Greetings on a beautiful Sunday afternoon! Hope you are having a great one.
Here is a quick list of things I did in the last week to simplify my life, to be more present and stop to enjoy life:
Cuddled with my daughter at a community concert. We went to a free outdoor concert this week. My younger daughter got cold and was tired, so I invited her to sit on my lap. We cuddled and rubbed noses and acted silly. Then she fell asleep in my arms and I just looked at her, occasionally kissing her head. She is so beautiful and I'm so lucky to be her mom. She is getting to be a big girl. She doesn't normally sit on my lap any more. So, this was so special. I am a Type A gal, but I tried to just savor the moment. It was precious!
Acted as an audience. A friend from church was going to be playing a duet at a local concert of classical music. Out of the blue, she asked if my kids and I could be an audience for a run-through of their performance a couple days before the actual show. I'm not sure why she asked us, but we re-arranged our schedule and dropped some nonessential things to do it. She needed an audience and we wanted to help. We don't know anything about classical music, but it was pretty. It is nice to help and to try new things.
Social media posting fast. Like many people, I have mixed feelings about technology. I essentially lived the first half of my life without computers, the internet or cell phones. Certainly, those things have been tremendous gifts in many ways. But I also see what a distraction and time-suck those are. You can lose many hours in an empty way just using those items so frequently or for such long periods of time. I'm fairly new to social media and often find it exciting how much interesting information is out there. Sometimes I get particularly excited by what I read and like to share it. But I see a couple problems with that. First, that takes up more time than I'd prefer in my own life. Second, I may be contributing to a similar problem for others who then have to take time to process what I've shared. To alleviate this problem, I vowed to not post anything for one week. The last thing I posted was a simple living themed meme reminding us to value people, not things. My account has been silent since then. It has been rather liberating!
Play dates. I made time in our schedule for a play date in a park with a lovely family from our church. We spent a lot of time after services letting our kids play and the parents visit. Such a neat family! And in the process, we met another neat family whom our friends knew and happened to be playing in the park. Turns out they live in our neighborhood. Later in the same week, I hosted a slumber party for my kids' friends who have moved to the other side of town and we rarely see anymore. I also got to visit with their mom with whom I have a lot in common. We all had a great time. Good to stop and smell the roses with other people.
Happy Sunday! Make it a good one.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
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."
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."
Sunday, October 13, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective edited & compiled by Michael Schut (Part II: Evy McDonald's Essay)
I was plugging along reading Simpler Living, Compassionate Life as a daily devotional. The essays and excerpts were so varied, it was really hit or miss for me. But the essay that first (and most) gave me an "a-ha" moment was Evy McDonald's. It was entitled "Spending Money as if Life Really Matters." I really encourage you to take a read.
The introductory bio on Ms. McDonald described her as a former nurse who had gone on to found the New Road Map Foundation, which focuses on educating and enabling people to "shift to low-consumption, high-fulfillment lifestyles." In that mission, they rely primarily on Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin's book Your Money or Your Life. I had never heard of that book until reading Ms. McDonald's essay, but afterwards I couldn't wait to read it and it eventually had a real impact on my thinking. But in the meantime, Ms. McDonald's essay was a great introduction to the concepts in that book and really wetted my appetite.
A number of points in Ms. McDonald's essay really caught my attention.
First, she observed, "Though history shows that there was a constant tension between material acquisition and spiritual transcendence, most households until the twentieth century were not consumers but producers and manufacturers. People grew their own food, built their own homes, barns and furniture, poured their own candles and sewed their own clothes." This passage really opened my eyes. At the time, I was so in the trenches in my career, I had become rather myopic. It may sound silly but it never occurred to me that the lifestyle I was living (and that most folks in my social circles were living) was a fairly modern invention. On some level, I guess I had assumed that through the centuries, people had always been consumers. It was just that we had consumed less and what we had consumed was different in the olden days. Even though I had read books like Little House on the Prairie as a kid, I guess I had lost sight that that lifestyle was not unique to families whose patriarch yanked them out of civilization to homestead on the frontier. And it began to dawn on me that if the consumption lifestyle has not always been, maybe it will not always be. Just maybe there might be another way to live our precious time on this planet--even if we live in large metropolitan areas and have jobs.
