On Email and Facebook Habits

Apparently, it's time to re-think my email and Facebook habits. They've gotten a little silly. Here's the back story:

This is what my email habit used to be like, before simplicity:
6:00-6:30am - Alarm went off. I immediately went to the email app on my phone. What if I had missed something overnight??!! I read it, but don't respond or sort it - it just stayed in the inbox to deal with later.

9:00am - Now that I was at work, I actually responded to those emails I read earlier and sorted them out of the inbox.

Throughout the day, at ridiculously short intervals, I would check the email.... right up until I was in bed ready to go to sleep. But at some point in the evening, I would stop responding and sorting, just leaving them in the inbox, unless it was something really urgent.

I think that "something really urgent" might have happened once? Ever?

But what would happen was this: I would get an email at 9pm that I would worry about for the next twelve hours, that would keep me up at night, that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about. Or I would wake up and the first thing I would see was an email that worried me. (I worry easily.)

And every one of those emails could have waited until 9am the next morning.

This is what my Facebook habit used to be like, before simplicity:
Every time I checked my email, I would check Facebook too. In case there was something good. What was the "something good" I was looking for? Still not sure. It mostly left me feeling depressed, angry, or like I had just wasted a bunch of time.



Yep, that was me.


A few months ago, I adopted new habits, in the interest of simplicity:
Read emails ONLY AT WORK, where I can immediately respond and sort. Don't open the email app outside of work. Don't open it! Leave it alone! Trust that if there's an emergency, someone will call rather than email. On the Sabbath (which I take on Fridays), don't open the email app at all. At all! No touchy!

I made my Facebook app a little bit harder to get to on my phone, and turned off the notifications. I briefly checked it each morning ONLY AT WORK to see if anything really earth-shattering had happened, gave myself a rough time limit, and then closed it for the rest of the day. I didn't open the app on my phone at all.



These new habits were terrific! I loved them. They made my whole day better. And I never missed anything important.

A few weeks ago, I totally lost these wonderful new habits. I'm finding myself, again, checking email and Facebook as I wake up in the morning, way too often throughout the day, and way too late at night. Why? It makes me sad and anxious and wastes a lot of time to do this. So why do it?

As with all the things that keep us away from simplicity, it's about unfounded fears:

• The fear that if I don't check email and Facebook, something will happen that will be out of my control. The reality is that things will happen out of my control whether I check my email or not.
• The fear that if I don't check email and Facebook, someone will have a problem that they can resolve without me, and I won't be needed. Seriously? Dumb. But still there - we all need to be needed.
• The fear that if I don't check email and Facebook, something disastrous is happening that I'm responsible for, and I won't know about it until it's too late. There's an emergency that needs my immediate attention, and if I fail, then people will think less of me.
• The fear that I'm disconnected from people I love. Ironically, of course, checking email and Facebook too much tends to create disconnection rather than connection.
• The fear that I don't have something to do. Too often, I do this just out of boredom. I'm between one thing and the next. I'm waiting for somebody or for a particular time. What do I do in the meantime? Pull out the phone and check the email and Facebook. But in truth, it's okay to not have something to do. Some of our best moments come at those times.

So, my friends, this is my commitment to going back to much healthier, simpler habits regarding email and Facebook. See you at 9am! (But not tomorrow, 'cause it's the Sabbath.)

Question and Response

Every so often, we have a "Question and Response" day at church. I like to post those here, as well. We had some great questions. I certainly don't have all the answers, and I welcome comments and discussion!

1. Would it be possible to have small Communion cups for people who can’t see so well?

Yes! Thank you for asking! And I encourage you to always ask questions like this. Speak up for what you need to better connect with God. I can’t promise that we’ll always be able to make it happen, but we certainly can’t if we don’t know. Thanks for asking, and let’s do it!

2. What does the Bible offer us?

We call the Bible the “Word of God.” That means different things to different people, but let me share what it means to me.

In the first part of the gospel of John, it says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” It’s talking about Jesus, Jesus as the Word of God. The Greek word that’s used is “Logos.” In ancient Greek culture, the idea of “logos” was some kind of wisdom or consciousness that permeated everything and was involved in creation. So the gospel writer is using that idea and applying it to Jesus, saying that Jesus is the Logos of God, Jesus is the Word of God, Jesus is the wisdom or consciousness that permeates everything, that was involved in creation.

