Shak El writes:
"Green Utopianism does not have to mean a return to the farm (tho it would not stop those who wished to do so). It could easily embrace an industrial society based on green energies (sun, wind, wter, geo-thermal etc). necessary labor would be gradually reduced by moving ever towards full automation and shared work load divided amongst the population. Some estimate that we could produce everything we need with only 10-15 hours of necessary labor."
"Some estimate that we could produce everything we need with only 10-15 hours of necessary labor."
When I was growing up in the 1960s and even into the early 70s, a shorter work week was very much a vision. With increased productivity, we would could all live well and by working fewer hours live, paradoxically, more abundantly.
In the 1960s, the idea of a shorter work week was linked to the technological Utopia that was going to liberate us all, and we were less sophisticated about environmental issues. I remember the first Earth Day, when our elementary school class stood on the baseball diamond and let go a great flock of colorful helium balloons. We wouldn't do that today ... but we meant well.
What made my heart sing was hearing others speak (not just Shak El, but Alice, Hysery, etc.) of that seemingly long lost vision of an abundance of time rather than of material goods. I have been thinking much about vision these days, and the quote from Proverbs that "without a vision, the people perish" sticks in my mind. It's not just any vision that Proverbs means, but a vision, as the next part of the quotes notes, that is tied to the law--which, as I read it, links it specifically to the building of the shalom community.
We seem so surrounded by visions of scarcity. We are told must work longer and harder for less and less and do so in an environment of fear. Yet our productivity has grown massively in the past 50--and even 20--years. By embracing a vision of simply living more simply, and wisely using the technology we have, we could be released from lives of toil. If we lived at the level of the average family of the 1950s, we could all work shorter weeks, with less stress and more joy and time for family, friends and community.
Back in the 1930s, Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker movement advocated for the same vision: People living simply by working 20 hours a week and spending another 20 hours a week in discussion and education, ie. in community. If people in a society that had so much less could have this vision, we can too. (I think. I hope.)
We live in a culture too that values work as work, so that one can be fearful of advocating for leisure. And some, but not all of us, will have passions, be it for building a bicycle from scratch to helping build a Friends boarding school, that will take up large amounts of time--but not feel like work.
Overall, this green vision is not about "leisure" per se but achieving a more balanced life. In The Overworked American, the author, Juliet Schor, cites studies that once people work 30 hours a week or fewer, they actually watch less television and are more apt to be involved in politics and community. Could this be the real reason we are told we must work ever longer and harder?
Not to restate the obvious, but maybe it needs to be said more often: Fewer hours in an office or commuting to a job might lead to less money but it would also open up more time for gardening and hanging laundry and walking places and enjoying life. Maybe we'd read more books. Maybe we'd be healthier, driving down health care cost. Perhaps I dream ...
Showing posts with label simplicity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label simplicity. Show all posts
Monday, April 11, 2011
Beautiful Barnesville, Fairyland and Walking.
Roger and I walked the seven miles round trip to the Fairyland ice cream stand yesterday. One of the charms of Barnesville is how it captures a simpler, bygone era. Of course, my feet now hurt ... even after bathing them in Olney's lake. Ah spring!! How we love you!
I'm struck with Barnesville's quiet when I come back here from Richmond on the weekends. I live on a shady, quiet, old-fashioned street there, but Route 40, a few blocks a way, provides constant, subliminal traffic noise and there's the train whistle, and an undercurrent of hum from people in houses built in a row along a street. It's not bad noise, but it's noise. Our house in Barnesville, however, is surrounded by fields and a barn, with the lake on one side, and we are set far back from the road, so the quiet is profound, except for the birds and the geese, and occasionally, sounds drifting over from Olney.
Since, like Jane Austen, I live "half in" all the books I've read, our walk to the Fairyland reminded me of when Donna Parker and her best friend Ricky, a freckle-faced girl, took a long walk to the soda fountain on their day off from camp counseling in the Donna Parker books, a children's series written in the late 1950s, early 1960s ... which book was that? Of course, the soda stand looked a lot closer when they were whipping past in the car on the way to camp ... Has anybody read the Donna Parker books?
And while I'm ruminating on long walks ... trekking to the Fairyland reminded me too of a March of Dimes walk-a-thon through Baltimore when I was 14. I wish I had photos and/or a route map from that day, because it was street after street of tidy rowhouses with marble steps ... and most of that is probably gone now or in disrepair ... I took it all for granted, of course. I know there's a metaphor here somewhere. :)
Any walk memories?
I'm struck with Barnesville's quiet when I come back here from Richmond on the weekends. I live on a shady, quiet, old-fashioned street there, but Route 40, a few blocks a way, provides constant, subliminal traffic noise and there's the train whistle, and an undercurrent of hum from people in houses built in a row along a street. It's not bad noise, but it's noise. Our house in Barnesville, however, is surrounded by fields and a barn, with the lake on one side, and we are set far back from the road, so the quiet is profound, except for the birds and the geese, and occasionally, sounds drifting over from Olney.
Since, like Jane Austen, I live "half in" all the books I've read, our walk to the Fairyland reminded me of when Donna Parker and her best friend Ricky, a freckle-faced girl, took a long walk to the soda fountain on their day off from camp counseling in the Donna Parker books, a children's series written in the late 1950s, early 1960s ... which book was that? Of course, the soda stand looked a lot closer when they were whipping past in the car on the way to camp ... Has anybody read the Donna Parker books?
And while I'm ruminating on long walks ... trekking to the Fairyland reminded me too of a March of Dimes walk-a-thon through Baltimore when I was 14. I wish I had photos and/or a route map from that day, because it was street after street of tidy rowhouses with marble steps ... and most of that is probably gone now or in disrepair ... I took it all for granted, of course. I know there's a metaphor here somewhere. :)
Any walk memories?