Second, Ms. McDonald described that prior to the Great Depression, "social innovators were planning self-sufficient communities that would give people a sense of belonging and integrate urban and rural towns." She cites David Shi's book The Simple Life in this description. However, she explains that with the advent of the economic collapse of the Great Depression, these plans fell apart. Then once the economy recovered, "[l]eading economists felt that perpetual economic growth was possible." From there, a "theology of consumption began to invade our culture--and our churches. Slowly, almost imperceptively, we wandered away from the foundational teachings of Jesus--sharing our wealth, identifying with the marginalized, living a life of grateful stewardship--and began to identify our worth with how much money we made or how many possessions we owned."
Wow! I really want to read Mr. Shi's book. Those pre-Depression communities of self-sufficiency sounded exciting. I've never heard of those. With our hussle bussle modern lives, most of us have really lost a sense of community. We don't even know our neighbors in more than a superficial way most of the time.
But I had definitely heard of and been impacted by the belief in "perpetual economic growth" and "theology of consumption." At the time, my husband and I worked for publicly traded companies fairly obsessed with their stock price. Everyone was always wanting to show more revenues, more expansion, more everything. Staying the same was not acceptable. Shrinking was catastrophe.
And that thinking about the corporate bottom line infects our thinking in so many other ways. Schools need to increase their number of graduates and the passage by their students of key tests. Nonprofits need to show they are helping more people and increasing grants. We are often judged professionally not by how well we do but by how much improvement we can prove. But in the back of my mind, when I had a moment to breath, I would sometimes wonder whether it was always possible to grow in tangible ways. At some point, isn't growth more difficult to achieve? Is such growth even valuable if you've gotten so big and it takes so much effort to grow a little more?
And the theology of consumption is not just a secular idea. When I was young, I didn't like going to church. There were a lot of reasons, but one was that church seemed to often be a chance for people to show off their fancy clothes. I never had a lot of clothes, fancy or otherwise. This was a distraction for me, and I never understood how showing off one's clothes squared with Jesus's teaching. I couldn't reconcile the two, and sadly it drove me away from church for many years.
It continues today to some extent. My husband and I have felt judged even by clergy for not dressing more elegantly. We don't wear ripped jeans and flip flops, but we also don't wear suits. One Christmas, a deacon approached our family and to our horror asked if one (but not both) of our children would like to help the pastor at one point in the service because the child she was inviting "was dressed." What she meant was that our invited child had taken it upon herself to wear her fanciest dress, while our other child was wearing a more modest outfit of slacks and a solid cotton shirt. Apparently, the uninvited child wasn't fancy enough to be seen at the front of the church. We were so disappointed in this mentality!
And it is not just clothes. We are a culture that still judges each other based on other possessions--what kind of car, which electronics, what kind of house, what kind of furniture. But Ms. McDonald notes how contrary that is to Jesus's teachings. How convicting!
Later, she had a line that caught my attention. She notes that "our affluence and consumption [have not] given us more fulfilling, happier and just ways of living" and instead "[t]oday, people admit to feeling stressed and tired with little time to care for and nuture relationships, family, friends or the environment." She notes that researchers have indicated this trend increased from the 1970s to now. It left us "[s]atiated at the physical level, yet starved at the spiritual level." These words really hit home. Why was I working so hard? It was true that I had more financial cushion than I'd ever had in my life. But money was not the big motivator to me. My husband and I didn't particularly like buying things. We did enjoy traveling. And our corporate jobs were giving us the money to go places. But they also gave us so few vacation days that we frankly had little time to go anywhere.
Quoting Marcus Borg in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, she states: "Our culture's secular wisdom does not affirm the reality of the spirit. . . It looks to the material world for satisfaction and meaning. Its dominant values are what I call the three A's--Achievement, Affluence and Appearance." Mr. Borg's book is a great one, but even if you aren't a person of faith, it is easy to see the emptiness and futility of a life built on those three A's. Those values are really pointless. They aren't sustainable or lasting.
