and I politely and immediately flagged we would not be interested.  The organizing parent thanked us for our response, but then asked a number of other times to make sure since we were apparently the only family on the entire team declining to purchase the trophy.  I explained how we already had a ton of them from all the seasons our daughter had played sports and frankly we were out of room.  But this was not enough for this gentleman.  He ended up buying an engraved trophy with our daughter's name out of his own pocket so she wouldn't be the only one without a trophy at the end of season picnic, which we couldn't even attend since we had a prior commitment.  So we have the darned trophy anyhow!  And to make matters worse, it is so huge that it doesn't even fit on the shelf with all the others.  We've had to display it more prominently on a shelf with more space.  Oy, vey!

My other daughter played volleyball in a different league this season, and that league provided trophies for all players on the last day.  I was grateful to not have to deal with the issue of paying for the burden of another trophy.  However, I found it astounding that she and her teammates got a trophy because her team had a losing season.  And not by just a smidge.  Until the last day of the season, her team had not only not won a single match, they hadn't even won a single set!  They had lost miserably in straight sets week after week after week.  But in the current climate, the first place team and the last place team "earn" the same trophy. 

Not only do I find this a waste of resources and not a prudent way to raise kids, but I am just appalled at the environmental impact.  Nothing but parental guilt keeps us holding on to all these meaningless trophies.  But at some point, they will go in the trash--even if it is not until they move out of the house and it seems more socially acceptable to get rid of them.  My kids have tons of these trophies at this point.  Think of that multiplied by all the other kids who get these darned things nationwide.  What a huge landfill need that creates! 

Simply Sunday #15

Hello!

So, here is something I've done recently to simplify my life...

I organized my bedroom closet!  So simple, but it has really lifted my spirits. 

Though in the last year I've given away a tremendous amount of clothing and reduced by 75% the amount of closet space I was consuming, my closet still felt cluttered.  At this point, I don't want to get rid of anything else.  But the problem was that everything was a huge, chaotic mess.

One problem was that clothing I only use part of the year was taking up room in seasons when I couldn't use it.  As we are now well into summer, I took the opportunity to collect all the winter clothing and put it in one location, out of the way.  That thinned the rest of the closet and freed up more space.

I also gathered together things I need to hold onto, but don't need frequently, e.g., formal attire.  Those items too are now out of my way.

It has felt so liberating to have a de-cluttered, more organized closet!  If I get time, I would like to organize it more.  But for the time being, just getting out of the way out of season and occasionally used items has helped tremendously. 

I feel like I've expanded my closet space simply by organizing the existing space better.  That same reality happens all over our homes.  We sometimes think we need a certain square footage and/or rented storage space to hold all our stuff.  But in truth, we often can make due with less through a combination of being realistic about what we actually use and need, and organizing our existing space more wisely.

I hope this helps!  Have a great day.

Unexpected Gifts

So, our family has gone through three different major simplifying life changes that cut our household income approximately in half.  Each one has been a little scary initially.  But we're frugal and we're savers.  And we've planned a lot before each one of these life changes.  So ultimately we didn't have any real serious concerns.  And we never had any regrets.  Quite the opposite.

But one of the things we've experienced each time was the prospect of cutting out (more!) luxuries from our family budget.  This last major life change was in some ways the most jarring.  It took our family to the lowest income level we've ever had.  Again, we'd planned a lot beforehand and knew it was possible.  But especially in the beginning we really had to tighten our belt.  We didn't go out to eat much previously, but we cut it out completely for a full year.

I'm not into Coach purses, my husband doesn't want a sports car.  Neither of us drinks or gambles.  But travel and eating out are our two weaknesses.  So this was a sacrifice.  But we knew it was not forever.  And frankly, some people never get to go out to restaurants.  We're blessed to have eaten out as many times as we have in our lives.  And we were confident that we would again at another point in our life.

But one thing that was really interesting was that once we began this year long restaurant fast, we began to receive gift cards to eat out. 

One friend gave me a Starbuck's card when I left my job.  I never buy fancy coffee for myself, so that was a real treat. 

Another friend completely out of the blue sent me a gift card for a national restaurant chain.  She was excited for and proud of our major life change.  She was also very thoughtful and realized we were having to cut back to do it, so she wanted to treat us to a night out.  We really enjoyed that a lot! 

Yet another friend recently gifted me a Starbuck's card--just as I had pretty much squeezed the last few cents out of the first one. 

