The Subversive Power of Simplicity

Hello Dear One!

Today’s Text: Romans 12:1-2 NIV

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Song:

Here is Jonathan McReynolds with an amazing song for contemplation. Lyrics are here. The chorus: “I find space for what I treasure. And I make time for what I want.
I choose my priorities and Jesus, You're my number one.” Such a great declaration song and the flow here is a lot of fun!

Question for Discussion:

• In what ways are you opening your hands today?

In your group:

I would suggest offering each person an agreed upon amount of time to answer this question, with someone working as a timekeeper. It is important that this time of conversation reflects the entire gathered community - even those who don’t usually share very often.

And as you close your time together:

I leave you with this blessing:

I release you in the power of the Holy Spirit into the world God so loves, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with the God, who sees the goodness and grace in you and walks proudly with you.

Many blessings,

Carmen

This post is offered for individual worship, and for sharing with your small group and member congregations. It is offered free of charge at this time - you do not need to be a paid subscriber to access this content. Please do share it with others who may appreciate the blessing in this message.

Notes:

(I have used transcription software to create these notes. I found some funny errors and left them in for your amusement.)

Hello Friend and welcome back to Riverside and Baptist Collective.

Today I wanna talk about simplicity.

Mountain Top Experience

Years ago, I took a week to go off by myself in a cabin on the mountain. Uh, it was beautiful, it was amazing. And I remember thinking, why can't I just live like this? Instead of what I had at the time was big house school golf course. Why couldn't my life just be this simple? And that began a journey for me. I remember the drive home. It was a long drive home, and along the way I saw rainbow after rainbow after rainbow. And it was a, for me, it's a personal symbol that God is nearby. And I walked back into my life and realized that I was miserable. It was time at that point to grow some courage and to make some big changes. I knew I could get to a different place, so that I could live the way I wanted to live, and so that I could be intentional.

So I began the hard work of making the changes in my life to live more intentionally. Now, culture tells us how we are supposed to live conform to the pattern of this world, the pattern that leads us to happiness and wealth. The pattern of this world is selfishness. It's all about me. Self-preservation, hands tightly closed. What was the cry of my heart on that mountain? What was that all about? Why did the simplicity feel so powerfully liberating?

Moravians

Writing about the Moravians, Phil Anderson wrote “simplicity of lifestyle and generosity with wealth were regarded as basic requirements of spiritual health.” Basic requirements, <laugh>

Franciscans

Writing about the Franciscans, “St. Francis and St. Clair created a life which they had little to lose, no desire for gain, no debts to pay, no luxuries they needed or wanted. And most of us can only envy them.”

Richard Rohr writes, “it seems to me that if Franciscans got back to the simplicity of our contemplative and peacemaking foundations, we might look again like the Catholic version of the Quakers in the Amish who initially resembled us. The world expects and longs for a truly unique, positive and inviting message from the followers of St. Francis of Assisi.” Amen.

Shakers

Brian Vanden Brink writes that “The Shakers put faith in God at the center of their lives. It was a Shaker belief that making something well was himself an act of prayer. They integrated their aesthetic into all that they made or did. And that aesthetic was spiritually based. Order, simplicity, industriousness community living and making ordinary things beautiful. These were the important aspects of their lives.”

Mennonites

And among Mennonites, Ken Martin's Free's (Friesen) rights that “the biblical ethic of simplicity remains central to the Anabaptist movement. Even as the gradual process of assimilation into North American culture eroded the understanding of what simplicity means.”

So what did they know that we may have forgotten? That's a tough question, but I think part of it is that they knew how to let it go.

• In 1790, the average house size in the United States was 831 square feet. And an average of five and a half people lived per house. I don't know who the half guy is. <laugh>.

• In 1910, the house was 945 square feet.

• In 1950, it had one bathroom.

• In 1973, that house had doubled to 1,660 square feet with one or more bathrooms.

• In 1982, 3 quarters of all new construction had two or more bathrooms.

• In 2015, the average home size had tripled to 2,687 square feet with an average of only 2.5 occupants.

• In 2023 houses were an average size of 2,286 square feet.

• 4% of new construction had one bathroom,

• 62% had two,

• 26% had three and

• 8% had four or more bathrooms.

Now this trend of moving from smaller houses with more people into larger houses with fewer people has left us feeling isolated and disconnected and alone.

Now, lest we think that it's this way in the entire developed world…

• in England, the average house size is 739 square feet.

• And in London it's smaller at 705.

So what do we really need or is our sense of need based on what we're used to? What do we actually need?