The part of the essay that particularly got my attention was when Ms. McDonald described how her "[w]ork was the center of her life" until a particular day that changed her life. She received a devastating medical report and was advised she would probably die within a year. Because of her health condition, she was rapidly replaced at work because her manager did not think she would still be able to keep up with such a demanding job. She wrote, "I had lost the job that gave me my identity, my purpose in life and my sense of self-worth, and I had been told that I was going to die." To add insult to injury, she then found out her home had been burglarized and most of her worldly possessions were gone. Out of the blue, in rapid succession, everything was taken away--her future, her career and her things.
She described that God was the only place to turn, but she painfully realized that she had not been living the life she had professed: "God only existed for me at times of crisis or convenience." She asked herself whom she wanted to be when she died and the answer came to her: "I wanted to be a person who lived her values, understood what service was about and could love herself enough to accept God's love and love her neighbor." She went on to explain that to make that happen, "[m]y self-centered and unhealthy relationship with money was a logical place to start learning how to live my values." This led her to accept a friend's invitation to attend a seminar by Joe Dominguez.
She summarized that she had two main takeaways from the seminar. The first was "identifying how much is enough" and the second was "understanding the true definition of money." Ms. McDonald went on to elaborate that per Joe Dominguez "enough" is "having our survival needs met (food, clothing, shelter), having possessions that bring joy and comfort and even having those few special luxuries that add to the quality of our life." She explains that her definition of money had previously been "power, prestige, status and a way to identify where I stood in relation to other people of my profession," but Mr. Dominguez defined it in a completely different way: "Money is something for which you trade your life energy--your time." To make this definition more comprehensible, Ms. McDonald elaborated:
That one paragraph was a revelation (and a revolution!) to me. I did some computations to figure out my hourly "wage" though I was a salaried employee. I then used that number to think about how many hours of my life I had given up for various purchases I had made. That gave me a whole new way to look at how I was spending my life and whether various purchases were a good use of my life energy. We only have a finite amount of time in this life. None of us knows how much. We cannot squander our lives or put off living until retirement.
Ms. McDonald's experience rang true to me on so many levels. I too was working crazy hours. And around the time I read her essay, I had had some health scares of my own. Things had turned out well, but there were some nervous times after initial doctors' reports that made me wonder if I was not long for this world. That kind of experience is scary and stressful, but it is also valuable in helping you put things in perspective!
I loved how Ms. McDonald ended her essay:
Aren't those beautiful words? I hope they will be a joy and a blessing to you.
The introductory bio on Ms. McDonald described her as a former nurse who had gone on to found the New Road Map Foundation, which focuses on educating and enabling people to "shift to low-consumption, high-fulfillment lifestyles." In that mission, they rely primarily on Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin's book Your Money or Your Life. I had never heard of that book until reading Ms. McDonald's essay, but afterwards I couldn't wait to read it and it eventually had a real impact on my thinking. But in the meantime, Ms. McDonald's essay was a great introduction to the concepts in that book and really wetted my appetite.
A number of points in Ms. McDonald's essay really caught my attention.
First, she observed, "Though history shows that there was a constant tension between material acquisition and spiritual transcendence, most households until the twentieth century were not consumers but producers and manufacturers. People grew their own food, built their own homes, barns and furniture, poured their own candles and sewed their own clothes." This passage really opened my eyes. At the time, I was so in the trenches in my career, I had become rather myopic. It may sound silly but it never occurred to me that the lifestyle I was living (and that most folks in my social circles were living) was a fairly modern invention. On some level, I guess I had assumed that through the centuries, people had always been consumers. It was just that we had consumed less and what we had consumed was different in the olden days. Even though I had read books like Little House on the Prairie as a kid, I guess I had lost sight that that lifestyle was not unique to families whose patriarch yanked them out of civilization to homestead on the frontier. And it began to dawn on me that if the consumption lifestyle has not always been, maybe it will not always be. Just maybe there might be another way to live our precious time on this planet--even if we live in large metropolitan areas and have jobs.
