Approaches to Simple Living

Lisa Kinney Colburn

What is simple living? Real Simple, along with other lifestyle magazines, would have us believe that living simply is owning a versatile $300 blouse that can be worn with either a designer suit or the latest jeans. Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel catalogs seduce us with a monochromatic palette of muted browns and grays that suggest the cool serenity of a monastery— for a four-figure price tag. And we are led to believe that if we buy that expensive closet organizing system or have our homes reoriented by a feng shui consultant, our days—and indeed our lives—will run like clockwork. We'll probably even be thinner and better looking! But is this really what it's about?

Simple living has been co-opted by big business nowadays because many Americans are craving relief from a relentless treadmill: work / acquire / feel overwhelmed by "stuff" / repeat. And for some of the most affluent members of our society, perhaps Real Simple and Pottery Barn do fill the bill. But for most of us, especially those walking a spiritual path, what they offer is simply not enough, because ultimately they promote consumption—and what we yearn for is meaning.

1. So, What Is Simple Living?;


2. The Evolution of Simple Living;


3. Ten Ways to Embrace the Simple Life;


4. Questions for Congregational Small Group Discussions;


5. Recommended Resources.

So, What Is Simple Living?

Simple living means different things to different people, but to state it succinctly, it is about living a balanced, inner-directed—as opposed to an outwardly focused—life. Here are a few things about which most people writing on this topic would agree:

1. Simple living is not about being poor. It is about choosing to live with enough to meet your needs, but not accumulating excess. It could, for example, mean driving an older model car rather than buying a new one every year. Or living in a smaller home that requires less upkeep. Excess is considered burdensome.



2. Living simply means choosing to live an authentic life that reflects your values and priorities. When we live according to our values and divorce ourselves from cultural expectations (a tall order, to be sure), we discover a spacious way of being in the world that allows for flow, creativity, and the movement of spirit.
   
   For example, if healthy eating is your priority, you will make sure that you invest the time to always have healthy food available. (For an extreme—and inspiring—example of this, see Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, in which she chronicles her family's choice to eat only locally grown food that is in season.)



3. Living simply includes acknowledging our connection to one another and to the earth. We put people ahead of material things and attempt to reduce our environmental impact. We "go green."



4. Simple living is about freedom to make choices: how to spend your time, your money, and your energy. You decide what to do with your life.



5. Living simply requires solitude on a regular basis for meditation, prayer, or just plain unencumbered thought.

Why is all this important to people of faith? Well, as anyone who has walked it knows, the spiritual path is less a superhighway to enlightenment than a meandering pathway through the underbrush, with occasional clear patches to help us see whence we came. And "being in the world but not of it" is one of the biggest challenges we face.

American culture invites us to conform to its values of ceaseless productivity, workaholism, and maintaining appearances with the "right" car, house, clothing, and vacation destination. We also are encouraged to feed on up-to-the-minute "news" via the 24-hour news cycle; if we're bored with that, we can always numb out by watching the latest reality TV shows. In fact, the average American watches more than four hours of television a day,¹ goes to bed too late, and wakes up exhausted. Where is there room for God in this ethos?

We need to "come apart for awhile" to refresh our spirits and to discern what is right for ourselves and our families. We need to remember who we are as children of God in kinship with one another. The principles of simple living can help us do that. As Catherine Whitmire says so eloquently in her book, Plain Living:

Through my personal journey I have come to understand plain living as a matter of spiritual intent, or an aim of the heart. . . . Plain living is a form of inward simplicity that leads us to listen for the "still, small voice" of God's claim upon our lives. It is both a spiritual lens and a discipline of holy obedience. This way of living simplifies our lives because when we focus our energies on what we discern by listening within, we are able to release the extraneous activities and possessions that clutter our path.²

The Evolution of Simple Living

The idea of simple living has its roots in ancient soil, extending as far back as the times of Aristotle and Jesus, and reaching around the globe, encompassing both Eastern and Western civilizations.

In his introduction to The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture, David Shi acknowledges the contribution of spiritual teachers from the East—Buddha, Lao-Tse, Confucius, and Zarathustra—in influencing Western ideas of the simple life, but says that philosophers from ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the Hebrew prophets and Jesus, played a larger role.³

For example, Socrates advocated a golden mean between poverty and wealth, with Plato and Aristotle agreeing that it was important to lead a life that is carefully balanced materially and intellectually. And in the Old Testament, Agur prays, "Give me neither poverty nor riches" (Proverbs 30:8). In Matthew, Jesus advises "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth . . . but store for yourselves treasures in heaven . . ." (Matthew 6:19-20).