And then John says that the Word of God became a human being. “The Word became flesh and made his home among us.”

There’s a theologian named Karl Barth who took this idea and thought, well, if Jesus is the Word of God, then how is the Bible the word of God? This is what he came up with, and I think it makes a lot of sense.

Karl Barth says this: God is really, really interested in communicating with humanity, in having a relationship with human beings. God is so interested in that that God became human, basically to communicate with us. God communicates in lots of different ways, in prayer, in the actions of the prophets recorded in the Old Testament, in fact, God can communicate in any way God pleases - Barth’s famous example is that God can communicate even through a dead dog on the side of the road. A little grisly, but true, right? God can communicate any way God wants.

And at the same time, we don’t have any control over whether God communicates or not. That’s totally up to God. There are some places, like the Bible, where God frequently chooses to communicate. But not always. We can’t force God to communicate. We have to look where God has chosen.

And the one place that God has chosen to communicate completely - not just to communicate a little bit about who God is, this is not just a brief text message from God or just a voicemail on an answering machine, this is God showing up at our door - the one place where that has happened is in the life of Jesus. That’s why Jesus is the “Word of God.” Because in the life of Jesus, God has communicated God’s own self to the world. God has said, “This is who I am. This is what I want from humanity. This is how much I love you.” It’s not that Jesus’ words are the word of God, but Jesus’ whole life, from beginning to end, everything he said and did, is the Word of God.

So if that’s the case, if Jesus is the number one place where we get to see who God is, what life is for, how we ought to live and think of ourselves, then what we really need, two thousand years later, is lots of folks to tell us about Jesus. Because we weren’t there. So that’s what the Bible is. In Karl Barth’s view, it’s really not quite right to say that the Bible is the Word of God. That’s Jesus and Jesus alone. The Bible is the witness to the word of God. The Bible tells us about the word of God. In the Old Testament, the Bible shows us the culture, the religion, the traditions and stories that formed Jesus, the culture and religion and traditions in which God chose to be born. That has got to be relevant for who God is - God could have chosen any place, any time, and God picked that place and time. So we should get to know as much as we can about it. And the New Testament describes Jesus, the Word of God, based on the accounts of those who lived with him.

So that’s what I think the Bible offers us: the clearest window that we have into who God is, what life is about, how we ought to live, and how we ought to think of ourselves. That includes great comfort and great challenge, but most of all it includes knowing that we are here for a purpose, that we are loved just as we are, and that God is still working in our lives.

3. If all Christians go to heaven when they die, where do all the rest go?

This is a huge question, and entire books have been written about it. I highly recommend Love Wins, by Rob Bell, which looks closely at what the Bible actually says, is easy to read, and brings up a lot of the questions that all of us naturally ask. You may not agree with Rob Bell’s conclusions, and that’s okay – it’s still a great overview. I also want to say that I have had to make choices here about what to include and what to leave out. I have my own beliefs about this, which inevitably color my response. I am not right about everything, and I am still learning. You are welcome to disagree or to come to different conclusions. I also recommend reading the Bible on your own to come to your own answers. A good place to start for this question is by reading Luke and Romans.

Overall, the Bible is pretty quiet about what happens when we die - it’s just not the main subject, life right now is the main subject. Much of what the Bible does have to say on the subject is metaphorical, including the book of Revelation and many other passages. The passage I find most helpful in thinking about what happens when we die is from 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul says that life after we are raised from the dead will be so different from life now that it’s like the difference between a tree and a seed. Again, a metaphor, but I find it helpful because it basically says, “No, we don’t really know exactly what life is going to be like after death, but we can trust God that it will be good.”

But we want to control it, don’t we? We want to know the itinerary, we want to read the guidebook, we want to know that it’s worth going, we want to know the road map of how we get there. And we want to make sure that all the people we love are going to get there, too.

So let’s see what the Bible says about going to heaven. And again, the Bible doesn’t give us a clear road map: Do x, y, and z, and you get to heaven. In fact, it goes back and forth between two ideas: your actions are key, or the grace of God is key. There are passages like Matthew 25, where Jesus is talking about the end times and separates people based on whether they’ve fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, taken care of the sick. In these passages, it’s clear that what you do determines whether you go to heaven or not. And there are other passages that emphasize that it’s only by God’s grace - by God’s free gift - and it has absolutely nothing to do with human actions. Paul, the writer of Romans and many other books of the New Testament, held to this view quite consistently, though he also says that a good life is important. That second view, that grace is key, is where most Protestant churches have landed. A good life is still important, but the good life is the evidence of God’s grace, not the thing that makes us deserve God’s grace.