Second, Ms. McDonald described that prior to the Great Depression, "social innovators were planning self-sufficient communities that would give people a sense of belonging and integrate urban and rural towns." She cites David Shi's book The Simple Life in this description. However, she explains that with the advent of the economic collapse of the Great Depression, these plans fell apart. Then once the economy recovered, "[l]eading economists felt that perpetual economic growth was possible." From there, a "theology of consumption began to invade our culture--and our churches. Slowly, almost imperceptively, we wandered away from the foundational teachings of Jesus--sharing our wealth, identifying with the marginalized, living a life of grateful stewardship--and began to identify our worth with how much money we made or how many possessions we owned."
Wow! I really want to read Mr. Shi's book. Those pre-Depression communities of self-sufficiency sounded exciting. I've never heard of those. With our hussle bussle modern lives, most of us have really lost a sense of community. We don't even know our neighbors in more than a superficial way most of the time.
But I had definitely heard of and been impacted by the belief in "perpetual economic growth" and "theology of consumption." At the time, my husband and I worked for publicly traded companies fairly obsessed with their stock price. Everyone was always wanting to show more revenues, more expansion, more everything. Staying the same was not acceptable. Shrinking was catastrophe.
And that thinking about the corporate bottom line infects our thinking in so many other ways. Schools need to increase their number of graduates and the passage by their students of key tests. Nonprofits need to show they are helping more people and increasing grants. We are often judged professionally not by how well we do but by how much improvement we can prove. But in the back of my mind, when I had a moment to breath, I would sometimes wonder whether it was always possible to grow in tangible ways. At some point, isn't growth more difficult to achieve? Is such growth even valuable if you've gotten so big and it takes so much effort to grow a little more?
And the theology of consumption is not just a secular idea. When I was young, I didn't like going to church. There were a lot of reasons, but one was that church seemed to often be a chance for people to show off their fancy clothes. I never had a lot of clothes, fancy or otherwise. This was a distraction for me, and I never understood how showing off one's clothes squared with Jesus's teaching. I couldn't reconcile the two, and sadly it drove me away from church for many years.
It continues today to some extent. My husband and I have felt judged even by clergy for not dressing more elegantly. We don't wear ripped jeans and flip flops, but we also don't wear suits. One Christmas, a deacon approached our family and to our horror asked if one (but not both) of our children would like to help the pastor at one point in the service because the child she was inviting "was dressed." What she meant was that our invited child had taken it upon herself to wear her fanciest dress, while our other child was wearing a more modest outfit of slacks and a solid cotton shirt. Apparently, the uninvited child wasn't fancy enough to be seen at the front of the church. We were so disappointed in this mentality!
And it is not just clothes. We are a culture that still judges each other based on other possessions--what kind of car, which electronics, what kind of house, what kind of furniture. But Ms. McDonald notes how contrary that is to Jesus's teachings. How convicting!
Later, she had a line that caught my attention. She notes that "our affluence and consumption [have not] given us more fulfilling, happier and just ways of living" and instead "[t]oday, people admit to feeling stressed and tired with little time to care for and nuture relationships, family, friends or the environment." She notes that researchers have indicated this trend increased from the 1970s to now. It left us "[s]atiated at the physical level, yet starved at the spiritual level." These words really hit home. Why was I working so hard? It was true that I had more financial cushion than I'd ever had in my life. But money was not the big motivator to me. My husband and I didn't particularly like buying things. We did enjoy traveling. And our corporate jobs were giving us the money to go places. But they also gave us so few vacation days that we frankly had little time to go anywhere.
Quoting Marcus Borg in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, she states: "Our culture's secular wisdom does not affirm the reality of the spirit. . . It looks to the material world for satisfaction and meaning. Its dominant values are what I call the three A's--Achievement, Affluence and Appearance." Mr. Borg's book is a great one, but even if you aren't a person of faith, it is easy to see the emptiness and futility of a life built on those three A's. Those values are really pointless. They aren't sustainable or lasting.