And perhaps the most amazing instance of all this was a total stranger who came up to me and my kids at a grocery store.  He explained that someone had given him a gift card for a national restaurant chain but it was not his cup of tea.  He asked if I'd like to have the card.  Initially, I thought this a strange question, but he was an elderly man and didn't seem dangerous.  :)  It was a restaurant we'd frankly never been to, and our whole family had a terrific time.

Oh, and did I mention that we won a $25 gift card at our local grocery store?!  We never win anything.  We haven't used it yet, but have plans to treat ourselves to a fancy home cooked meal with it.  We're going to splurge on some ingredients we don't normally buy.

These serendipitous gifts to eat out (or eat in as in the last example) were such luxurious treats.  In our year of fasting from restaurants, we really appreciated them.  There is nothing like fasting from something to make you appreciate it more!

And as a person of faith, I see the hand of God in all this.  We never got restaurant gift cards in the past, this was unique and special.  And it came at a time when we most appreciated these treats.  Very special.

Keeping Up With the Joneses

A couple years ago at my church, our pastor had a woman in our congregation give a talk about her family's struggles to get their finances under control.  At the time, our community had been hard hit by the Great Recession.  Many were out of work.  So many had lost or were going to lose their homes.  Times were rough.  Our congregation offers Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, a course on money management.  The talk was intended to encourage others to take the course to get on better footing financially.

I remember when the woman was giving her talk, she shared that her family had spent more than they needed to on a fancy home, nice cars and nice clothes.  The pastor interrupted and asked her why they had spent more than they should have on such things.  Without any need to reflect, the woman said it was a case of "keeping up with the Joneses."  In other words, they had felt social pressure to spend money on things to appear affluent and comfortable. 

I was stunned by this response.  This woman and her family seemed so self-assured.  They were people of great faith.  I was shocked that such people would care what the Joneses--or anyone else thought about them.

But I've thought about it over the years, and am no longer shocked.  It is human nature for us to care what others think about us.  In our culture, we don't like people to think we are poor, suffering economically or not able to afford whatever we want.  We don't want to be pitied.  And we want to fit in. 

Particularly here in the 'burbs, we often have a distorted sense of others' finances.  We often think that others are doing better than they are.  They have nice things, go nice places.  So we figure they must be doing well financially. 

But if the Great Recession has taught my husband and me anything, it was to not believe the facades we were shown.  To recognize facades are not an accurate representation of reality.  When the economy tanked, we were shocked that people had misrepresented being laid off.  We were shocked at all the people in our social circle who lost their homes.  At one point, it seemed like almost everyone we knew was impacted by the economic collapse. 

I like to think that I am mature and secure enough that I don't care what others think about me and my family.  Maybe I don't obsess about it, but I am not immune to it.  And in the 'burbs where everyone is putting up facades and trying to show they are living the good life, it can be awkward and even embarrassing when you choose to live a different way and not spend like everyone else.  And I think that type of awkwardness and embarrassment is why many keep on spending instead of choosing a different lifestyle that might enable them to live a more fulfilling life.

For this reason, I'm starting a new series called "Keeping Up With the Joneses."  The point of posts in this series will be for me to share concrete examples of situations where my family and I have felt social pressures to spend money, and to describe how we have (or have not) overcome such social pressures.  I hope it will be an encouragement.  In our culture, we don't discuss financial problems openly, so it comes as a shock with others admit financial limitations.  This series will be somewhat unique for that reason.

Opportunity Costs

When I was going to apply to law school, I took a couple courses in Economics at a local community college.  I had never taken any as an undergrad, but I read somewhere that everyone who goes to law school should know something about economics.  I found it fascinating and wished in retrospect I'd taken Economics earlier, I even wished I had majored in it. 

One concept I learned in my basic Economics coursework was "opportunity cost."  It is defined differently in different settings but expresses the idea of the value of alternative choices in a given situation.  For example, if I choose to write for this blog, then I forgo spending time with my family, reading a good book, and giving my dogs a bath.  At this period in time, I've valued expressing myself in this blog over those other options.  The opportunity costs of posting to this blog are time with family, reading a book and bathing my dogs.  I've sacrificed those things to write on this blog today.

Life is full of opportunity costs.  We are constantly making decisions of how to use our time and other resources.  But we don't usually stop to consider that is what we are doing.  Typically, we are so caught up in the hectic-ness of life to realize what we are sacrificing when.  And many times we have no real option but to keep on doing what we are doing.  We have responsibilities--financial and otherwise--that restrict our options.

But sometimes we do have choices that we may not realize.  It can be hard to realize those choices because it would require thinking outside the box and making choices that others in our social circle don't make.  We humans are used to thinking in more traditional ways.  We are creatures of habit.  And it is very hard to go against the herd.  It takes vision and courage.

