Finding Simplicity

With my second doubleshot in hand, and walking aimlessly through the mall for more than forty minutes trying to decide if I needed another pair of Italian ankle-booties, it hit me; I cannot live like this anymore. I have allowed the clutter of everyday to press down upon me and dictate my every thought and action. My priorities have swung with the pendulum of cultural expectations, rather than with the Divine, and my sense of reality has become all but lost. Though I have taken up vows to live as a reflection of Christ, I have allowed my attachment to need and want to behest my time, my body, and my mind.

Therefore, I am beginning an experiment— a leap toward transformation. Though it may seem simple on paper (or perhaps ‘on screen’), I am about to embark on one of the most difficult venture of my entire life: find simplicity. I will be turning to the Scriptures, the desert fathers and mothers, and contemporary theologians for the next six months to find what I would call ‘nothingness.’ I have allowed austerity to escape me, and I will allow it no more.

Though my husband and I have taken significant steps towards reducing our carbon foot (now registering at 0.09 metric tons of CO2) and choosing to shop locally and organically when possible, I do not live as simply as I feel the Father prefers. Even as Christians, the race to impress even those we do not even particularly like with our possessions and stature does not escape many of us easily. Many of us love value, but we also love cheap; therefore, our closets have become filled with cheap clothes that give the impression of a reality we wish was ours. As a result, Ill-fitting garments hang limply from the branches our closets, many with the clearance tags attached. These items were manufactured under nice labels, but with the same environmental and humanitarian care that a wolf might show to a lamb. Deep down, several of us know the holistic harm our love affair with cheap causes, but it often seems too difficult to consider doing the right thing when the right look is so important.

This morning, I read a deeply philosophical and spiritual reflection on the Christian’s loss of simplicity by Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline¹, which tendered and humbled me beyond description. Foster’s rapture in Simplicity is exquisite and could not be eclipsed be even the most learned or articulated:

“The Christian discipline of simplicity is an inward reality that results in an outward life-style. Both the inward and outward aspects of simplicity are essential. We deceive ourselves if we believe we can possess the inward reality without its having a profound effect on how we live. To attempt to arrange an outward life-style of simplicity without the inward reality leads to deadly legalism.

Simplicity begins in inward focus and unity. It means to live out of what Thomas Kelly called 'The Divine Center.' Kierkegaard captured the nucleus of Christian simplicity in the profound title of his book, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing.

Experiencing the inward reality liberates us outwardly. Speech becomes truthful and honest. The lust for status and position is gone, because we no longer need status and position. We cease from showy extravagance, not on the grounds of being unable to afford it, but on the grounds of principle. Our goods become available to others. We join the experience that Richard E. Byrd recorded in his journal after months alone in the barren Arctic: 'I am learning ... that a man can live profoundly without masses of things.'²

Contemporary culture lacks both the inward reality and the outward life-style of simplicity. We must live in the modern world, and we are affected by its fractured and fragmented state. 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 insane attachment to things. We must clearly 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…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. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.”

May we find that which we have lost: simplicity.

Grace and Peace

1. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline. 1998. pp 80-1
2. Richard E. Byrd, Alone. 1938. p 19