The part of the essay that particularly got my attention was when Ms. McDonald described how her "[w]ork was the center of her life" until a particular day that changed her life. She received a devastating medical report and was advised she would probably die within a year. Because of her health condition, she was rapidly replaced at work because her manager did not think she would still be able to keep up with such a demanding job. She wrote, "I had lost the job that gave me my identity, my purpose in life and my sense of self-worth, and I had been told that I was going to die." To add insult to injury, she then found out her home had been burglarized and most of her worldly possessions were gone. Out of the blue, in rapid succession, everything was taken away--her future, her career and her things.
She described that God was the only place to turn, but she painfully realized that she had not been living the life she had professed: "God only existed for me at times of crisis or convenience." She asked herself whom she wanted to be when she died and the answer came to her: "I wanted to be a person who lived her values, understood what service was about and could love herself enough to accept God's love and love her neighbor." She went on to explain that to make that happen, "[m]y self-centered and unhealthy relationship with money was a logical place to start learning how to live my values." This led her to accept a friend's invitation to attend a seminar by Joe Dominguez.
She summarized that she had two main takeaways from the seminar. The first was "identifying how much is enough" and the second was "understanding the true definition of money." Ms. McDonald went on to elaborate that per Joe Dominguez "enough" is "having our survival needs met (food, clothing, shelter), having possessions that bring joy and comfort and even having those few special luxuries that add to the quality of our life." She explains that her definition of money had previously been "power, prestige, status and a way to identify where I stood in relation to other people of my profession," but Mr. Dominguez defined it in a completely different way: "Money is something for which you trade your life energy--your time." To make this definition more comprehensible, Ms. McDonald elaborated:
Every purchase could be seen in terms of the number of hours I would need to work to pay for it. The real cost of a $100 blouse, therefore, would be the 20 hours on the job needed to make the money to buy it. Would I receive satisfaction from the blouse equal to 20 hours of my life? I began to apply that question to all my purchases.
That one paragraph was a revelation (and a revolution!) to me. I did some computations to figure out my hourly "wage" though I was a salaried employee. I then used that number to think about how many hours of my life I had given up for various purchases I had made. That gave me a whole new way to look at how I was spending my life and whether various purchases were a good use of my life energy. We only have a finite amount of time in this life. None of us knows how much. We cannot squander our lives or put off living until retirement.
Ms. McDonald's experience rang true to me on so many levels. I too was working crazy hours. And around the time I read her essay, I had had some health scares of my own. Things had turned out well, but there were some nervous times after initial doctors' reports that made me wonder if I was not long for this world. That kind of experience is scary and stressful, but it is also valuable in helping you put things in perspective!
I loved how Ms. McDonald ended her essay:
Gradually my actions became more aligned with my values. I discovered the truth of graceful simplicity: having a few pairs of shoes, not 70; a few blouses, not a hundred; books that are read instead of lining the shelves. Through this process I reclaimed the most precious gift God gave me--the hours of my life--and I could begin to discover how God wanted those hours used. In defining how much was enough for me I found time for serving, reading, watching sunsets, singing, going for a walk with friends, enjoying a concert and listing in silent prayer. In short, a life of immeasurable wealth.
I still consume. We all consume. The critical step is to move from being conspicuous consumers to being conscious consumers.
Discovering what was enough for me allowed me to make that shift. Our task now is to return to a life based on feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, raising healthy loving children, and stewarding and preserving creation. Perhaps then each act of consumption will become a hymn of thanksgiving.
Aren't those beautiful words? I hope they will be a joy and a blessing to you.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Simply Sunday #7
Hello and happy Sunday! Hope you're having a great one.
I've got a list of a few things I did this week in my effort to adopt a life style that is more in keeping with the concept of voluntary simplicity:
(1) I learned some lessons from my child about the real point of sports. My younger daughter is adopted, and though we share no DNA, she has somehow inherited my complete ineptitude for anything involving the throwing/hitting/catching of balls. But I like her to get exercise and learn about team work, so at my encouragement, she agreed to participate in a recreational volleyball league this fall.