Friday, June 25, 2010
Solitude
"But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray." Luke 5:16
I came home from the beach early to begin teaching Freshman Comp, and realized I have spent probably more time alone these past six months than in the past 25 years. It's been a fruitful solitude, and Barnesville, where I am sojourning by myself at the moment, hardly fits the description of a desolate place-- it's bursting with all the fecundity caused by a rainy spring, including my abundant raspberry patch--but I am here alone.
I do miss Roger and my kids--and that's a good thing. It's a good thing when you can say you miss your teenage children and mean it!
This past semester at ESR, I was also in solitude often, as I rented a small apartment near campus and stayed there midweek to attend classes. Often, it was so bitingly cold that I hurried home to be in the warmth and do my reading. As spring came, I made friends, for which I am glad, but often was still alone with my work.
I realize my time in Richmond at ESR was a joyful, rich solitude, and quickly understood that my deliberately austere apartment was my version of Thoreau's cabin, a place stripped down to the essentials where I could "front" life. The solitude was creative and clarifying, though I would miss Roger terribly at times.
My children being gone--either to college or boarding at Olney--has created much of this solitude. While I was glad the boys could board at the school last year, I also wonder if we should have kept them home another year. I developed a pattern of stopping at Sophie's college town en route to Richmond so we could have lunch together weekly, which was a good way to keep in touch.
I know people have different tolerances for solitude. I am glad Jesus went off by himself to commune with God and refuel. I wonder how other people deal with solitude and whether they find it helpful or not.
I came home from the beach early to begin teaching Freshman Comp, and realized I have spent probably more time alone these past six months than in the past 25 years. It's been a fruitful solitude, and Barnesville, where I am sojourning by myself at the moment, hardly fits the description of a desolate place-- it's bursting with all the fecundity caused by a rainy spring, including my abundant raspberry patch--but I am here alone.
I do miss Roger and my kids--and that's a good thing. It's a good thing when you can say you miss your teenage children and mean it!
This past semester at ESR, I was also in solitude often, as I rented a small apartment near campus and stayed there midweek to attend classes. Often, it was so bitingly cold that I hurried home to be in the warmth and do my reading. As spring came, I made friends, for which I am glad, but often was still alone with my work.
I realize my time in Richmond at ESR was a joyful, rich solitude, and quickly understood that my deliberately austere apartment was my version of Thoreau's cabin, a place stripped down to the essentials where I could "front" life. The solitude was creative and clarifying, though I would miss Roger terribly at times.
My children being gone--either to college or boarding at Olney--has created much of this solitude. While I was glad the boys could board at the school last year, I also wonder if we should have kept them home another year. I developed a pattern of stopping at Sophie's college town en route to Richmond so we could have lunch together weekly, which was a good way to keep in touch.
I know people have different tolerances for solitude. I am glad Jesus went off by himself to commune with God and refuel. I wonder how other people deal with solitude and whether they find it helpful or not.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
"right size it"
In yesterday's blog, I posed the question; If having fewer material goods is not "a lower standard living," how do we more accurately describe it?
An answer struck me. I remember that during the recession of the early 1990s, I was working for a computer company (ie, private industry). Many of our business associates were laying people off and shrinking their businesses. They insisted that they were not, let me repeat not, "down-sizing." They were "right sizing." I remember it being a faux pas even to say "downsizing."
Well, that was all rather ridiculous, but I think the term "right sizing" is in fact apt to describe a move to simpler existence. What do you think?
An answer struck me. I remember that during the recession of the early 1990s, I was working for a computer company (ie, private industry). Many of our business associates were laying people off and shrinking their businesses. They insisted that they were not, let me repeat not, "down-sizing." They were "right sizing." I remember it being a faux pas even to say "downsizing."
Well, that was all rather ridiculous, but I think the term "right sizing" is in fact apt to describe a move to simpler existence. What do you think?
Thursday, October 22, 2009
small towns
In Another Turn of the Crank, a book of essays by Wendell Berry published in 1995, he entreats us to build small, sustainable communities that recognize the interconnectedness of all people. He also advocates seeing the earth's ecosystem--air, water, soil, plants and animals--as at one with humankind.
Berry notes the environmental extremes and disjunctions on both sides of the equation. He abhors the strip mining and other degradations to the natural habitat of his native Eastern Kentucky and other places , but at the same time, he pushes back against the desire of some environmentalists for protected land that's so pristine humans can't use it. He argues that we live in a strange tit-for-tat system in which it becomes "OK" to rape and pillage part of the environment because you have "preserved" another part. "Preservation" of part of the land isn't a magic formula that offsets destroying another part, he argues. In fact, he says, both practices tend to be inhuman(e) in the sense that humans are Xed out of the environment.
Rather than striking a balance between unused, untouched land and ruined land, he says, we would be better off to use all land--or almost all land--in respectful, sustainable and environmentally sounds ways.
As I was reading Berry, I was reminded of Wolf Guindon, a Quaker who settled with several other Quakers in Monteverde in Costa Rica in 1950 because the country had no draft. Guindon became involved in the movement during the 1970s and beyond to save the rainforest he lived in and was instrumental in helping to set up vast preserves, such as the Children's Eternal Rainforest. However, he clashed at times with environmentalists who wanted to keep the preserved rainforests entirely pure. Wolf envisioned certain areas set up as picnic grounds and for swimming, so that the local population could enjoy the beauty.
I tend to agree with Wendell and Wolf that it's better to coexist with and enjoy the nature around us than to place it off limits to human touch. It seems better to teach people how to live respectfully in an eco-system than to forbid entry.