These admonishments set the stage for the evolution of simple living in the United States, beginning with the Puritans, who arrived in the New World in the early 1600s embracing Calvinist notions of the sanctity of work and the importance of helping the poor. According to Shi, the Puritans were not opposed to wealth, but to the potential for distancing from God that it created.⁴

The Quakers, arriving in the New World 50 years later, also strove to balance both earthly and spiritual concerns. Like the Puritans, they believed that people should enjoy the fruits of their labors, but should also keep only that which was sufficient for their needs. Further, the conscious decision to live simply would also bring one closer to God.

As Shi explains, the ideal of "republican simplicity"—again, a middle ground between poverty and wealth, and also emphasizing frugality and self-sacrifice—took hold during and after the American Revolution in the 1770s, with cousins John and Samuel Adams as some of its most passionate adherents. In the first half of the 1800s school reformers made a concerted effort to institutionalize republican simplicity for the masses, but the often heavy-handed and preachy attempts at moral instruction were not eagerly adopted. It wasn't until the American Transcendentalist movement, best exemplified by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, that the ideal of simple living was infused with new life.

The Transcendentalists' focus on the individual's realization of inner truth, combined with an appreciation for the natural world, represented a departure from what came before. This new view, also called "romantic simplicity," was eloquently expressed by William Henry Channing around 1840: "To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly . . . . This is my symphony."⁵

Emerson believed in balancing the material and spiritual aspects of life, but he believed the inner life to be superior; he also believed that wealth and improvements in technology were valuable only insofar as they served higher pursuits. Like Aristotle and some leaders of the Puritans and Quakers before him, Emerson believed that living the simple life could not be dictated or controlled by institutions, but needed to come from an inner self-control and self-reliance.⁶ Emerson also believed, through his own experience and observation, that the middle way was best: too much asceticism and too much luxury each impeded the inner life.

Thoreau, Emerson's intellectual intimate and occasional gadfly, took a more hands-on approach to simple living, which involved his famous Walden Pond experiment. Through encounters during his time there, he came to understand that those who live in a "primitive" manner aren't necessarily more enlightened than those who don't, but that some occasional removal from society is necessary to allow space for contemplation. Thus he does not prescribe any one way to live simply, but suggests each person must find the way for himself.⁷

The seeds of the concerns we have today can be seen in Lewis Mumford's critique of modern urban life in the 1920s—as "a blankness, a sterility, a boredom, a despair." As he urged Americans to reduce both their work hours and their consumption, he imagined a balance between the material and the spiritual: "We begin again to dream Thoreau's dream—of what it means to live a whole human life."⁸ It is a dream many of us share today.

Ten Ways to Embrace the Simple Life

1. Stay present. When you find your mind racing ahead or rehashing past events, take a deep breath and bring your focus to the here and now. When this moment is all there is and this place is where we are, we can think clearly and ground ourselves. More important, this moment is where we can know God.



2. Maintain a regular practice of prayer and meditation. By making the decision to consciously step off the hamster wheel of everyday concerns and turn your attention toward God, you are claiming a place for God in your life. By both speaking to (praying) and listening to (meditating) God, you will find a calm center from which to make your decisions about what is important to you.



3. Release clutter of all kinds from your life. When we think of clutter, we think of its physical manifestation, such as accumulations of mail, clothing that no longer fits, broken or worn-out items that we'll get to "some day" and so forth, but there is also another way of looking at it.
   
   Clutter can also be commitments you've made that are no longer working for you (such as serving on the PTA or some long-standing church committee), friendships that have soured or gone toxic over time, or unexamined habits such as watching TV for several hours every evening. It is useful to step back and examine every activity and commitment to discern whether it still fits; if it doesn't, release it freely. Especially examine those things you feel you "have" to do; you may find that you can let go of some of them.



4. Take time each day to ask, to paraphrase Jesus in Luke 10:42, "What is the one thing needful this day?" We are not machines, programmed to get as much done as possible without regard to its importance in our lives. Asking this question places you in the path of discernment, allowing God to help you discover what is true and right for you to do today. By paring away what is not essential to our lives, we allow space for God to move.



