Simple Living

Today I have contemplated the concept of "simplicity" and how it affects my life. Simplicity or... more clearly... living with a virtue of simplicity is a time-tested tool that we humans can use to prune our lives - voluntarily submitting our lives to an ongoing pruning process that removes our irregularities, trims our unproductive growth, and prepares us for a future of fruitfulness and productivity. Simplicity is a spiritual practice that has been at the heart of the monastic way of life for many centuries.

If ever simplicity was needed, it's today. We live in a time and place where simplicity is desperately needed. We live in a time that is fast-paced, consumer-oriented, and information-overloaded. This is not entirely or even dramatically different from Francis' time 800 years ago.

Francis saw a world with huge socio-economic barriers between the rich and poor. The carnality of his age seemed to overwhelm everything, including the church, which itself had become one of the most powerful international banking institutions of the Middle Ages. But, as Francis reflected on the life and words of Jesus, he was confronted time and time again with Christ's simple lifestyle, His warnings about the dangers of money, and His commandments to His followers to sell all they owned. As I contemplate simplicity, I see the same teachings and wonder how to practice them in my life.

Simplicity is not a specialized discipline for monks or other unusual individuals seeking an advanced degree of enlightenment. Instead, simplicity can be a garden from which all other spiritual virtues grow. Simplicity is a prerequisite to our being both fully human and fully spiritual. Like the branches of an unpruned tree, our attachment to possessions, wealth, and plans for the future chokes our lives, enslaves our souls, and hinders both human community and union with God.

Seeking simplicity is not a new idea

As long as there have been cities, civilizations, and technology, sensitive souls have sounded an alarm about the corrosive consequences of chaos and complexity in our lives. In 1845, one of my heroes, Henry David Thoreau, a writer and naturalist, turned his back on the hustle and bustle of Concord, Mass, and went to live in a simple cabin in the woods near a place called Walden Pond. He remained there for two years, two months, and two days concentrating (some would say meditating) on "the essential facts of life".

More than 100 years later, E F Schumacher wrote Small Is Beautiful, an eloquently written manifesto about the threat of technology and economic growth run rampant. He helped inspire a growing concern for simpler ways of living. His philosophy has found expression in a variety of movements emphasizing conservation, ecology, sustainable lifestyles, natural foods, and a broad range of social and economic justice. But, for all that enlightenment, these movements have done little to help the millions of folks who are regularly run ragged by too much tension, too many choices, and too little peace in a world spinning wildly out of control. Clearly, something is out of balance.

Living a life engrossed in the cares and chaos of the current world is not only bad for us, personally, it is bad for the world itself. Take for instance the very idea of consumerism. While North Americans are a VERY small percentage of the world's population, we consume a disproportionately large amount of the world's limited resources. We live in a world where the few possess much... while many do not have the basic necessities to meet even their most basic needs.

Live simply so that others may simply live. - Gandhi

We don't have to live the life of a cloistered monk or the life of an itinerant mendicant to follow God's call to simplicity. Francis described a third, more mainstream model: practicing equality in a world of savage disparity. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, encouraged those believers to consider the welfare of their neighbors "as a matter of equality your surplus at the present time should supply [others'] needs, so that their surplus may also supply your needs, that there may be equality." This equality-based model for living is both a matter of urgent practicality and a potent symbol of spritual intent. The effort to simplify and consume less is a real way to decrease our emphasis on self-gratification and increase our ability to share with others.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. - Lao-Tzu

We also don't have to plunge ourselves into abject poverty to meet the call to simplicity. There is a "middle road", an important step that we can take that will help us begin the process of living more simply. That step involves distinguishing between our wants and our needs. It is difficult for us (as Americans) who have been born and raised on a steady diet of capitalism, consumerism, and advertising. How do we sort through all the confusion? There is no simple formula. What we can do, though, is to strive toward distinguishing between food that is a need and the "desire" for a medium-rare T-bone steak; between clothing that we need and the "desire" for a designer suit with matching shoes; between housing that is a need and the "desire" for a split-level ranch with attached garage, walk-in closets, and three bathrooms.

Not all wants are bad or destructive. But a life consumed by fulfilling those wants is a recipe for frustration and unhappiness. If we seek simplicity, distinguish between wants and needs, we can prune our lives and cut away the things that hinder our growth. While daily life forces us to make hundreds of decisions, many of them seem unimportant. But if we consistently apply the ideal of simplicity to even the most mundane of those decisions and choices, we can begin living simply in the midst of a complex and often confusing culture.By pruning the tangled branches of our lives, we accomplish two things at once:

(1) cutting back the areas of our lives that have grown wildly out of control
and threaten to kill us or drive us crazy; and

(2) channelling our future growth toward a simpler approach to living.

Putting this all into Practice

My personal plan for achieving some simplicity:

(1) Return to a life of vegetarian eating - avoiding the hazards of an agribusiness-dominated food industry that depends on high-tech equipment and large doses of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.

(2) Promote vegetable protein in my own diet by consuming more beans, rice, and other protein rich foods that are simpler to prepare and less expensive to purchase.

(3) Use the age-old gift of fasting on at least one day (preferably two days) a week to help clarify the differences between food needs and food wants. Fasting also cleanses the body, enhances the power of the mind, sensitizes us to the needs of the spirit, breaks our addictions to unhealthy eating habits, and makes a significant symbolic statement about the desire to stand against the
excesses of our consumer culture.

(4) Pare down my years’ accumulation of clothing (sadly, in varying sizes) and give the excess to the poor.

(5) Change the clothing that remains to simplify my "style", concentrating less on the "in style", fashion, or in-your-face sexuality that is part/parcel of the mass consumerism of clothing markets. Afterall, the majority of the "in" clothing is uncomfortable, uncomplimentary, unhealthy, and almost instantly out-of-date.

Simplicity is a gift. It is a doorway that allows other gifts into our lives.