Today I read an interview in Sun magazine with James Howard Kunstler, who made largely the same point: to survive after peak oil, which he says is now, Americans will have to live differently, in smaller walkable communities that very much resemble the small towns of yesteryear and may in fact be those towns. He sees globalization not as inevitable but as something that will end when oil prices rise high enough to make shipping goods halfway around the globe economically unfeasible. (A friend from Singapore offered an example of the absurdity of globalization. (Maybe we need friends from other places to see what we view as "normal.") He and his wife, who own a house in Maryland, went to Home Depot and bought bags of gravel to put under their deck. The gravel was imported from China. My friend couldn't get over it. 'They shipped rocks halfway around the world!' Yes, absurd, absurd and yet we all understand the economics.) After reason is restored and it once again becomes crazy to ship gravel across the earth, local farming, local communities and local industry will undergo a rebirth, sez Kunstler.
I have to say that for years I have dreamed of living in a place where you could walk everywhere you needed to go and where trains connected communities. Kunstler calls this move away from the car--and the smaller houses we will have to live in and the gardening we will have to do-- a decline in the American standard of living. But is it a decline or simply different? To me, it sounds better. I spent enough time in a minivan chauffering children to activities not to want to do that again. I love the idea of children being able to walk themselves to little league practice or dance class or me being able to walk to market. I loved my time living in a small house and preferred it to the bigger home we moved into after our family grew.
On the other hand, much as we might like the idea of small town communities, they can also be bastions of cruelty and narrow-mindedness. We associate lynchings with small towns. In 17th century England, women in small towns who complained about abuse or injustice by the men in power there were sometimes labeled witches and burned or hanged. Today, we rely on larger government entities to control the abuses of the small town dictator. However, if we are going to go back to living in small communities, rather than rely on the government (though I do believe in Aristotle's model of a stronger force protecting the everyday person from the abuses of the petty tyrant) I believe we must find ways to structure our communities with kindness, compassion, creativity and opportunity.
So two different questions: If having fewer material goods is not "a lower standard living," how do we more accurately describe it? Second, if we are going to be living in smaller communities, what are some ways to keep them from becoming abusive?
Berry notes the environmental extremes and disjunctions on both sides of the equation. He abhors the strip mining and other degradations to the natural habitat of his native Eastern Kentucky and other places , but at the same time, he pushes back against the desire of some environmentalists for protected land that's so pristine humans can't use it. He argues that we live in a strange tit-for-tat system in which it becomes "OK" to rape and pillage part of the environment because you have "preserved" another part. "Preservation" of part of the land isn't a magic formula that offsets destroying another part, he argues. In fact, he says, both practices tend to be inhuman(e) in the sense that humans are Xed out of the environment.
Rather than striking a balance between unused, untouched land and ruined land, he says, we would be better off to use all land--or almost all land--in respectful, sustainable and environmentally sounds ways.
As I was reading Berry, I was reminded of Wolf Guindon, a Quaker who settled with several other Quakers in Monteverde in Costa Rica in 1950 because the country had no draft. Guindon became involved in the movement during the 1970s and beyond to save the rainforest he lived in and was instrumental in helping to set up vast preserves, such as the Children's Eternal Rainforest. However, he clashed at times with environmentalists who wanted to keep the preserved rainforests entirely pure. Wolf envisioned certain areas set up as picnic grounds and for swimming, so that the local population could enjoy the beauty.
I tend to agree with Wendell and Wolf that it's better to coexist with and enjoy the nature around us than to place it off limits to human touch. It seems better to teach people how to live respectfully in an eco-system than to forbid entry.
Today I read an interview in Sun magazine with James Howard Kunstler, who made largely the same point: to survive after peak oil, which he says is now, Americans will have to live differently, in smaller walkable communities that very much resemble the small towns of yesteryear and may in fact be those towns. He sees globalization not as inevitable but as something that will end when oil prices rise high enough to make shipping goods halfway around the globe economically unfeasible. (A friend from Singapore offered an example of the absurdity of globalization. (Maybe we need friends from other places to see what we view as "normal.") He and his wife, who own a house in Maryland, went to Home Depot and bought bags of gravel to put under their deck. The gravel was imported from China. My friend couldn't get over it. 'They shipped rocks halfway around the world!' Yes, absurd, absurd and yet we all understand the economics.) After reason is restored and it once again becomes crazy to ship gravel across the earth, local farming, local communities and local industry will undergo a rebirth, sez Kunstler.
I have to say that for years I have dreamed of living in a place where you could walk everywhere you needed to go and where trains connected communities. Kunstler calls this move away from the car--and the smaller houses we will have to live in and the gardening we will have to do-- a decline in the American standard of living. But is it a decline or simply different? To me, it sounds better. I spent enough time in a minivan chauffering children to activities not to want to do that again. I love the idea of children being able to walk themselves to little league practice or dance class or me being able to walk to market. I loved my time living in a small house and preferred it to the bigger home we moved into after our family grew.
On the other hand, much as we might like the idea of small town communities, they can also be bastions of cruelty and narrow-mindedness. We associate lynchings with small towns. In 17th century England, women in small towns who complained about abuse or injustice by the men in power there were sometimes labeled witches and burned or hanged. Today, we rely on larger government entities to control the abuses of the small town dictator. However, if we are going to go back to living in small communities, rather than rely on the government (though I do believe in Aristotle's model of a stronger force protecting the everyday person from the abuses of the petty tyrant) I believe we must find ways to structure our communities with kindness, compassion, creativity and opportunity.
So two different questions: If having fewer material goods is not "a lower standard living," how do we more accurately describe it? Second, if we are going to be living in smaller communities, what are some ways to keep them from becoming abusive?
Friday, September 11, 2009
True Simplicity
I read about a book called No Impact by Colin Beavan. Colin and his wife Michelle Conlin and their four year old child lived for a year trying to leave as little ecological footprint as possible on the planet. They functioned in a NYC apartment without electricity, bought only local food and didn't even use toilet paper.