One reason I started this blog was to help others realize that they had choices and it might be possible to live a more fulfilling life.  Like most folks, I assumed that I'd spend the bulk of my life working frantically at a job until I was in my 60s.  But then I happened upon books about voluntary simplicity and in particular the book Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vikki Robin.  I began to see a different way of living that was more sustainable and more fulfilling.  I'd love for others to have similar epiphanies.

Right now I know people who are not living their best life because they are caught up in the materialism of modern American life.  They are trying to keep up with the Joneses.  They think they cannot live without certain "necessities."  They think they'd have to win the lotto to live their lives doing things they enjoy.  But that may not be the case.

I know women who would love to be stay-at-home moms instead of being away from their kids all day at a job they don't really care about. 

I know people who would like to adopt and provide a child in need a forever home.

I know people who would like to do mission work or work in the nonprofit sector.

I know people who don't mind working, but feel they are betraying their values by working in lucrative industries where the product or services may not provide social value or may create social harm.

I know people in these situations who feel stuck.  They'd rather do something else with their time and other resources, but feel like there is no other choice.  These are middle class professional people.  And to the extent that they want to continue their current spending and standard of living, they are right.  They are stuck in their current jobs--unless they are willing to make changes.

If eating out frequently or grabbing a latte on the way to work is the priority, they are stuck.

If annual vacations to luxury resorts is the priority, they are stuck.

If driving a gas guzzling vehicle is the priority, they are stuck.

If getting professional manicures or pedicures is the priority, they are stuck.

If having a smart phone for everyone in the family is the priority, they are stuck.

If buying fashionable clothes and accessories regularly is the priority, they are stuck.

If having cable TV is the priority, they are stuck.

If sending one's kid to drama camp or classes to earn a black belt are the priority, they are stuck.

If having seen all the Oscar nominated films prior to Oscar night is the priority, they are stuck.

If eating lots of meat and/or all organic produce is the priority, they are stuck.

If filling your home with junk and needing a larger home to store all the junk are priorities, they are stuck.

But note that eating out, grabbing a latte, vacations, gas guzzling vehicles, mani/pedis, smart phones, fashions, first-run movies, and a home filled with junk--these are costs you are choosing to pay if you'd rather do something else with your life.  Following your passion may be the opportunity cost to spending your money on such luxuries and needing to keep working to pay for such luxuries.

At least out here in the 'burbs, the things I listed above tend to be considered necessities by many.  They cannot conceive of a life without such things.  But if you haven't before, I encourage you to try to imagine life without them.  Ask yourself if these things are truly necessities or if you might live without them.  You may be surprised by the answer you come to.

Christmas in the 'Burbs

I've thought about posting to this blog the last couple weeks.  But I thought it would be hypocritical.  As life was already in need of simplifying this time of year, making an extra effort to get time at the computer to write would have made things even less simple.  So please excuse my absence.

As a person of faith, I love Christmas.  It is a time of great joy.  And even if you are not a person of faith, it is a wonderful time to make time for merry-making with those you love.  Or at least it should be.

Ugh.  If there is a time most challenging to someone trying to live a simpler life in the suburbs, it is Christmas.  Everyone is giving everyone else presents we don't need.  But it is custom and expected.  People wouldn't think to do something different.  It is just an expected part of life.  Even our pastor got into it one year, publicly noting to the congregation that Starbuck's gift cards would be particularly appreciated.

To the extent that I feel our family cannot get around gift giving sometimes, I try to have us give baked goods that we make.  My thought is that if someone eats it, it at least won't end up in the landfill.  But making time for baking can be a challenge when so much is going on this time of year.

And at this time of year, everyone's having parties, most of which require a gift of some kind.  This is particularly true for the kids' parties.  Even though our family gives very few gifts amongst us--mostly just small things for the kids--we end up spending more than normal due to the parties.  I don't want to be a wet blanket and deny our kids going to these parties.  So, I just wonder at how much everyone is spending.  And I worry how much debt they are taking on.  I'm sure others in our social circle think we're either stingy and/or impoverished to not be giving so many gifts.  We're definitely weird by comparison.

I'm used to all that.  It is irksome, but I suppose it is tolerable.  But there was an added dimension this year.  This was the first Christmas I was on social media.  Wow, how depressing and sad. 

