Lotus Light Sangha Blog - Simplicity

An Evening of Meditation on Quaker Views on Simplicity

  

Queries

 What in my present life most distracts me from God?

What am I ready to release so that I can give my attention to what matters most?

How do the ways in which I choose to use my time, my possessions, my money, and my energy reflect my most deeply held values?

How do the ways in which we choose to use our community's resources reflect our most deeply held values?

How do we support one another in our search for a simpler life?

Advices

The testimony of simplicity is like a bell that calls us to awareness of the Center. It challenges us to ask "what matters?" It reminds us that much of what worries us and stresses us is not all that important. It asks us to recognize the burdens we carry needlessly and lay them down: our anxiety about our appearance, our struggle to afford what we do not need, comparisons between our lifestyle and the lifestyles of others, squabbles born of tension and stress, worries that leave us exhausted and unable to find time for what matters in our lives. Simplicity is not about an antique form of dress or speech. It is a reminder that today, as surely as hundreds of years ago, we can choose to allow God to order our lives. It asks us to set aside time for prayer and spiritual discipline that open us to wisdom and guidance beyond our own. Today, as then, it refers to a life lit from within by the Inward Light, ordered by the Love that nourishes the core, and freed by the Spirit from bondage to the superficial.

Voices

My mind through the power of Truth was in a good degree weaned from the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be content with real conveniences that were not costly; so that a way of life free from much Entanglements appeared best for me, tho' the income was small. I had several offers of business that appeared profitable, but saw not my way clear to accept of them, as believing the business proposed would be attended with more outward care & cumber than was required of me to engage in. I saw that a humble man, with the Blessing of the Lord, might live on a little, and that where the heart was set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving; but that commonly with an increase of wealth, the desire for wealth increased. There was a care on my mind so to pass my time, as to things outward, that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the voice of the True Shepherd.
John Woolman, c. 1744

How much interior emigration there is all about us! Students emigrate to the future and are not present where they are. Displaced persons live in the past and refuse to let go to the new homeland and to live where they are. Parents are not present here and now but are living for the day when the children are raised, or when they will retire, or when they will be free of this or that, but remain numb and glazed and absent from the living moment. To be present is to be vulnerable, to be able to be hurt, to be willing to be spent -- but it is also to be awake, alive, and engaged actively in the immediate assignment that has been laid upon us.
Douglas Steere, 1967

Jesus spoke to the heart of the matter when he taught us that if the eye were single, the whole body would be full of light (Matthew 6:22). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, before he died at the hands of the Nazis, said, "To be simple is to fix one's eye solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted, and turned upside down."
Richard J. Foster, 1981