So how do we get to heaven? If it’s by God’s grace, does that mean that it’s by claiming the opinion that Jesus is God and that his death and resurrection get you to heaven? What about people who do what Jesus said but aren’t sure whether they can even believe in heaven? What about people who claim Jesus but don’t even make a hint of an effort to follow him? What about those who lived before Jesus, or before worldwide evangelism, or in some other way never heard about Jesus? What about your kids or brothers or sisters or friends who you love, people you believe that God created out of love, but who don’t believe in Jesus?

Many Christians, including me, believe that all those people will actually go to heaven. And many of us feel some guilt for believing that - like we’re somehow twisting faith, we’re cheating somehow. But even though it feels like cheating, we can’t help it. We just can’t get ourselves to believe that a good, loving God could love our kids, our brothers and sisters and friends, any less than we do. We just can’t get ourselves to believe that a good, loving God could condemn someone to eternal punishment based on one mistake. But sometimes we feel guilty for believing that, because the overwhelmingly more publicized Christian position is that some will go to heaven, and others will go to hell.

But as we already explored, the Bible has very little to say about heaven and hell, and much of it is metaphorical. Here are three different positions that all have solid Scriptural support - even though they’re not all widely publicized. And it’s not cheating, it’s not twisting Scripture, it’s really just looking at what does the Bible say. Three positions with solid Scriptural support:

-Position A: The widely publicized position that some go to eternal heaven, a big party with God, and others go to eternal punishment. For instance, Matthew 25:46 “They will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.”

-Position B: A much less publicized but still Biblical position: some go to eternal heaven, a big party with God, and others are destroyed completely. For instance, the famous John 3:16, which promises that whoever believes in Jesus will have eternal life - the opposite implied is not eternal punishment, but eternal death. There are other passages that support this as well.

-Position C: God keeps giving us chance after chance to accept the gift of heaven. There is no arbitrary cut-off line set at death. There is no “too late.” As Romans 8 says, “I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.” Death is explicitly listed there. Nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ. There are other passages that support this position, as well.

As you may be able to tell, this is the position that makes the most sense to me. I don’t think it excludes the idea of a temporary punishment or cleansing after death. In fact, it makes sense to me that we would all experience some kind of cleansing after death. But there is no clear Biblical argument that death is the last chance, period. There are a couple of verses that seem to hint at that, but in my opinion, they are far from convincing. In my view, the whole direction of scripture points to love that does not stop giving second chances. The whole story of Israel, the story of the prodigal son, Jesus’ life and death and resurrection, the Bible is full of a God who does not stop giving second chances.

So the question was, “If all Christians go to heaven after they die, where do all the rest go?” Others may answer this differently. There’s Scriptural evidence for different positions. But my reading of Scripture, my knowledge of God, my experience of love, says that nothing can separate us from God’s love, not even death. That eventually, we will all gladly accept the free gift of heaven that God offers.

Again, I recommend Rob Bell's Love Wins. A more technical discussion can be found here.

4. Why do people go to church?

I think you all can answer this better than me. I can tell you why I go to church. First, take a moment and think: why do you go to church?

I love church because I think it’s a practice-run for the kingdom of God. This is like the rehearsal hall for the kingdom of God. Human beings have the privilege and the responsibility of working with God to create the kingdom of God, to create a world of love, joy, peace, hope. We struggle with it and we mess up a lot, but I think that’s part of our purpose in life.

And that’s really hard. It means loving folks who are different from ourselves. It means trying to figure out together what the kingdom of God really looks like, and none of us have quite the same ideas. And even when we agree on what it looks like, we’re often really bad at it. I believe that in the kingdom of God, nobody is afraid to talk to their neighbor. Guess what? I’m still afraid to talk to my neighbor.

So church is the place where I can practice. Where I can try it out, and maybe I say something awful, but here it’s okay because I’m forgiven. Here it’s okay, because I’m loved, and whoever I say that awful thing to, well, they can tell me, so that I can learn and do better next time. At least, that’s church at its best.