We had a particularly full house at Christmas this year.  At some point on Christmas day, I stole away a sanity break and looked at Facebook.  Typically I enjoy seeing my friends' cute posts of their children (human, feline or canine) and memes about various spiritual or social justice topics.  But on Christmas I was surprised at what I saw.  It was not even midday when I checked Facebook, but already there was a steady stream of images involving gifts.  Most were pictures of kids and/or kid gifts.  Kids with prized toys.  Kids with a bunch of used wrapping paper.  Kids next to piles of gifts, some wrapped, some not.  Clearly, the gifts were the focus of the day.  Again, as a person of faith, that was a shock.  That is not what Christmas is all about.

Let me say that I was not raised in a religiously observant household.  In fact, the family in which I was raised used to do the same thing.  But what struck me was that most of the posts were from families who were church-goers.  But at the end of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, even the title character could tell you that presents are not the real meaning of Christmas.  We all love that story, but I don't think we really believe its message.

My husband and I have mindfully taken a different approach at our home.  We preemptively arrange to not do a lot of presents.  And the ones we do have, we don't open until later in the day.  We focus on other fun things.  We make yummy meals together and we play games.  To direct our attention to the reason for the day, I begin the day by leading the kids in a Bible Study of the nativity story in the New Testament.  We end the day with a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the Christmas lights.  And we watch a Christmas movie.  Second year in a row, we watched White Christmas this year. 

Those are the things that are the most fun: spending time together.  I look back at my childhood Christmases.  No matter how we spread it out.  No matter how big the pile of presents under the tree.  Once the unwrapping was over on Christmas morning, there was a let-down feeling.  So that is it?  Even when I got stuff I liked.  It was sad, we spent the rest of the day doing our own thing and not doing anything together.  We just played with our respective toys.  It was so empty.  At this point in my life, I could probably only list on one hand the number of presents I even remember getting.  Stuff like that doesn't make lasting memories.  But I believe that the fun stuff our family does together does make lasting memories.  That is what counts.

But you do feel alone when you realize what your neighbors are all doing.  It is not easy to go against the tide and do something different from those around you.  It is well worth it though.

The Holiday Season

We are now in what is probably the most challenging time of year for those who crave or try to adhere to a simpler, less hectic, less consumerist way of life.  At this time of year in particular, the dominant culture whips everyone up into a frenzy of materialism and overspending.

This makes my husband and I sad.  For a number of reasons.  People are chasing things that in the end won't make them happy for more than a brief period at most.  Meanwhile, they are doing destructive things like spending more than they should, incurring debt and foregoing spending on things with longer lasting value (e.g., retirement accounts, kids' college savings account).  And to us, as people of faith, it is particularly upsetting that all this is done in the name of Jesus.  The Prince of Peace was born in an animal stable as a peasant.  It makes no sense to us to remember his birth by spoiling our children and exceeding our credit card limits.

So, I have a couple of thoughts to share that I hope might be particularly apropos and helpful this time of year.

For those who are Christ followers, I encourage you to re-focus on why we celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas, Christmas and Epiphany.  The Advent Conspiracy movement is working hard to help us do that.  Their website is: http://www.adventconspiracy.org/.  It helps us to avoid the secular trappings of the season to celebrate in a manner that is more in line with our faith. 

Another resource you might consider is the 2007 film What Would Jesus Buy?  It was produced by Morgan Spurlock, a West Virginia filmmaker who came to prominence with the documentary Super Size Me.  What Would Jesus Buy? is an odd film.  It follows a band of (what I take to be) performance artists who assume the persona of a flamboyant preacher and his choir who travel the country in the days before Christmas preaching the gospel of the anti-materialism as the "Church of Stop Shopping."  At times, What Would Jesus Buy? was someone offensive to me because they caricature my religion (or at least aspects of it) and seem to denigrate the sacred (like baptism).  But I always try to keep an open mind and there were definitely parts of the film that were very engaging, and thought-provoking.  I particularly found insightful the people interviewed about their attitudes towards Christmas.  It made me very sad to hear so many express that the holiday was only about buying a lot of stuff.  That alone I find spiritually vacuous, but what I found even more tragic was the attitudes of parents who expressed that they needed to move heaven and earth, do whatever was necessary to give their kids lots of stuff to open on Christmas Day.  I don't even know how to express my profound sadness over such cultural perversion over a beautiful holiday with a very different meaning at its core. 

In my opinion, the Advent Conspiracy and questioning our perversion of Christmas is much more fruitful that the effort by Focus on the Family and others to get retailers to use the phrase "Merry Christmas" instead of the more inclusive "Happy Holidays."  I hold the birth of my Savior as sacred, and find it patently offensive when retailers exploit it to make money.  As a Christian, I much prefer the broader term "holidays" to the more explicit exploitation of the birth of Jesus.