5. Do one thing at a time. This is really a corollary to #1. With our cultural emphasis on getting as much done as possible, we take pride in our ability to multi-task. We often even brag about how much we can do at one time (I cooked dinner, paid the bills, and talked to my mother on the phone!). Yet studies have shown that multi-tasking is actually less efficient than doing tasks sequentially,⁹ because doing tasks while our attention is divided means that we do them less well, and may have to do them over. Multi-tasking also reduces our enjoyment of the task at hand and takes us out of the present moment. When was the last time you felt God's presence while doing three things at once?



6. Put first things first. What is most important to you? If it is spending time with God, put your prayer and meditation time first. If it is taking some quiet time for yourself, or being in nature, or exercising, do that. In the financial world, there is often talk of "paying yourself first" by saving a percentage of your income. This is the same principle. Do what feeds you first so that you may then best discern how to feed others.



7. Celebrate the Sabbath. Because our work weeks usually are so hectic and full, we tend to use the weekends to catch up on our errands, housework, and paperwork, which really makes every day a workday. Consider truly celebrating the Sabbath as a day of spacious rest and renewal, allowing a breath of fresh air into your life so that you can take stock—and enjoy life while you're at it! And if you can find ways to incorporate mini-Sabbaths into your everyday life, try it.



8. Pay attention. This is also akin to being present, but in a deeper sense. Not only are you in the present moment, but you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell the details of what is around you. Often this brings about a moment of profound gratitude, in which a life of simplicity abounds.



9. Reacquaint yourself with nature. Go for a walk or simply step outside and breathe. Advocates of the simple life invariably advise slowing down enough to get in touch with the rhythms of nature, and to experience the world as truly wondrously made. Give yourself the gift of the great outdoors.



10. Turn off the TV. Even the most conscious of television viewers cannot help but be seduced by the steady stream of images that suggest our lives would be better if we bought that new car, found that perfect dress, tried the latest hair color, and so on. Legions of specialists in human behavior spend millions of dollars to get you to think that way. And if you believe TiVo is the answer (so you can skip the commercials), think again: you'll get the same messages—only in subtler form—in the shows you watch. Besides, think of the time you'll save by giving up TV!

Questions for Congregational Small Group Discussions

Simple Living is a great topic to engage in congregational small group discussions, because it is one that tends to be on people's minds as we experience the stresses of everyday life, not to mention economic downturns and job insecurity.

One way to approach this would be to sign up for the Northwest Institute's five-session Voluntary Simplicity course, which is designed for use in workplaces and faith communities. The website explains and presents the course modules.

You may also want to consider group study of Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective, which incorporates a detailed study guide.

Or, if you prefer a more informal approach, you may consider discussing the following questions:

1. How does the idea of simple living resonate with your spirit? Is it something you feel called to try? Why or why not?



2. Have you tried variations on this theme in your life before (such as deciding to reduce clutter and give away unwanted possessions or deciding to drive less as a way of being more environmentally responsible)? How did it work for you? Were you able to sustain it? What helped you or impeded you?



3. Is there one thing you can think of that you could implement in your life right now to live more simply? What is it? Are there any obstacles to your achieving it?



4. Of the 10 pointers listed above, which would be the most difficult for you to try? Why?



5. Is there something your congregation could act on to live more simply? Do you think your congregation is open to ideas in this arena, such as recycling or beginning a contemplative prayer group?

Recommended Resources

Here are some basic resources for congregational leaders seeking to learn about simple living and implement a simple-living ministry.

Awakening Earth (web resource)

The aim of Voluntary Simplicity author Duane Elgin's website is to contribute to a "sustainable, compassionate, and promising future for the human family," and it is a rich resource for those who want to delve into possibilities for an ecologically sustainable future for ourselves and the planet. The site (www.awakeningearth.org) contains the full text of interviews, articles, and book chapters on simple and sustainable living, as well as links to other online resources.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Simple Living (book)
Georgene Lockwood, author. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2000.

As the title implies, if you are looking for a basic overview of the concept of simple living, this would be a good place to start. Providing a bit of cultural and historical context, it then moves on to discuss how simple living can be achieved in the areas of money; food, clothing, and shelter; family, friends, and community; and the environment and education. It also provides a resource guide at the end to further pursue each of the topics.

The Simplicity Forum (web resource)

The Simplicity Forum (www.simplicityforum.org/index.html) is a self-described "think tank of academics and authors, activists and artists, educators and entrepreneurs" concerned with promoting simple, just, and sustainable ways of life. The site lists events, and has a comprehensive list of resources, from websites to books, articles, research, and other media. This is well worth a look for those who want to delve into this topic.