I also love church because I really need a lot of help remembering that God is a part of my life. I need lots of spiritual practices. I need to pray and read the Bible and sing every day. I need to meet with folks who will ask me how it goes with my soul. I need to come to church every week and be surrounded with other folks who are hoping to get a glimpse of God. Because if I’m left to myself, I’ll forget. I’ll get caught up in the tiny things of life, in the trivialities, and I don’t mean the beautiful tiny things but the tiny things that start to feel like huge burdens and mountains to climb and terrifying monsters. I need constant reminders that I belong to God, that I am loved, that no matter what I do or don’t do, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

5. Why are so few coming to church? Where are all the youth?

First, how many are coming to church? We’re going to focus on US trends here, and we’ll see that they are reflected in our local church - and in thousands and thousands of local churches across the country.

In the 1948, Gallup polls started asking about religious affiliation. At that time, 91% of Americans identified as Christian. Ninety-one percent! That held steady for a couple of decades, and in 1975 it started inching down, 87%, in 1990, 82%, in 2010, 76%, and in 2014, 72%. That includes all Christians - Catholic, Protestant, and more. But the group in there that changed most dramatically was Protestant - including the United Methodist Church. In 1948, 69% of the US was Protestant. In 2014, 37% of the US was Protestant. Most, though not all, of that drop has come from folks under 35.

Compared with those statistics, our particular local church has actually stayed much more consistent. We’ve fluctuated some but we’ve generally averaged between 70 and 120 folks on a Sunday over the years - a pretty wide range still. Some of that difference is explained by how people go to church now - many folks who consider themselves regular churchgoers attend church maybe twice a month. Other weeks, they’re traveling, they’ve got other commitments, they’re working. Many of our most faithful members simply can’t be here every week. That was the case far less often fifty years ago. Many more folks came to church basically every week. So even though the number of folks involved in the church has not dropped dramatically, the average Sunday attendance has gone down noticeably.

But that certainly doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain how in 1948, 69% of the US was Protestant, and in 2014, 37% of the US was Protestant. That kind of huge change - that represents millions and millions of people - that means a few things. First, it means that nothing this particular church has done or not done has caused this change. There was never a magic formula to get folks to come to church. There was no program that could have reversed this change. There was no huge mistake in our theology or our approach to Battle Ground or our choice to be a United Methodist Church or in our leadership or anything that has caused fewer people to be going to church. This is happening in basically every church, basically everywhere in our country. There are exceptions, but those exceptions also don’t have a magic formula or program or perfect theology.

Fewer people in church, and especially fewer young people, feels like failure for church. We often have it as our goal to get more people, to reach people for Christ, to, as the mission of the UMC says, “Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Those are good things. But if we look at the declining numbers of Christians in America and we feel like we’re failing somehow, I think first we need to look farther back than 1948.

I read this in a blog recently - unfortunately I accessed the blog through Facebook and now it’s lost on the Internet and I’ll never find it again. But this blog claimed - and I think it’s true - that when we compare how many folks go to church now with how many folks went to church in the 1950’s, we’re missing something really big. The 1950’s, this blog claimed, were not by any means the norm of religion throughout history. Rather, because of our national reactions to the Great Depression and two World Wars, that was a time when an abnormally large percentage of folks made it a priority to go to church. In much of western history, while most folks would claim some sort of belief in God, the reality is that a huge portion of folks were Christian in name only - nominally, but not actively, Christian.

In the 1800’s, as folks made their way across the western frontier, the United States was nominally, but not actively - in fact, one estimate is that in 1850, only 34% of Americans adhered to a particular denomination or church. That’s way lower than what we see today. We were nominally, but not actively, Christian.

England was nominally, but not actively, Christian in the 1700’s when John and Charles Wesley started the ministry that would lead to the beginning of the Methodists. Europe was nominally, but not actively, Christian in the 1600’s when Martin Luther and other Reformers started calling for people to live out their Christianity more deeply. Even in the 300’s, when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity basically the national religion of Rome, folks were nominally, but not actively, Christian. And before that, when Christians were persecuted throughout Rome, they were such a minority that they probably couldn’t have imagined a nation where 72% of people claimed Christianity of some kind - and that number was a significant decrease.