Here is something else.  To some of you, this will seem really radical, but my husband and I have also never indoctrinated our children into the modern Santa Claus myth.  We believe in being honest and don't want to ever give them reason to not trust us.  We also don't want them to believe in magical fairies who dump lots of toys on well-behaved kids from affluent families but somehow don't stop at the homes of well-behaved kids from families with less income.  And as people of faith, we don't want a mythical elf to compete in any way with Jesus Christ. 

If you think this is an extreme approach to the Santa myth, I encourage you watch a wonderful, insightful documentary from A&E's Biography series on Santa Claus.  It was first aired in 2005.  The episode traces the roots of the Santa myth as a tool for modern retailers to the modern Hollywood deification of the character.  As you watch the episode, you will begin to realize the term "deification" is not an exaggeration.  One aspect of the episode that particularly got my attention was when one Hollywood interviewee described the modern concept of Santa Claus as like God for grown ups.  Wow. 

Even if you are not a Christian or if you are not a person of any faith, this time of year is still hectic and stressful.  There are social customs in our country that make it quite a challenge to avoid over-spending.  For years when we were younger, my husband and I felt the need to buy presents for so many people in our lives.  As if there was some shame in not giving someone junk they didn't need and probably didn't want. 

For years, I also didn't question all the stuff I was gifted.  That was part of life.  But after a while, I began to realize what a burden it was.  I felt obligated to make room for stuff, even if I didn't like it.  Someone had given it to me, it would be ungrateful to throw it out or give it away.  My home became cluttered with stuff like that.  I began to think of all the money we spend giving each other such gifts.  And all the time we waste trying to figure out what to do with it when we receive it and the emotional energy we use feeling guilty that we really want to throw it out. 

So, now our family gives few presents.  We give presents to our kids--more on that in a minute.  But few to adults or anyone outside our family.  We agree with the notion of showing appreciation for all the nice folks who make our lives better throughout the year, but now we only give gifts that can be consumed.  We enjoy baking once a year and we share that bounty with people whom we appreciate and want to thank.  They can eat it or share it with someone else, but it is not going to take room on their shelves gathering dust until they get the gumption to throw it out.  And if I say so myself, our baking is pretty good, so it is a treat to receive our cookies and muffins.

It is difficult for all of us this time of year, but it is particularly difficult for parents, in large part to the cultural perpetuation of the Santa myth and the efforts of retailers.  Even though we homeschool and don't watch much TV, even our kids are not immune from the frenzy of Christmas and the cultural expectation that the holiday is for receiving gifts.  So as a parent, it is a tough situation to deal with.  We do our best. 

We try to talk to our kids throughout the season to remind them why we celebrate Christmas, to remind them that Santa Claus is a myth invented by retailers to sell more stuff, and to just enjoy each other's company.  We give some gifts to the kids, but we try to not give many.  We don't want that to be the main focus of the day.  We try to do gifts at other times so as to not confuse our children about why we celebrate Christmas.  Instead, we have a birthday party for Jesus.  We cook together to have a special meal or two.  We also make a special cake, which our kids like to decorate.  We put a ton of candles on it because Jesus was born about 2000 years ago.  We sing "Happy Birthday" to him and enjoy his cake.  We play games.  We take a walk at night to see the Christmas lights in the neighborhood.  We drink hot cocoa to warm us up.  We watch a fun Christmas movie at the end of the celebrations.  It is an absolutely fun day.  We don't just open a lot of presents, then spend the day apart with those presents.  We spend the day together, which is a lot more meaningful.

One last thought I want to share with you about the season's frenzy of gift giving.  Even if you aren't swayed by the harm done to our wallets or the perversion of a sacred religious holiday or the space/time/effort wasted on buying things people don't want, there is another reason why buying a lot of presents may not be the way to go. 

In our modern culture, we've demanded access to a plethora of cheap consumer goods.  These types of goods make up the bulk of holiday gift-giving.  What we in the West don't often stop to consider is the high cost of making these cheap goods available for easy purchase.  We may see the "made in China" or "made in Bangladesh" mark on the goods, but in our hectic lives, we may give that no thought.  We should. 

Workers in developing nations are leading lives of misery to make those goods for our markets.  Some are so miserable in their dehumanizing work environments that they take their own lives: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/06/01/china.foxconn.inside.factory/. 

Many are forced to work poverty wages in unsafe conditions.  Some are modern day slaves, but others nominally agree to such conditions due to desperation in economies with few other options.  Many are children.