This stirred my own thoughts about simplicity. Since simplicity has become more and popular, and because it is a core Quaker testimony, I'd like to offer some observations. (One caveat: this is obviously aimed at overconsuming people, not those who lack the necessities of life.) I invite you to offer your own thoughts:
1. True simplicity is religiously based. Beavan, for example, is a Zen Buddhist and truly seems to believe we are all interconnected. My own experience is that simplicity is either an exercise in confusion or a fashion statement (by which I mean an external pose adopted to attempt to look good to ourselves and others) until it springs from trying to live at one with God--as God would have us live--and with integrity. I use the word religiously deliberately because the word "spirituality" itself can be a fashion statement.
2. True simplicity is liberation not deprivation. The great lightbulb that goes off as you shed material stuff is: oh, this feels better. Life is better. When Roger and I went to one car for a time (we now have two again), the results were so good we were sorry when we had to again buy a second car. In the Upside Down Kingdom, the second car becomes the deprivation. It was the same with our television. After a brief detox period, we have never missed it. Less is more. The ability to own fewer material good is a luxury, at least for people at our level of U.S. affluence. If you are suffering through a sense of deprivation for giving something up, you may be experiencing holiness through self-denial, which can be a blessing, but it is not the same as simplicity.
3.True simplicity is rooted in humility. This connects to point two. It's a privilege and a grace to be able to do with less. Thus, we shouldn't beat people up or feel superior to them because our footprint is lighter on the earth. I remember once being infuriated by an article written by a 62 year old retired man with no children who had replaced his car with a bike. I was glad that he had done that but his tone of scorn towards people who still used cars was ruthless. He seemed entirely blinded to the fact that not everyone lived as he did: some people had young children, some people had demanding jobs far from home, some people had health issues ... the list could go on. We have to realize that what simplicity we can experience is a gift. We should never scorn the other person for not meeting our standard, especially when what to us looks like overconsumption may actually represent steps in the right direction for that person. When we start doing judging people, I believe we are functioning at the level of fashion statement.
4. True simplicity means finding the level of materialism that is right for you. It doesn't mean you have to give up everything. It doesn't mean you have to live on a farm or as the Amish do. As Quakers say, you shouldn't get ahead of your leading. I have a sense that we would all be most in touch with God at a far less materially cluttered level, but most of us can't do that.
5 True simplicity shouldn't be confused with lack of money. Because simplicity has become fashionable, people sometimes will say they are practicing simplicity when they can't afford a material good they would buy if they could. It becomes a way to put a good face on what for them is a bad situation. If you are moving into a smaller house with regret because your MacMansion was foreclosed on, you are not practicing simplicity. If you are trading the week at The Plaza for camping because your money is gone, you are not practicing simplicity. I think it's important to live with integrity and name things for what they are. I don't think there is any shame in saying: We didn't want to live in the cramped, lousy smaller house, but we could no longer afford the larger one. If the rest of us are practicing simplicity as humility, we won't make people feel bad for saying that. However, if a person moves into a smaller house or camps out and then realizes he or she loves it and truly wouldn't go back to their old way of living, they have achieved a measure of true simplicity.
Finally, can you be practicing true simplicity if you are doing it for the sake of the book contract?
This stirred my own thoughts about simplicity. Since simplicity has become more and popular, and because it is a core Quaker testimony, I'd like to offer some observations. (One caveat: this is obviously aimed at overconsuming people, not those who lack the necessities of life.) I invite you to offer your own thoughts:
1. True simplicity is religiously based. Beavan, for example, is a Zen Buddhist and truly seems to believe we are all interconnected. My own experience is that simplicity is either an exercise in confusion or a fashion statement (by which I mean an external pose adopted to attempt to look good to ourselves and others) until it springs from trying to live at one with God--as God would have us live--and with integrity. I use the word religiously deliberately because the word "spirituality" itself can be a fashion statement.
2. True simplicity is liberation not deprivation. The great lightbulb that goes off as you shed material stuff is: oh, this feels better. Life is better. When Roger and I went to one car for a time (we now have two again), the results were so good we were sorry when we had to again buy a second car. In the Upside Down Kingdom, the second car becomes the deprivation. It was the same with our television. After a brief detox period, we have never missed it. Less is more. The ability to own fewer material good is a luxury, at least for people at our level of U.S. affluence. If you are suffering through a sense of deprivation for giving something up, you may be experiencing holiness through self-denial, which can be a blessing, but it is not the same as simplicity.
3.True simplicity is rooted in humility. This connects to point two. It's a privilege and a grace to be able to do with less. Thus, we shouldn't beat people up or feel superior to them because our footprint is lighter on the earth. I remember once being infuriated by an article written by a 62 year old retired man with no children who had replaced his car with a bike. I was glad that he had done that but his tone of scorn towards people who still used cars was ruthless. He seemed entirely blinded to the fact that not everyone lived as he did: some people had young children, some people had demanding jobs far from home, some people had health issues ... the list could go on. We have to realize that what simplicity we can experience is a gift. We should never scorn the other person for not meeting our standard, especially when what to us looks like overconsumption may actually represent steps in the right direction for that person. When we start doing judging people, I believe we are functioning at the level of fashion statement.
4. True simplicity means finding the level of materialism that is right for you. It doesn't mean you have to give up everything. It doesn't mean you have to live on a farm or as the Amish do. As Quakers say, you shouldn't get ahead of your leading. I have a sense that we would all be most in touch with God at a far less materially cluttered level, but most of us can't do that.