• Many women in the 18 hundreds had an everyday dress and a Sunday best dress.

• In 1950, the average woman had five everyday dresses and three Sunday best dresses.

• In 1980, it was the “more is more” decade and women and men owned lots of clothing.

• In 2023, a blogger wrote that “research found that a sufficient wardrobe consists of 74 garments and 20 outfits in total.” That was deemed “sufficient”.

So this idea of what we need is a moving target. It's partly cultural.

Our sense of need is based on what we're used to having, but it's not always the same thing as actual need.

So how do we change the mindsets so that we are more focused on what we actually need? 'cause:

What you're used to determines what you think you need, change what you're used to and it will change what you need. -Carmen Shenk

For example, if you've never had a dishwasher, you know that you don't need one. But if you've lived with a dishwasher for a while, you probably cannot imagine life without one.

Shame messages

I also think it's important to recognize that many of the marketing messages aimed at us are basically a message of shame. You aren't enough, but you could be if you bought this product. Now, it's never that overt. This is a very savvy industry, but the next time you're tempted by a great ad, stop for a second and think about its fundamental message.

Is it sending you a message that you are not okay as the child of God that you are? See, I think we can all expand our skills in resistance. We need to say no to to these shame messages. And sometimes that means refusing the purchase. Sometimes it means taking the Amazon app off of our phone!

Friction

Put some friction between you and making purchases that are just a little bit too easy. Delete the cards in your online wallet so that you actually have to enter the card number every time you want to buy something. Adding friction into the system gives you a minute to think about what you're really buying and who you're buying it from, because I think you need to know and be reminded that you are enough. And there isn't anything that you can buy this weekend that will make you more valuable than you are right now because you are enough.

Tiny House Life

In 2014, Xavier and I were frazzled and frustrated. He was running the pipe organ business and I was running our restaurant and we were working all the time, <laugh>, and we weren't getting to see each other. It was just crazy. And we were both exhausted. We were both having health issues.

And so we had one of those “come to Jesus” conversations and we sold the restaurant and then we found an ad on Craigslist for a tiny house.

We got to the place where it was and we went inside the tiny house and we looked around to see the whole thing. And basically that looked like this (turns in a circle while standing in one spot) because there wasn't a lot of space to move around inside. So we just turned in circles and looked at everything <laugh>.

Then I remember we both went outside to just check out how the outside of it looked. And I remember that Xavier and I met in the back. The owner was in the front and we had met in the back. And I looked up at Xavier and I said, because it was tiny <laugh>, can we really live this way? And my husband is a genius about things sometimes, and he just pulled me close and said, of course we can. As long as we are together, we can do anything.

Now, at the beginning it was lovely. There was a honeymoon stage. Everything was cute. Little bitty stuff, little bitty fridge. It was all so cozy and comfortable and warm and lovely. And then it wasn't <laugh>.

Then I got frustrated because I thought I didn't have the space to do the things that I wanted to do. And the road back from that sense of deprivation and that frustration was intentional, simple living.

See what I know now that I didn't know then was the key to simplicity was your sense of purpose in a season. So stock your life to meet that purpose and then let go of the rest. Now knowing your life purpose, now we've kind of made this into some big thing. It's kind of unknowable or whatever, but it's really not. It's seasonal. It's changes it, there's some ebb and flow to it. And sometimes you'll make adjustments to what you own and for you know, the purpose in a new season.

And that's fine. Find your sense of purpose in this season, stock your life to meet that purpose and then let go of the rest.

What are actual needs?

And also having a grounded sense of need is important. It's important to be able to say “this is enough”. It's especially important when millions of dollars of marketing messages are aimed at you every day. And yes, some of them are targeting you very specifically.

Quaker teacher Richard Foster, suggests 10 principles of simplicity. (Now, I've changed the wording here a little bit, but these are his ideas.)

1. Buy things for their long term usefulness by quality.

2. Learn the difference between a need and an addiction and seek support for addictions and regain freedom.

3. Develop the habit of giving things away (that can just be so much fun).

4. Avoid short-lived gadgets that promise to save time, they will probably break that promise <laugh>.

5. Enjoy things without owning them. Libraries, parks, restaurants. You don't have to have a big dining room and a lot of chairs and a lot of plates and everything to serve friends who can meet in a restaurant.

6. Nurture an appreciation for nature. Get outside, connect to the earth. See the views, enjoy it.

7. Get out and stay out of debt. (Yikes, I’m meddling now! Y’all ok?)

8. Use plain honest speech. Say what you mean and keep your commitments.

9. Reject anything that oppresses others. For example, buy fair trade products. Don't shop at stores that don't pay their workers a livable wage. Avoid fast fashion.