I encourage you--with some trepidation--to look at the link below.  It contains a heart-wrenching photo and article about the collapse in April of this year of a factory in Bangladesh.  1129 human beings died in that tragedy, and 2515 other human beings were injured.  Some of us heard of the tragedy, but may have paid it little mind because of our busy lives and our feeling that we are powerless to help.  Others may be unfamiliar with the story.  Either way, I encourage you to consider the article and the photo.  I encourage you to consider the human toll of the low prices for consumer goods we demand in our culture.  The electronics, the clothes, the toys.  Beyond what the frenzy does to our own finances and our souls, what about the people who produce these goods at the exploitively low prices we demand?

http://iacknowledge.net/the-most-powerful-image-youll-see-today/

Thanksgiving

OK, we're within 48 hours of the big day. 

Thanksgiving is a fabulous holiday.  The point is to give thanks to one's deity for the blessings in our lives.  And it is a secular holiday, so even if you believe in no deity, you can still take time out to be mindful of your good fortune.  Modern medicine has proven that such mindfulness contributes to a range of physical and mental health benefits.

Beyond giving thanks for blessings, a secondary point to Thanksgiving is to gather together with others.  We spend time with family and/or friends.  It is considered less than ideal to spend the holiday alone.  In my adult life, when I've known folks who would be alone on the holiday, I always invite them to join my family.  They are always glad to get the invite.  It would be depressing to spend Thanksgiving by oneself.

Note that both giving thanks (or mindfulness) and spending times with loved ones are quintessentially part of the ethos of voluntary simplicity.  So in some ways, for those who embrace a simpler life, Thanksgiving is our most important holiday.  What could be better than gathering together with people you love (or hopefully at least like) to eat some yummy food and spend some quality time.

But in my lifetime, I've seen Thanksgiving become less and less recognizable. 

First, it degenerated to a day when people sit in front of the TV watching football all day, maybe while munching on a turkey drumstick.  Despite being native Texans, our family watches only one football game a year--typically the Super Bowl.  And frankly even then, we're only in it for the nachos. To me, if you are staring at a TV screen all day and screaming for some gladiator to mercilessly tackle another, you have overlooked the point of Thanksgiving.

And there have always been issues about going overboard with the feast. Some women (and occasionally men) who are responsible for preparing the feast for their families feel tremendous stress to provide a dining experience that Martha Stewart with her team of staff could produce. I know women who get up in the middle of the night and are virtually slaves of their own kitchen on Thanksgiving while everyone else is elsewhere having fun.  They fret for weeks over concocting the right menu.  Then they don't get to enjoy the day because they are trying to produce a dizzying array of dishes in a finite timeframe.  They are worried about being judged or not adequately impressing their guests.  Again, that misses the point of Thanksgiving.

But by far, the worst perversion of Thanksgiving has come in recent years with the encroachment of the commercial exploitation of Christmas.  I am a Christian of over a quarter century, so I can tell you with some authority that no where in either the Hebrew Scripture or the New Testament is there even a suggestion that one must stand in line to buy a Play Station or plasma screen TV in order to properly celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

It always made me sad that after the simple calm and gratitude of Thanksgiving, people would head out the very next day to spend hours in stores.  It seemed like a cruel irony.  We spend time giving thanks, then we run around like maniacs trying to accumulate more and more because apparently what we just gave thanks for was insufficient.

However, things got worse over time.  At least initially Black Friday started at a normal time.  We could enjoy our Thanksgiving and recover a bit Thursday night and Friday morning.  But then retailers began to open their doors earlier and earlier Friday morning.  I began to know people who would plan their Thanksgiving around that.  They had to finish Thanksgiving at an earlier hour, so they could go to bed early to wake up early to get to the stores.  How perverse!

But then a few years ago, the unthinkable began to happen.  Some retailers began to open for a few hours on Thursday evening to get a jump start on Friday shopping.  I wasn't even aware of this until a friend of mine explained that she and a friend were combining their families' Thanksgiving celebration so they could finish early and hit the special Thursday sale while the husbands watched football.  This is a dear friend of mine.  Her plans just depressed me more than I can say.

Meanwhile, the deals have gotten more and more attractive--luring more and more customers in either on Thursday or at crazy early hours on Friday morning.  The term "door buster" was coined with sad irony because people desperate to get limited deals on waffle irons and computers trampled other human beings in the process. 

And that is after many camp for days, sometimes as much as a week, outside a store to get such deals.  Think about that.  Where does one go to the bathroom?  It is cold at night outside, even in the Sunbelt.  Forcibly, one has totally foregone any feigned attempt to celebrate Thanksgiving if one spent it in a tent outside a Best Buy.  Even if it is the biggest TV or snazziest iPad or gaming device, is it really worth days of your life when you might be doing other things?  What a deeply sad state of affairs.