5 True simplicity shouldn't be confused with lack of money. Because simplicity has become fashionable, people sometimes will say they are practicing simplicity when they can't afford a material good they would buy if they could. It becomes a way to put a good face on what for them is a bad situation. If you are moving into a smaller house with regret because your MacMansion was foreclosed on, you are not practicing simplicity. If you are trading the week at The Plaza for camping because your money is gone, you are not practicing simplicity. I think it's important to live with integrity and name things for what they are. I don't think there is any shame in saying: We didn't want to live in the cramped, lousy smaller house, but we could no longer afford the larger one. If the rest of us are practicing simplicity as humility, we won't make people feel bad for saying that. However, if a person moves into a smaller house or camps out and then realizes he or she loves it and truly wouldn't go back to their old way of living, they have achieved a measure of true simplicity.
Finally, can you be practicing true simplicity if you are doing it for the sake of the book contract?
Monday, October 6, 2008
Visit to an Amish House, 1
On Friday, I visited an Amish farm. I was quite excited to go.
The farm was a few miles from where I live, off a narrow, gravel road and down a windy, rutty driveway into a hollow.
My first thought was "this isn't the 19th century, it's the 18th century."
Before us was a white frame farmhouse with a cow and dozens of red chickens strutting around in the foresty front yard. It reminded me of the Kiera Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, in which pigs and poultry live outside the Bennet's door. I saw a black buggy tucked near the side of an outbuilding.
We met "Sara" and her son. Sara wore a long, light blue workdress, black work boots, and spoke with what sounded like a German accent. She was very kind. She showed us pears she had ripening between two blankets in her living room. One variety will become pear butter; the other will be preserved. The room also held a woodburning stove and a single bed with a quilt.
In her kitchen/dining room she had a long, narrow dining room table covered with a plastic tablecloth. I remember an enamel sink. Under the windows along the wall overlooking the front yard, she had shelves filled with empty glass canning jars. The walls of both rooms were bare, as you would expect, except for hooks for hanging clothes and implements. The walls were painted sky blue and white. Everything was very still and serene.
While there, I was struck by two things. The first that I was talking to a woman who really could have been transported straight from the 18th century. She may never have seen television or driven in a car. The difference between her, and say, a Jane Austen character, however, is that she would be aware of cars and television and other forms of technology.
The second was a flash I had, one of those moments of opening, when you really, truly see how excessively we "English" live. I don't want to idealize the Amish, and as people tell me, and I agree, I wouldn't --or couldn't-- live as they do. I'm a creature of my culture and moving to a technologically primitive farm life would be painful and difficult for me. That's not to say it wouldn't be "better" (how do I know?) but I imagine that, like one of those children raised by wolves or dolphins, I couldn't, at my age, make the transition. That said, I had my flash, standing in that simple, unadorned home, of how we overload our homes with stuff. No wonder there's an epidemic of obesity (aside, of course, from the glut of food). Our homes are filled with plush, upholstered sofas and armchairs, thick carpets, remote controls, every convenience that would encourage us to loll around being inactive. With its pears and canning jars lined up as if she were running an apothecary shop, Sara's home, in contrast, was a workplace. There was nothing upholstered, no entertainment center. It was a place to work, to eat, and to sleep. Quiet though it was, it seemed more a center of a life than perhaps many of our homes do. It seemed idyllic. It seemed like a miracle that such a place and such people still exist.
Anyway, I thought of those high Victorian rooms you see in photos or sometimes reproduced in museums, where every inch of space is covered in patterned wallpaper, tasselled pillows, and dozens of pieces of bric-a-brac crowded onto every conceivable surface. The rooms are so overstuffed and overdone you can want to throw up. And for just a second, I saw that perhaps we live the same way. That we do live the same way.
I had a similar flash about six years ago. (These flashes, which stick with me, seem to be places where the Eternal breaks through to critique the Now.) It was raining and the kids had to go to school. I began a frantic search for the boys' hooded raincoats, recently purchased. I found jackets, coats and sweaters of every conceivable sort hanging on hooks, on hangars, even crumpled into backpacks, but no raincoats. And I had that flash that we are drowning in such excess that it becomes a form of deprivation. You can't find what you need. You replace order with chaos. I say this, too, knowing we were hardly the most high consumption family in the neighborhood. We were trying to live simply.
While I can't realistically conceive of living exactly as the Amish do, I admire them for putting God at the center of their lives. I see them as patterns, not to be slavishly followed, but from whom we can learn. And I feel grateful to William Penn for opening up this country to them.
The farm was a few miles from where I live, off a narrow, gravel road and down a windy, rutty driveway into a hollow.
My first thought was "this isn't the 19th century, it's the 18th century."
Before us was a white frame farmhouse with a cow and dozens of red chickens strutting around in the foresty front yard. It reminded me of the Kiera Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, in which pigs and poultry live outside the Bennet's door. I saw a black buggy tucked near the side of an outbuilding.
We met "Sara" and her son. Sara wore a long, light blue workdress, black work boots, and spoke with what sounded like a German accent. She was very kind. She showed us pears she had ripening between two blankets in her living room. One variety will become pear butter; the other will be preserved. The room also held a woodburning stove and a single bed with a quilt.
In her kitchen/dining room she had a long, narrow dining room table covered with a plastic tablecloth. I remember an enamel sink. Under the windows along the wall overlooking the front yard, she had shelves filled with empty glass canning jars. The walls of both rooms were bare, as you would expect, except for hooks for hanging clothes and implements. The walls were painted sky blue and white. Everything was very still and serene.
While there, I was struck by two things. The first that I was talking to a woman who really could have been transported straight from the 18th century. She may never have seen television or driven in a car. The difference between her, and say, a Jane Austen character, however, is that she would be aware of cars and television and other forms of technology.
