Simplicity Part 2

It is amazing how the Lord works in your heart and then there is this ripple effect.  It is in your heart so you talk to someone else, and who knew it was working on their heart too.  Well, for the last couple years Leslie,  one of my closest friends, and I have had deep conversations about our lives, our purpose, and what it all means in the end.  Like always, I mentioned to her that I was thinking about telling everyone about my purging experience, and there was the ripple again.  She, like I and so many others, have been having these same nagging thoughts of why do I have all this stuff?  What is is doing for me?  Why am I financially strapping myself down to all this stuff?  She had just told me last week about this book that she had just finished reading.
                                        

I haven't had a chance to read this book, but she says it just "hit her" with the way this author put things.  You know someone can say something to you a million times and then one day someone else says it in a different way and you just "get it."  Just like in the Gospels, those men all saw the same thing, but all through different eyes.  Leslie gave me this recap of the book, and I think it is a huge challenge.

The Hatmaker family pastored a mega-church with all of the big fancy bells and whistles that comes with a mega church.  They were surrounded by very wealthy people.  As she says in the book, they were the “blessed blessing the blessed”.  They realized they were not being good stewards and began to downsize and change their lifestyle.  Then, they took in a family that was evacuated during Hurricane Ike.  They thought they were living a pretty modest lifestyle at this point, but the first thing a ten-year-old evacuee said when he walked into their home was “Dad!  This white dude is rich!”  It made them realize that while they thought they had changed so much and were living so modestly, they were still very well off compared to so much of the world and really were not sacrificing much at all.

This is where the idea of “7” comes into play.  Here were Jen’s thoughts:

“What in my life, in the lives of most westerners, is just too stinking much?

-Food

-Clothes

-Possessions

-Media

-Waste

-Spending

-Stress

Seven months, seven areas, reduced to seven simple choices.”

The first month, Jen chose seven food items (chicken, eggs, whole-wheat bread, sweet potatoes, spinach, avocados, and apples) and only water to drink. 

The second month, Jen chose seven items of clothing to wear for the entire month.  Her choices included one pair of dark wash jeans, one long-sleeved solid black fitted t-shirt, one short-sleeved black t-shirt, one short-sleeved gray t-shirt, one pair of gray drawstring knit Capri pants, one long silk brown dress shirt, one pair of cowboy boots, and one pair of tennis shoes.  While she didn’t feel like clothes were a big deal to her, when she counted the items in her closet (327), she realized that she was definitely living in excess.  Even if every item only cost $20 on average (which is unlikely), it would mean she had $6,540 worth of clothes in her closet.  If the clothing items averaged $30 each (more realistic), it would mean she had $9,810 worth of clothes in her closet.  At the end of the month, she says “wearing seven clothes was easier than I expected.”  Turns out, it made life more simple not having to worry about picking out a cute outfit with matching accessories every day.

Month three was all about possessions.  The plan is to give seven items that they own away…every day for the entire month.  She talks about their 2465 square foot house being packed full of “stuff”.  “Why do we have so much junk?  How am I supposed to keep up with all this?  Where did this all come from?  And then I remember:  I bought it all.  I supposed acting like someone snuck into my house while I was feeding the homeless and filled my shelves with more black shirts and a fourth set of Legos against my will is probably ignoble.  To hear me fuss, you’d think I was a victim of drive-by consumerism.  Guess what, doves?  I’m a part of this little game.  I see it (on you, on them, in their house, at Target, on TV).  I manufacture a need for it.  Then I buy it.  I use it a little or not.  I store it/shelve it/stack it/ stuff it/ get tired of it, then wage war against it one day when all my little things are strewn about as escapees from their shelves and drawers.  I could blame Big Marketing for selling me imagined needs.  I could point a finger at culture for peer pressuring me into having nicer things.  I might implicate modern parenting, which encourages endless purchases for the kids, ensuring they aren’t the “have-nots” in a sea of “haves”.  I could just dismiss it all with a shrug and casual wave of the hand.  Oh, you know me!  Retail therapy!  But if I’m being truthful, this is a sickening cycle of consumerism that I perpetuate constantly.”