Unclutterer (blog)

This blog (unclutterer.com/) focuses on tips, strategies, and product reviews for those interested in home and office organization. It's more of a nuts-and-bolts approach than zenhabits, but it is rich in practical ideas. It also features a Simple Living section, as well as a reader Q&A column, which can be helpful for those suffering from intractable clutter-related issues.

Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich (revised edition) (book)
Duane Elgin, Author. New York: William Morrow, 1993.

This classic work provides a good overview of the tenets of simple living. The author describes what simple living is (and is not), provides the historical roots of simplicity, and enumerates the benefits of a simple, ecologically sustainable lifestyle on individual, community, and global levels.

Zenhabits (blog)

Covering everything from exploring our values to how to use Twitter more effectively, this blog (zenhabits.net) is a treasure trove of inspiration and guidance for how to pare down and live more simply and peacefully. There is an entire category entitled "Simplicity," with posts such as "10 Things You Can Do Today to Simplify Your Life" and "The Art of Doing Nothing."

Here are more in-depth resources for those who want to delve further into this topic.

General:
Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity (book)
Catherine Whitmire, Author. Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2001.

Whitmire's own journey toward plain living was bolstered by her encounter with the accumulated wisdom and lore of Quaker writers over the last 300 years. This inspiring book contains quotations and stories on subjects ranging from inward simplicity to work, time, and money, and from parenting and aging to discernment and decision-making.

Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective (book)
Michael Shut, editor. Denver, CO: Living the Good News, 1999.

With captivating essays from heavyweight writers such as Henri Nouwen, Wendell Berry, Frederick Buechner, and Gerald May, this book provides a rich variety of food for thought on subjects such as time, money, community, theology, food, lifestyle, and more. The book contains a detailed study guide, which would make it a wonderful choice for congregational small groups.

History:
The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture (book)
David E. Shi, author. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2007.

If you want a comprehensive history of the simplicity movement in the United States, you need look no further than this extraordinarily detailed book. The author's introduction gives a nod to Eastern and Western influences before plunging into fascinating historical accounts of the main characters in U.S. history who helped mold this movement. This book spans more than 300 years of history, from the Puritans and Quakers through the early 21st century, although the in-depth coverage only goes through the Reagan years (the original version of this book was published in 1985).

Materialism:
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (book; film also available)
John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor, authors. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2001.

Affluenza is defined by the authors as "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more." Many of us are only too well acquainted with its symptoms, but in this simultaneously alarming and witty book, there is hope. And one hope mentioned in Chapter 23 is the voluntary simplicity movement, with a discussion of how study circles are cropping up all over the country as people hunger for relief from this disease.

Personal Accounts:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (book)
Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, authors. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

This beautifully written, inspiring book is perhaps the best illustration of the difference between living a "simple" life and an "easy" life. Novelist Kingsolver and her family move from Arizona to a southwestern Virginia farm, resolving to eat only what they grow themselves or can buy locally (with a few exceptions, such as coffee and olive oil). They develop an extraordinary appreciation for the gifts of nature—in both its abundance and its harshness—and the reader is treated to a remarkable journey through the seasons.

Living Simply: Choosing Less in a World of More (book)
Joanne Heim, author. Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2006.

This book is what I would describe as a "cozy" read, in which the author presents her own family's journey as they attempt to live a simple life centered on God and family time. Liberally sprinkled with Bible verses and charming anecdotes, this book is for those who enjoy the thought of family time spent reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books aloud or creating different ways to celebrate the holidays that are more meaningful. Part memoir and part Life's Little Instruction Book, this would be enjoyable for an afternoon with a cup of tea. The author also has a Web site: www.thesimplewife.typepad.com.

About the Author

Lisa Kinney Colburn was the editor of the Alban Institute’s Congregations magazine from 2000-2004. Now a freelance writer, she is also an active member of Unity of Fairfax in Oakton, VA, where she participates in the music and prayer ministries. While Lisa aspires to the simple life and admires those who have mastered it, she is still addicted to her piles of books—but she has managed to kick TV!

1. "Nielsen Media Research Reports Television's Popularity Is Still Growing," Nielsen Media, 2006.


2. Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity, page 15.


3. The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture, page 4.


4. Ibid., page 12.


5. Ibid., page 128.


6. Ibid., page 132.


7. Ibid., page 149.


8. Ibid., page 231.


9. "Is Multitasking More Efficient? Shifting Mental Gears Costs Time, Especially When Shifting to Less Familiar Tasks," American Psychological Association, 2001.