On social media, I've seen people decry the deterioration of Thanksgiving in this way.  So I know I'm not the last person in America to feel this way, though it sometimes feels like it.  Many such persons vilify the retailers for offering such deals at such times.  There is some validity to that finger wagging.  But others rightfully point out that the retailers are simply meeting a demand.  It is the consuming public that is to blame for this state of affairs. 

Personally, I think there is some truth to both sides.  We see a similar situation in the disastrous war on drugs in this country.  We vilify the parasitic, often violent drug dealers.  They are to blame and if we just round them all up, the problem would go away.  Only it doesn't work that way because our nation has such a huge demand for narcotics that others rise up to fill that demand.  I would never defend drug dealers.  I think they are exploitive and greedy, doing unconscionable harm.  But it is too easy to just blame the dealers when the demand is apparently so great.  We need to look at our own contribution to the situation in creating the demand the dealers meet. 

Very similar dynamic with regard to retail sales at Thanksgiving.  I do hold responsible the stores that offer these crazy door busters at insane times.  But even if Walmart and Target refrained, other stores would spring up to fill the void because a lot of otherwise sane folks are willing to sacrifice Thanksgiving for cheap consumer goods.  Shame on us all.

But I invite you to be different, to take the path less traveled so to speak.  I encourage you to focus on the true meaning of Thanksgiving--to create a simple and enjoyable meal so you can spend the day just relaxing and enjoying the company of your friends and/or family. 

Moreover, I encourage you to not be a part of this modern cultural madness.  My husband and I are frugal and try to be good stewards of our finances.  We buy things when they are on sale whenever possible.  But I'm not even looking at any of the ads for this week and no one in our family is going shopping Thursday or Friday.

I know others take similar pledges.  On social media, I saw one young man dismiss all the handwringing about the perversion of Thanksgiving by pointing out that if we abstain from all the consumption, we are not impacted in the least by the madness of Black Friday spilling over onto Thanksgiving.  I was struck by what an insensitive, privileged statement this was.  Based on the context of this statement, I glean that this man was well-educated and had a good job that did not require him to work on Thanksgiving.  Not everyone has those advantages. 

I know several people who work at grocery stores who have to work all day on Thursday.  And it has nothing to do with door busters.  Their corporate bosses decided it was important to stay open for all the folks on Thursday who begin to make the mashed potatoes but run out of butter or who realize they didn't buy enough sparkling apple juice for everyone who will be at their table.  Don't forget the folks working this other end of retail sales at grocery stores.  If you pledge to abstain from shopping during Thanksgiving, make sure you don't breach that pledge by running to the Ralph's or Piggly Wiggly for last minute groceries.  Plan ahead, make sure you have what you need for all your recipes, and find work-arounds on Thursday if you don't.

In closing, I just encourage you to do your part to take back Thanksgiving from the retail madness and restore it to its original, beautiful purpose.  Take time to appreciate your life and the people in it.  Enjoy!

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."

Simply Sunday #8

Hello!  Hope you are having a stupendous Sunday.

Here are a few things I did this week in my journey towards voluntary simplicity:

(1) Went to the drive-in movies with our family.  We just recently found out there is actually a drive-in movie theater in our metropolitan area, and it is not that far away.  Tuesday is "family night" where the price of admission is a little lower than normal.  But frankly it is a pretty good deal all week for families.  Parents pay about what they'd pay at a regular theater, but kids are just a dollar each and you are welcome to bring your own food, which everyone does.  And we even got a double feature of kid films!  We brought our camping chairs and a picnic.  What a fun evening!  The weather is perfect right now in our neck of the woods.  Watching movies under the stars with my lovies while munching on treats.  Who could ask for more?!

(2) Cleaned out a dresser.  We have an antique-ish dresser in our hallway that we inherited from my husband's grandma.  (I say "antique-ish" because it is old, but not valuable in a monetary sense.  To me, the term "antique" sounds like something in a museum that needs to be insured.  Grandma's dresser ain't that!)  Unfortunately, this inherited dresser had become a junk drawer where my dear husband has hid things he didn't know where else to put.  I am happy to announce that I've cleaned out all the drawers in that dresser.  I've put two drawers to good use, and am now contemplating the best use of the others.  Yeah, organization and de-cluttering!