In month four, Jen gave up TV, gaming, facebook/twitter, iPhone apps, radio, texting, and internet.  Texting was allowed if it was a time saver, not a time waster.  Internet was also allowed if it was for jobs, kid’s school, adoption process (they were adopting during the time she wrote the book).  Here’s her summary on the month:

“Whew! What a month!  I know in the big scheme of things, a media fast is not headlining news, but I gotta tell you, we had to dig deep this last week.  For me, it wasn’t so much the media I was missing but the knowledge that I was the only one missing it.  The party was going on outside my window, and I uninvited myself.  But the wiser (read:smaller) part of my brain interrupted this pity party with a question: What are you really missing?  Asinine television programming?  Web sites that suck you in then waste your time?  The Facebook knowledge that someone is going to the store: or her “son went big boy poopy in the big boy potty today”?  These don’t enrich my life in the slightest.  They do, however, steal energy from my home and family substituting face-to-face time with screens.  We’re all losing on this exchange, and we won’t revert to the plugged-in family we were before.”

In month five, Jen began gardening, composting, conserving energy and water, recycling (everything), driving only one car, shopping thrift/second-hand stores, buying only local.  I won’t go into too much detail about this chapter since it is a little off the simplicity topic, but she does say that the point is to “stop careless consumption that requires nothing of me.”

During month six, Jen chooses only 7 stores/vendors to shop at/pay for the month including Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market, HEB gas station, online bill pay, kid’s school, limited travel fund, emergency medical, and Target (if absolutely necessary).  Here are some interesting statistics on spending:

Annual U.S. spending on cosmetics: $8 billion

Basic education for all global children: $6 billion

Annual U.S. and European spending on perfume: $12 billion

Clean water for all global citizens: $9 billion

Annual U.S. and European spending on pet food: $17 billion

Reproductive health for all women: $12 billion

Here’s her month six wrap up:

“This. Month. Was. Hard. But good. It’s one of those.  A good hard.  Vast consumption is so ordinary that its absence was shocking.  I didn’t realize how casually I ‘grab lunch,’ or ‘run through the bookstore,’ or ‘pick up that little scarf.’ I admit: I have a compulsion to buy something somewhere.  My craving is nonspecific; it just involves being in a store or restaurant and handing my debit card over and getting something back.”

Month seven was about stress.  She says, “We have too much going on.  We are short fused, stressed out, overextended, and unrested.  This pace is not sustainable.  I don’t want it to be.  This season of life is passing me by, accelerated by a lack of boundaries.  Most days I just try to keep the wheels on, not living in the moment at all; I’m just getting it all done while thinking about what’s left.  My kids and husband get half answers.  Every day I could take a two-hour nap, so exhausted do I feel at 1:00 pm.  I have considered ending my life over the volume of e-mails.  Such is the ridiculous American life.  Every one of my friends has a similar story.  None of us are happy about it, yet we keep filling the calendars.  Yes, I’m in; we’ll sign up; I’ll do it.  We race from one activity to another, teaching our children to max out and stress out.  Nice legacy.

During month seven, they pause and pray seven times a day (midnight, dawn, mid morning, noon, mid afternoon, early evening, and bedtime).  They also observe the Sabbath from sundown on Saturday to sundown on Sunday.  Just a side not- the Sabbath actually begins on Friday evening, but in American culture the Sabbath is on Sunday.  Month seven falls in November so they spend time at the family’s farm so that’s why she talks about “taking a sabbatical” and “living in a barn”.

Here’s what she has to say at the end of month seven:

“But these pauses, plus the Sabbath, plus the sabbatical taught me something.  My heart craves a slower life.  I want people to stop prefacing their phone calls with this: ‘I know you’re so busy, but if I could just have a second…’  I want to figure out what this means for our family.  We can’t live in the barn forever, nor can we pull out of work, ministry, school, community, mission, family, and all the activities that accompany them.  But what can we do to cultivate a quiet ranch heart in a noisy urban world?”

I liked this quote from the book to sum things up:

                                                                                                                                            

“Jesus, may there be less of me and my junk and more of You and Your kingdom.”


Note:  I have not read this book and am not saying that this book has the answers.  The only book that has the answers is the Bible.