The second was a flash I had, one of those moments of opening, when you really, truly see how excessively we "English" live. I don't want to idealize the Amish, and as people tell me, and I agree, I wouldn't --or couldn't-- live as they do. I'm a creature of my culture and moving to a technologically primitive farm life would be painful and difficult for me. That's not to say it wouldn't be "better" (how do I know?) but I imagine that, like one of those children raised by wolves or dolphins, I couldn't, at my age, make the transition. That said, I had my flash, standing in that simple, unadorned home, of how we overload our homes with stuff. No wonder there's an epidemic of obesity (aside, of course, from the glut of food). Our homes are filled with plush, upholstered sofas and armchairs, thick carpets, remote controls, every convenience that would encourage us to loll around being inactive. With its pears and canning jars lined up as if she were running an apothecary shop, Sara's home, in contrast, was a workplace. There was nothing upholstered, no entertainment center. It was a place to work, to eat, and to sleep. Quiet though it was, it seemed more a center of a life than perhaps many of our homes do. It seemed idyllic. It seemed like a miracle that such a place and such people still exist.
Anyway, I thought of those high Victorian rooms you see in photos or sometimes reproduced in museums, where every inch of space is covered in patterned wallpaper, tasselled pillows, and dozens of pieces of bric-a-brac crowded onto every conceivable surface. The rooms are so overstuffed and overdone you can want to throw up. And for just a second, I saw that perhaps we live the same way. That we do live the same way.
I had a similar flash about six years ago. (These flashes, which stick with me, seem to be places where the Eternal breaks through to critique the Now.) It was raining and the kids had to go to school. I began a frantic search for the boys' hooded raincoats, recently purchased. I found jackets, coats and sweaters of every conceivable sort hanging on hooks, on hangars, even crumpled into backpacks, but no raincoats. And I had that flash that we are drowning in such excess that it becomes a form of deprivation. You can't find what you need. You replace order with chaos. I say this, too, knowing we were hardly the most high consumption family in the neighborhood. We were trying to live simply.
While I can't realistically conceive of living exactly as the Amish do, I admire them for putting God at the center of their lives. I see them as patterns, not to be slavishly followed, but from whom we can learn. And I feel grateful to William Penn for opening up this country to them.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Poverty or Simplicity?
"Poverty does not mean scorn for goods and poverty. It means the strict limitation of goods that are for personal use. ... It means a horror of war, first because it ruins human life and health and the beauty of the earth, but second because it destroys goods that could be used to relieve misery and hardship and to give joy. It means a distaste even for the small carelessnesses that we see prevalent, so that beautiful and useful things are allowed to become dirty and battered through lack of respect for them."
Mildred Binns Young, 1956
I tried --and failed -- to find the pamphlet on-line from which this quote is taken, so if anyone knows ...
I'd hoped to discover whether the "It" of the sentence that begins "It means a horror of war ..." replaced the word poverty. Would poverty mean a horror of war ... or a distaste for the small carelessnesses ...?"
Reading a tiny tidbit about Quaker Mildred Binns Young, I found that she did write about functional poverty, so in the above passage perhaps her "it" really means poverty. I think in today's parlance we would use the term voluntary simplicity for her kind of poverty or perhaps simple abundance.
The sentence that struck me was "it means a distaste even for the small carelessnesses that we see prevalent, so that beautiful and useful things are allowed to become dirty and battered through lack of respect for them."
How many small carelessnesses have allowed the things in my life to become dirty and battered? Or more to the point, how much rushing and forgetting has led to things piling up, getting lost, getting dented or broken? We simply replace these things ... we live in a culture with a seemingly endless supply of inexpensive consumables.
But wouldn't it make sense to slow down, have less and take better care of what we have? I think of a saying of John Wesley's, Methodism's founder, which I heard: "Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, give as much as you can."
Ok, Ok, that's the Protestant work ethic in a nutshell. And we can take work to weird, excessive levels in this wired culture. But there's a wisdom in not wasting that I think we've completely lost sight of.
If Young bemoaned waste around her in 1956, a time when people had about half of what they do now, what of the mountains of waste around us today? I saw a YouTube video that said that 99 percent of what we buy is trash within six months. And then, of course, there's the movie "Wall.e" which I will discuss in another post.
In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World part of the satire is that the "betas," the consumer class in a brainwashed world, are taught rhymes about replacing things rather than repairing them. It's high comedy, apparently, in the 1930s, to imagine a society in which people are taught to throw out sweaters that are missing a button. But that is more or less how we live. In fact, we give the sweaters away before they're missing a button!
When did all this go over the top? I think I can pinpoint two places when waste and excess started to be normative in our culture, both dating from the early 1980s. The first connects to the movie "Ordinary People," which won the best picture Oscar in 1981 (?). There's a scene early in the movie where Mary Tyler Moore, playing a housewife, is pushing her son's serving of French toast down the disposal. Someone in the movie must question her, because she says something like "you can't save French toast." I actually remember conversations with people at the time about this: can you save French toast? Is it OK to throw food away? Was this character being wasteful? I can hardly imagine having such conversations today. That was also the time when diet programs routinely discussed our guilt over wasting food and assured us that it would not feed any hungry person to throw away food we were too full to eat. Today, food waste isn't even mentioned.
When E.T. came out in 1982, I remember all the conversations about how many toys the kids in the movie had. We'd never seen such a surfeit of toys! The children had a whole walk-in closet stuffed with stuff! I remember discussions about how we had nowhere near so many toys when we were growing up. Nowhere. Near. But after that movie, the excess started to seem normal. It's as if the movie set a much higher bar for the "new normal" in toys. I know my children, born in the 1990s, have had far more toys than I did growing up, and I was not at all deprived.
What do you think? How do we control our consumption? Does it create a sense of abundance not to have to replace things? Can you pinpoint, what for you, were cultural moments when our notions of "normal" seemed to shift? Is this a spiritual issue?
Mildred Binns Young, 1956
I tried --and failed -- to find the pamphlet on-line from which this quote is taken, so if anyone knows ...