She and I practice most week days for 30+ minutes, but she doesn't seem to make much (if any) progress. I have not mentioned this, but she has noticed it and it has frustrated her a bit. This past weekend was her team's first game. It was very close and it came down to the last few plays. Ironically, these involved some failed attempts by my daughter to serve and return the other team's serve. She was not phased. I'm not sure that she even realizes that one could accurately characterize her as having lost the game for her team. Her coaches were so gracious and encouraging. On the way home, she was glowing. She talked about how much she enjoyed the game. She said she wanted to play volleyball again next season. Later she added that when she grows up she wants to be a volleyball coach. How great is that?!
Over the weekend, a lot of my friends on social media were posting about how their kids had scored touchdowns or goals, and their kids' teams had won games. I was tempted to post something along the lines of: "My daughter caused her volleyball team to lose their first game, but she had a great time, everyone was supportive and she wants to play more. Life is great!" I didn't want to seem like I was putting down the parents who rightfully get excited about their kids' accomplishments. But my daughter reminded me that the accomplishments are not what are most important. This isn't the Soviet Union. Trying your best and having fun is the point of sports.
(2) Girls movie night! One evening, I spontaneously decided to make it a chick flick night. My husband was working and I told my daughters I had a great film for us to watch about a princess who goes on a vacation. I explained it that way instead of focusing on the fact that the film was about 50 years old and in black/white. The film was Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. We watched it and had a blast. My kids loved it! Yeah!!
(3) Celebrated the Life of St. Francis and Appreciated Our Doggies. My husband and I deeply admire St. Francis of Assisi. We named one of our children after the saint. Francis renounced worldly possessions to commune with nature and serve the poor. I'll blog more about him some time, but for now just know that Francis is the patron saint of animals, but might also be considered the patron saint of voluntary simplicity!
Our church has an annual Blessing of the Animals service, which is a little chaotic but lovely. It took place this weekend, and my daughters and I took our doggies to be blessed and to love on them. It is a wonderful service and is a great time to reflect on what an amazing blessing animals are to us. Our doggies are both "rescued" and aren't anything fancy. But they are very sweet and we love them very much. They bring so much to our lives.
(4) Kept the Windows Open and the A/C Off All Week. It is still pretty hot in our neck of the woods, but mercifully the hottest weather has finally broken. Having the windows open in the evening, night and morning feels FABULOUS! It is just delicious and makes me almost giddy.
The afternoons are a tad warm, but we've kept the windows open anyhow. There are a bunch of benefits to this. We save lots of money on our electric bill. We are less cut off from nature, more in tune to what is going on in creation.
And I'm trying to live a less luxurious lifestyle. Not because I'm a sadist or anything. But I aspire to one day do some missionary work. I honestly don't know if I'd ever have it in me to do that, I'm rather a wimp. But I figure that if I'm ever going to try, I need to cut back on my luxuries and live more like I would if I were in an underdeveloped community.
Moreover, cutting back on luxuries like a/c also helps me better empathize and identify those who have no choice but to go without such things. And then when we do experience such luxuries, we're more grateful. I had to get in my car the other day after a rather toasty afternoon in the house. It felt almost decadent to have that blast of cold air from the air vent!
(5) Served Left-Overs to Our Brunch Guests. I like to entertain because I enjoy people. I like having friends over, but I'm no Martha Stewart. I don't have a wide culinary repertoire or a lot of patience to spend lots of time on cooking. So, recently as we've been entertaining, I've tried to just make a couple simple dishes. No need to put on airs. And today, we had some friends over, one of the dishes I served was actually just a left-over squash-tomato dish. Our friends loved it, it fit in well with everything else, and we had a great time. One less thing to have to worry about to have some pre-made food to serve.