(3) Removed all purses from my husband's closet.  In our bedroom, there are two closets.  Because women have societally imposed expectations with regard to how they dress and I was working in a professional environment, I had a lot more clothes than I would have ordinarily wanted to own.  As a result of all this, for the past few years, I unfortunately occupied BOTH of the closets in our bedroom, and my husband used a small closet in the guest room.  Since leaving my paid gig, however, I've given a lot of my professional clothes away.  And I have more to sort through as I get time.  So, even though this paring down of my wardrobe is still a work in progress, for a couple weeks now my husband has been able to share one of the closets in our bedroom with me.  Rome was not built in a day--and unless you are Nero, it is not deconstructed in a day either!  I keep plugging away and this week I was able to give away more clothes and reorganize my main closet to take my purses out of the closet I share with my husband.  They are now on a shelf in my main closet.  He now gets 100% of the shelving space in our shared closet.  Progress! 

Don't tell my husband, but my eventual goal is that I will be down to one closet and he can have one closet fully to himself.  To be honest, voluntary simplicity is only part of the motivation.  He is rather a disorganized mess, so sharing a closet is stressful!

Multiple closets, antique-ish dresser, lots of clothes, the plural of "purse."  This may not sound like true voluntary simplicity.  But remember there is the ideal and then there is reality.  I'm not Mahatma Gandhi weaving my own cloth.  I'm a suburban mom in the 21st century in the U.S.  So, I share this kind of mundane stuff as an encouragement to you.  Voluntary simplicity is a journey.  It is not an all or nothing proposition.  You don't have to move to the country, raise all your own food and live off the grid.  Just start where you are now.  Everything counts.  All progress should be celebrated.

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.

Empathy as a By-Product

Over the years, one thing I've learned is that the more luxuries one has, the more difficult it can be to empathize with or truly serve those who suffer involuntary, material poverty.  That is one of many aspects of voluntary simplicity that appeals to me.  Social justice is a core value of mine and I aspire it to be a bigger part of my life going forward.  But I cannot truly serve those I do not understand, and I cannot relate to those in need if my life is so materially luxurious.

As  you might imagine, the recent shift in our family that permits me to stay home with our kids comes with a lot of financial sacrifice.  Our family income is dropping significantly.  And we're having to switch medical insurance from my employer to my husband's.  Unfortunately, their insurance is much more expensive than the one we had before.  It turns out that confluence of events means that a significant percentage of our household income will now go just to paying the premiums for our family's medical insurance. 

Initially, this dynamic really freaked me out.  I told my husband I was worried the numbers didn't work.  He's a (former) CPA, so I trust his math and his financial analysis.  He told me confidently, "I've run the numbers over and over.  We're frugal.  It is going to be fine.  But we are going to be like average families now.  Average families in the United States pay a crazy percentage of their income on medical premiums." 

His words really hit home with me, and I've been thinking about them every day since he shared them with me several weeks ago.  In our previous life, we had a lot more cushion in our family budget.  Though I've always been sympathetic to the poor, that cushion insulated us from many of the day-to-day challenges that most Americans face.  I feel like I've already gained a huge degree of understanding and even greater respect for those who have already been facing these challenges involuntarily. 

The moms and dads who go to extreme lengths to make the math work to put food on the table for their families are heroes, whom our society does not even feign to honor.  Instead, we often blame them for their poverty and vilify them.  ...Ah, but that is a different blog post for a different day.

Voluntary Simplicity v. Involuntary, Material Poverty

I recognize that not everyone reading this blog necessarily understands yet what the concept of "voluntary simplicity" is.  I'll explore that in more depth later in the blog.  But for now I just want to address one thing, of which I'm very conscious.  That is the privilege of embracing voluntary simplicity. 

By its name, the concept of voluntary simplicity suggests an affirmative decision to forego material things and excess activities in order to be more present in our lives and to be good stewards of our resources.  The concept is the opposite of involuntary material poverty that is thrust upon someone by circumstances beyond his or her control. 

The former is a choice to give up things that weigh us down and keep us from what is really important in life.  The former also recognizes that our modern Western consumptive lifestyle is not healthy or sustainable on either a micro or macro level.  The notion of voluntary simplicity presumes one's basic needs are met.  There is adequate food and shelter to maintain health.  But when one embraces voluntary simplicity, there is a conscious effort to try to avoid excess and overindulgence because such things distract from true happiness, and are unhealthy for both our bodies and our planet.

By contrast, involuntary, material poverty is not something to be glorified.  It is awful.  Working three demeaning jobs for minimum wage to avoid being kicked out of your apartment is not anything to which a rational human would aspire.  It is unfair that some have so many luxuries while others don't have enough to satisfy their bellies.  Such poverty also hurts in less tangible ways, particularly when you have dependents looking to you to fill their basic needs.  In no way do I embrace or advocate voluntary simplicity because I think being poor is glamorous or fun.  Due to various life experiences, I am under so such illusion.