I'd hoped to discover whether the "It" of the sentence that begins "It means a horror of war ..." replaced the word poverty. Would poverty mean a horror of war ... or a distaste for the small carelessnesses ...?"
Reading a tiny tidbit about Quaker Mildred Binns Young, I found that she did write about functional poverty, so in the above passage perhaps her "it" really means poverty. I think in today's parlance we would use the term voluntary simplicity for her kind of poverty or perhaps simple abundance.
The sentence that struck me was "it means a distaste even for the small carelessnesses that we see prevalent, so that beautiful and useful things are allowed to become dirty and battered through lack of respect for them."
How many small carelessnesses have allowed the things in my life to become dirty and battered? Or more to the point, how much rushing and forgetting has led to things piling up, getting lost, getting dented or broken? We simply replace these things ... we live in a culture with a seemingly endless supply of inexpensive consumables.
But wouldn't it make sense to slow down, have less and take better care of what we have? I think of a saying of John Wesley's, Methodism's founder, which I heard: "Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, give as much as you can."
Ok, Ok, that's the Protestant work ethic in a nutshell. And we can take work to weird, excessive levels in this wired culture. But there's a wisdom in not wasting that I think we've completely lost sight of.
If Young bemoaned waste around her in 1956, a time when people had about half of what they do now, what of the mountains of waste around us today? I saw a YouTube video that said that 99 percent of what we buy is trash within six months. And then, of course, there's the movie "Wall.e" which I will discuss in another post.
In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World part of the satire is that the "betas," the consumer class in a brainwashed world, are taught rhymes about replacing things rather than repairing them. It's high comedy, apparently, in the 1930s, to imagine a society in which people are taught to throw out sweaters that are missing a button. But that is more or less how we live. In fact, we give the sweaters away before they're missing a button!
When did all this go over the top? I think I can pinpoint two places when waste and excess started to be normative in our culture, both dating from the early 1980s. The first connects to the movie "Ordinary People," which won the best picture Oscar in 1981 (?). There's a scene early in the movie where Mary Tyler Moore, playing a housewife, is pushing her son's serving of French toast down the disposal. Someone in the movie must question her, because she says something like "you can't save French toast." I actually remember conversations with people at the time about this: can you save French toast? Is it OK to throw food away? Was this character being wasteful? I can hardly imagine having such conversations today. That was also the time when diet programs routinely discussed our guilt over wasting food and assured us that it would not feed any hungry person to throw away food we were too full to eat. Today, food waste isn't even mentioned.
When E.T. came out in 1982, I remember all the conversations about how many toys the kids in the movie had. We'd never seen such a surfeit of toys! The children had a whole walk-in closet stuffed with stuff! I remember discussions about how we had nowhere near so many toys when we were growing up. Nowhere. Near. But after that movie, the excess started to seem normal. It's as if the movie set a much higher bar for the "new normal" in toys. I know my children, born in the 1990s, have had far more toys than I did growing up, and I was not at all deprived.
What do you think? How do we control our consumption? Does it create a sense of abundance not to have to replace things? Can you pinpoint, what for you, were cultural moments when our notions of "normal" seemed to shift? Is this a spiritual issue?
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Simplicity and serenity
Thanks to everyone who has responded to the blog lately.
We are continuing to sort through stuff in our house and are actually making progress towards getting organized. The house is starting to look good! And it feels better already to be traveling lighter.
Roger and I filled three trash bags last night with give-away clothes. I would say that was crazy, but in this culture, a mere three bags probably rates as the essence of simple living. We also put a bunch of wool sweaters into two plastic vacuum bags I bought. You literally vacuum out the air and they shrink up. We will bring these to Barnesville to store.
As we proceed through this move, I'm trying not do everything pell mell. While initially I had thought of trying --of course!! -- to pack in as much freelance work as I could before I moved, to make as much money "while I could," I've hit unusual walls on several stories that have blocked me from moving forward with them. My deepest sense has been that I should see the walls as there for a reason, and focus my energies on the move. I feel at very much at peace with that in my inner core but there is the outward core that says, but, but, but we need ... money, money, money. I'm trying to ignore that nervous chatter and stay in the center. Put first the kingdom ...How much money do we "need?"
Someone once said haste is of the devil and someone else said haste IS the devil. While possibly overstated for effect, both statements have the ring of truth to me. I feel sad looking back over the past decade that our children's lives have been so hurried. Rushing has been normal for them. To put this in context, we are family that has tried hard to limit activities and be attuned to simplicity, but we've still gotten caught in the vortex. If I had it to do over again, I would have and do a lot less with much more thoughtfulness and deliberation.
It would be wonderful to live calmer lives in Barnesville, but much of the simplicity from which serenity springs is interior, as Thomas Kelly write in Testament of Devotion. He taught in Hawaii before World War II, when the island was an isolated, slow-moving, tropical paradise (maybe a little like Barnesville without the cold weather?). He thought he'd achieve a calm life there, but alas, brought his own baggage along.
Where you live can influence the pace of your life, or so I have to believe after hearing the many Midwesteners who move here mention how emotionally cold and fast-paced this area is. On the other hand, like Thomas Kelly, I also have to believe the serene life comes out of a core that intentionally seeks that rhythm.
On that note, I have to hurry to end this so I can hop in the shower so I can pick up Sophie from a sleepover so she can tend to the dogs she is housesitting for so we can both get to an appointment so I can get back home and out the door again to buy touch- up paint for my front door ....
But I will try to do all of this with serenity!
We are continuing to sort through stuff in our house and are actually making progress towards getting organized. The house is starting to look good! And it feels better already to be traveling lighter.
Roger and I filled three trash bags last night with give-away clothes. I would say that was crazy, but in this culture, a mere three bags probably rates as the essence of simple living. We also put a bunch of wool sweaters into two plastic vacuum bags I bought. You literally vacuum out the air and they shrink up. We will bring these to Barnesville to store.