10. Seek God's kingdom of love and justice foremost. And if anything distracts you from that purpose, let it go.

And look, I'm not here to shame you for owning things. We own some beautiful things. I'm not here to condemn you. Xavier and I live in a small house intentionally so that our collections don't get out of hand. They do sometimes and we have to reset. But the beauty of living in a small house is we can't bring it home if it doesn't fit. And so every time we bring something in, something else has to go. So I'm not saying that we all need to live in tiny spaces. I am saying that we could stand to live intentionally.

Moravians

Writing about the Moravians, Phil Anderson wrote, “Simplicity of lifestyle and generosity with wealth are regarded as basic requirements of spiritual health.”

“Basic”

It's a little offensive, isn't it? Because simplicity is not something that we even really talk about anymore. I had a difficult time finding it in the “Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective” as more than a passing comment.

The Prosperity Doctrine

And I can tell you that the Prosperity doctrine puts pressure on people to look wealthy and look “blessed’, which may mean running up debt they really can't afford to appear blessed by God.

And that's a trap.

Don't fall for it.

Romans 12:1-2 MSG.

“So here's what I want you to do. God helping you take your everyday, ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God. Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You can be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always driving you down to its level of maturity, God brings the best out of you and develops well-formed maturity in you.”

The key here is hands open.

Letting go is a skill.

Start in the closet. Do something very simple and very tactile and easy. That's a great place to start.

Then also while you're at it, let go of comparing yourself with others…

Or let go of jealousy.

See, I think we compare what our house looks like on our worst day, to what some influencer's house looks like on their best day, not knowing what's behind the camera. See, it is not difficult to make your space look better than it is for the camera. <laugh> Everything on social media is basically an illusion.

You may never know how many dirty dishes they move out of the sink to get that perfect shot of their beautiful kitchen. And after they got the shot, the dirty dishes go back and they go post online.

So beware that what's behind the camera may not always be readily apparent.

Letting go continued…

So we can graduate to other harder things like letting go of ruminating on what somebody said…

Or letting go of an old grudge.

Making Room

See, these things take up space in our hearts and in our homes space that could be filled with mission and purpose and the power of the Holy Spirit. So Lord, your kingdom come into these empty spaces. You will be done on these earthly planes as it is in heaven. Your kingdom coming here, Lord God, moving closer to us, coming to us in kindness and grace and healing.

So what did those Moravians and Mennonites and Franciscan and Shakers and Quakers know that we have forgotten?

I believe they knew the fine art of letting go.

I believe that they knew how to live with their hands wide open.

So can we.

Prayer

So Lord, I come to you with my overflowing closet and the dirty dishes in my sink and the dirt that is under every rug in my house. I come to you with the things that I bought for the dopamine hit or because I was doom scrolling in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep or the things that I thought would help me feel or look better. And most of them didn't work or to come with the products I was told would make me worse. Something that I'm not, that would make me more attractive, more interesting, or would make me look wealthy. I recognize that these marketing messages have made me feel like I wasn't enough. Lord, give me a fresh understanding of who I am to you and your amazing love toward me.

Thank you that I am created in your image. You stepped back in creation and you looked us over and you called us good. And you look at us through the lens of grace. We thank you that there is no condemnation in your perspective.

We are a new creation being made into your image and the old is passing away. Lord, help us develop a skill of letting go and the little things, even as we clean out the fridge and let go of the bottle of whatever that was that we haven't used for ages, that then, Lord, help us let go of the big stuff too.

Show us how.

Open our eyes, give us insight. Clear the slate.

Get rid of the gunk, the shame, the malignant stuff, and the cycles of blame, and whatever that is that's growing fuzz in the back of the fridge.

Lord, set us free from our consumerism, our colonialism, and our materialism.

Make us impervious to shame-based marketing messages.

Guide us to use the resources you've given us wisely, locally, and with integrity. Thank you for giving us the strength and the ability to make a giving.

Thank you for the challenge to return to our heritage as Mennonites, Anabaptists, Franciscans, Amish, Shakers, and Quakers. Lord, thank you for these people who lived in a way that is an example for us now.

Lord, we thank you for the way you love us and the way you care for us and the way that you free us from shame and make us strong. And make us true.

Thank you Lord.

And now friend, I release you in the power of the Holy Spirit into the world that God so loves to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with the God who sees your beauty and walks proudly with you. Amen.