I've got a list of a few things I did this week in my effort to adopt a life style that is more in keeping with the concept of voluntary simplicity:
(1) I learned some lessons from my child about the real point of sports. My younger daughter is adopted, and though we share no DNA, she has somehow inherited my complete ineptitude for anything involving the throwing/hitting/catching of balls. But I like her to get exercise and learn about team work, so at my encouragement, she agreed to participate in a recreational volleyball league this fall.
She and I practice most week days for 30+ minutes, but she doesn't seem to make much (if any) progress. I have not mentioned this, but she has noticed it and it has frustrated her a bit. This past weekend was her team's first game. It was very close and it came down to the last few plays. Ironically, these involved some failed attempts by my daughter to serve and return the other team's serve. She was not phased. I'm not sure that she even realizes that one could accurately characterize her as having lost the game for her team. Her coaches were so gracious and encouraging. On the way home, she was glowing. She talked about how much she enjoyed the game. She said she wanted to play volleyball again next season. Later she added that when she grows up she wants to be a volleyball coach. How great is that?!
Over the weekend, a lot of my friends on social media were posting about how their kids had scored touchdowns or goals, and their kids' teams had won games. I was tempted to post something along the lines of: "My daughter caused her volleyball team to lose their first game, but she had a great time, everyone was supportive and she wants to play more. Life is great!" I didn't want to seem like I was putting down the parents who rightfully get excited about their kids' accomplishments. But my daughter reminded me that the accomplishments are not what are most important. This isn't the Soviet Union. Trying your best and having fun is the point of sports.
(2) Girls movie night! One evening, I spontaneously decided to make it a chick flick night. My husband was working and I told my daughters I had a great film for us to watch about a princess who goes on a vacation. I explained it that way instead of focusing on the fact that the film was about 50 years old and in black/white. The film was Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. We watched it and had a blast. My kids loved it! Yeah!!
(3) Celebrated the Life of St. Francis and Appreciated Our Doggies. My husband and I deeply admire St. Francis of Assisi. We named one of our children after the saint. Francis renounced worldly possessions to commune with nature and serve the poor. I'll blog more about him some time, but for now just know that Francis is the patron saint of animals, but might also be considered the patron saint of voluntary simplicity!
Our church has an annual Blessing of the Animals service, which is a little chaotic but lovely. It took place this weekend, and my daughters and I took our doggies to be blessed and to love on them. It is a wonderful service and is a great time to reflect on what an amazing blessing animals are to us. Our doggies are both "rescued" and aren't anything fancy. But they are very sweet and we love them very much. They bring so much to our lives.
(4) Kept the Windows Open and the A/C Off All Week. It is still pretty hot in our neck of the woods, but mercifully the hottest weather has finally broken. Having the windows open in the evening, night and morning feels FABULOUS! It is just delicious and makes me almost giddy.
The afternoons are a tad warm, but we've kept the windows open anyhow. There are a bunch of benefits to this. We save lots of money on our electric bill. We are less cut off from nature, more in tune to what is going on in creation.
And I'm trying to live a less luxurious lifestyle. Not because I'm a sadist or anything. But I aspire to one day do some missionary work. I honestly don't know if I'd ever have it in me to do that, I'm rather a wimp. But I figure that if I'm ever going to try, I need to cut back on my luxuries and live more like I would if I were in an underdeveloped community.
Moreover, cutting back on luxuries like a/c also helps me better empathize and identify those who have no choice but to go without such things. And then when we do experience such luxuries, we're more grateful. I had to get in my car the other day after a rather toasty afternoon in the house. It felt almost decadent to have that blast of cold air from the air vent!
(5) Served Left-Overs to Our Brunch Guests. I like to entertain because I enjoy people. I like having friends over, but I'm no Martha Stewart. I don't have a wide culinary repertoire or a lot of patience to spend lots of time on cooking. So, recently as we've been entertaining, I've tried to just make a couple simple dishes. No need to put on airs. And today, we had some friends over, one of the dishes I served was actually just a left-over squash-tomato dish. Our friends loved it, it fit in well with everything else, and we had a great time. One less thing to have to worry about to have some pre-made food to serve.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, September 30, 2013
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:
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.
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.
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