As we proceed through this move, I'm trying not do everything pell mell. While initially I had thought of trying --of course!! -- to pack in as much freelance work as I could before I moved, to make as much money "while I could," I've hit unusual walls on several stories that have blocked me from moving forward with them. My deepest sense has been that I should see the walls as there for a reason, and focus my energies on the move. I feel at very much at peace with that in my inner core but there is the outward core that says, but, but, but we need ... money, money, money. I'm trying to ignore that nervous chatter and stay in the center. Put first the kingdom ...How much money do we "need?"
Someone once said haste is of the devil and someone else said haste IS the devil. While possibly overstated for effect, both statements have the ring of truth to me. I feel sad looking back over the past decade that our children's lives have been so hurried. Rushing has been normal for them. To put this in context, we are family that has tried hard to limit activities and be attuned to simplicity, but we've still gotten caught in the vortex. If I had it to do over again, I would have and do a lot less with much more thoughtfulness and deliberation.
It would be wonderful to live calmer lives in Barnesville, but much of the simplicity from which serenity springs is interior, as Thomas Kelly write in Testament of Devotion. He taught in Hawaii before World War II, when the island was an isolated, slow-moving, tropical paradise (maybe a little like Barnesville without the cold weather?). He thought he'd achieve a calm life there, but alas, brought his own baggage along.
Where you live can influence the pace of your life, or so I have to believe after hearing the many Midwesteners who move here mention how emotionally cold and fast-paced this area is. On the other hand, like Thomas Kelly, I also have to believe the serene life comes out of a core that intentionally seeks that rhythm.
On that note, I have to hurry to end this so I can hop in the shower so I can pick up Sophie from a sleepover so she can tend to the dogs she is housesitting for so we can both get to an appointment so I can get back home and out the door again to buy touch- up paint for my front door ....
But I will try to do all of this with serenity!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Irresistible Revolution
Not another book!
Well, as usual, I have several book going at once. Last night, I began Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution.
While so far agreeing with most of what he said, I was also skeptical, thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a cool skinny young guy with a kerchief on his head living in an intentional Christian community in a big city ... have we not been there and done that before? Is this a new story? And I thought, this is worthy, worthy work and I support it ... but does it warrant another book?
The jury is still out on that, though perhaps each mini-generation needs to hear this story anew. And I'm just at the beginning ...
However, the book already reveals some things I really like about Claiborne: He's giving away all his proceeds, advances and royalties. Also, during the 1990s, he and a friend went and helped Mother Teresa in Calcutta. That's amazing and had to be life-transforming.
Of course, there's the romance of Mother Teresa, and then the glam of doing the wild communal thing in the heart of a U.S. city ... and I have to remember that there's so much to be said for we suburbanites simply reaching out prosaically to the people all around us, who can be hurting or needing help in many ways that are not as dramatic but just as real. Cedar Ridge pounds on that all the time, and I'm glad they do, because as simple as all this is, the reminders help. We don't need to travel to India (though that's admirable) but we can invite our neighbors over, give them a call, pick up trash on the side of the street ... One of the things I did a few months ago was not to simply blow off a hispanic man who called me as a wrong number. I was able, dimly and by a thread, (and I attribute that dim seeing to years of spiritual work) to recognize he was distressed, and so I didn't hang up. As it happened, because he was at a computer, I was able to help him use the Internet to find the phone number he needed. He was intensely grateful and though it was only maybe three minutes out of my day, I felt I had genuinely helped. And I was very grateful that I could help.
Anyway, I will leave with one Claiborne quote. I've heard it before (I've written it before!) but it still resonates:
"But there is another movement stirring, a revolution of sorts. Many of us our refusing to allow distorted images of our faith to define us. ... There is ... a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of. And this revolution is irresistible. It is a contagious revolution that dances, laughs and loves."
What do you think?
Well, as usual, I have several book going at once. Last night, I began Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution.
While so far agreeing with most of what he said, I was also skeptical, thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a cool skinny young guy with a kerchief on his head living in an intentional Christian community in a big city ... have we not been there and done that before? Is this a new story? And I thought, this is worthy, worthy work and I support it ... but does it warrant another book?
The jury is still out on that, though perhaps each mini-generation needs to hear this story anew. And I'm just at the beginning ...
However, the book already reveals some things I really like about Claiborne: He's giving away all his proceeds, advances and royalties. Also, during the 1990s, he and a friend went and helped Mother Teresa in Calcutta. That's amazing and had to be life-transforming.
Of course, there's the romance of Mother Teresa, and then the glam of doing the wild communal thing in the heart of a U.S. city ... and I have to remember that there's so much to be said for we suburbanites simply reaching out prosaically to the people all around us, who can be hurting or needing help in many ways that are not as dramatic but just as real. Cedar Ridge pounds on that all the time, and I'm glad they do, because as simple as all this is, the reminders help. We don't need to travel to India (though that's admirable) but we can invite our neighbors over, give them a call, pick up trash on the side of the street ... One of the things I did a few months ago was not to simply blow off a hispanic man who called me as a wrong number. I was able, dimly and by a thread, (and I attribute that dim seeing to years of spiritual work) to recognize he was distressed, and so I didn't hang up. As it happened, because he was at a computer, I was able to help him use the Internet to find the phone number he needed. He was intensely grateful and though it was only maybe three minutes out of my day, I felt I had genuinely helped. And I was very grateful that I could help.
Anyway, I will leave with one Claiborne quote. I've heard it before (I've written it before!) but it still resonates:
"But there is another movement stirring, a revolution of sorts. Many of us our refusing to allow distorted images of our faith to define us. ... There is ... a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of. And this revolution is irresistible. It is a contagious revolution that dances, laughs and loves."
What do you think?
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