These Voices, Advices and Queries have yet to be approved by Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Your comments to the Faith and Practice Revision Committee would be appreciated.
10. Simplicity
Simplicity: Queries
For individuals:
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?
For the meeting:
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?
Simplicity: Advices
How are we to honor the testimony of simplicity in our
modern world? To many of us, our culture seems so "busy" and so
complex, so full of disturbing news and distractions, that we are
often overwhelmed. Our time is often overcommitted, and our
wants are manipulated to make us desire what we do not need.
Our consumption of goods as a nation is out of control. In our
world, the word "simplicity" may be quickly followed by guilt and
then by a sense of frustration, or even despair. We need to think
of simplicity not as an impossible demand, but an invitation to
a more peaceful and fulfilling Spirit-led life.
Simplicity flows from a well-ordered life. It is less a matter
of doing without, than a spiritual quality that simplifies our lives
by putting first things first. A simple way of life, freely chosen, is
a source of strength, joy, and comfort.
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 those 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.
Simplicity: Voices
I wish I might emphasize how a life becomes simplified
when dominated by faithfulness to a few concerns. Too many of us
have too many irons in the fire. We get distracted by the
intellectual claim to our interest in a thousand and one good things,
and before we know it we are pulled and hauled breathlessly along
by an over-burdened program of good committees and
good undertakings. I am persuaded that this fevered life of
church workers is not wholesome. Undertakings get plastered on
from the outside because we can't turn down a friend. Acceptance
of service on a weighty committee should really depend upon
an answering imperative within us, not merely upon a
rational calculation of the factors involved. The concern-oriented life is
ordered and organized from within. And we learn to say No
as well as Yes by attending to the guidance of inner
responsibility. Quaker simplicity needs to be expressed not merely in dress
and architecture and the height of tombstones but also in the
structure of a relatively simplified and coordinated life-program of
social responsibilities. And I am persuaded that concerns
introduce that simplification, and along with it that intensification
which we need in opposition to the hurried, superficial tendencies
of our age.
Thomas R. Kelly, 1941
It's a dangerous thing to lead young Friends much into
the observation of outward things, which may be easily done, for
they can soon get into an outward garb, to be all alike outwardly,
but this will not make them true Christians: it's the Spirit that
gives life. I would be loath to have a hand in these things.
Margaret Fell Fox, 1698
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
[Simplicity] brings sanity to our compulsive extravagance,
and peace to our frantic spirit. It liberates us from what William
Penn called "cumber." It allows us to see material things for what
they are _ goods to enhance life, not to oppress life. People once again
become more important than possessions. Simplicity enables
us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible realities of
our global village.
Richard J. Foster, 1981
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
'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free
'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
We will be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we will not be ashamed;
To turn and turn will be our delight
Till by turning, turning we come `round right.
Shaker spiritual
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
But the wonderful thing about simplicity is its ability to
give us contentment. Do you understand what a freedom this is?
To live in contentment means we can opt out of the status race
and the maddening pace that is its necessary partner. We can
shout "NO!" to the insanity which chants, "More, more, more!"
We can rest contented in the gracious provision of God.
Richard J. Foster, 1981
Learn the wonderful truth that to increase the quality of
life means to decrease material desire; not vice versa.
Richard J. Foster, 1981,
These Voices, Advices and Queries have yet to be approved by Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Your comments to the Faith and Practice Revision Committee would be appreciated.
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