And yet, God was working in every one of those times.

We often feel like we’re failing because the number of people who claim Christianity is going down. The number of people in church is going down.

But what I wonder is: What is God getting us ready for? What is the Holy Spirit up to? I don’t really want to be nominally, but not actively, Christian. I don’t want that to be what success looks like. I want to follow the Holy Spirit, even if it’s only a group of twelve. I want to follow the Holy Spirit, even if it means being criticized and laughed at. And I trust completely that the Holy Spirit is leading us somewhere good. I have no idea what that’s going to look like. But I trust the Spirit.

(See statistics here and here.)

6. Please tell us one thing that Paul did to promote Christianity and build the church that was just beginning. What does that mean for our church?

Paul never gave up on Jesus. Paul was frequently very, very frustrated. He was frustrated with the people he ministered with; too often, they got caught up in spats, or in theologies that Paul didn’t agree with, or they felt hopeless and helpless in the face of persecution. He got mad, he got loud about it, he was thrown in prison, he was almost certainly executed. But he never gave up on Jesus. He never gave up the passion he had or Jesus. How completely all-in he was for Jesus. He never said to somebody, “The Holy Spirit has left you.” He kept praying, he kept showing up, he kept doing anything he could do to show the love of Jesus with every single breath, to as many people as he could. It was largely Paul’s passion that the Holy Spirit worked through to build the church that was just beginning.

7. I was thinking that maybe to draw more young families to our church, that I could organize a “date night” for our community. Parents could drop their kids off here for a couple hours and go out on a date. We could put in The Reflector, the BG Facebook page, and so on!

Yes! Let’s do it! Come and talk to me about details. I wanted to read this one aloud because if we’re following the Holy Spirit, it means trying things. The Spirit frequently doesn’t sit still. The Spirit prompts us, and we get to follow. So thank you for listening to the Spirit, and for taking action on it.

8. Sing some hymns from Godspell

Okay!

On Accepting Invitations, One Step at a Time (including a cute dog picture)

Periodically in my life, I've been awesome at exercising. I would walk every day, or run every day, or go to the gym two or three times each week. This has generally lasted between a few weeks and a few months before the habit falls apart - but I've always been able to get back into it after a while.

Then came 2015.

2015 is the first year I've ever met my health insurance deductible. And that was all by the middle of April. My newly re-started running career hit a wrinkle in January when I got the shingles. (Yes, I'm 30. Yes, that seems to young to get shingles. Yes, I got it anyway.) And that was just the beginning of this screwy year for my body.

So... now I'm not really walking. Or running. Or going to the gym. Or, in general, moving more than I absolutely have to.

Every day, my husband Erik takes our dog, Henry, for a short walk. For the sake of cuteness, here's a picture of Henry:

While I was running every day, or walking every day, I'd usually decline to go with them on these walks. You know, I already got my exercise in for the day - usually much farther and more intense than a dog walk. Checked that box; now's the time to sit and relax.

So every day Erik would ask, "Do you want to come with us?" and I would say no.

And then when I had shingles, and all the other screwy stuff, well, no, I didn't want to go. For some of that time, I could barely walk.

"Do you want to come with us?" "No."

Well, I'm feeling better now. Feeling like I should be exercising again. Only now, it's overwhelming. How did I ever find time to do that before? I can't figure it out.

It recently occurred to me that the simple thing to do is not to decide, all of a sudden, to start running 2 miles a day every day again. Maybe that's something I'll get to in the future.

The simple thing is to take the small invitation that's offered to me every day by a great husband and a cute dog: "Do you want to come with us?"

Simplicity starts where we are. It's not about jumping into something overwhelming, all at once, to totally fix our lives or to be somebody else. It's about being who we are and taking one small step, every day, to be more and more the person that God has called and created us to be. One step at a time, build a habit - or let go of a habit - that lets you be the whole person God has made you to be.

And I think part of simplicity is seeing the easy opportunities that call to us every day - and to not just keep rejecting them out of hand as I was doing. Little by little, step by step, saying "yes" to those opportunities.

"Do you want to come with us?" Okay. Let's give it a try, one step at a time.

On Failing as a Practice of Simplicity

Oh, my. At the beginning of the year I said "I'll have a simplicity experiment every week this year and blog about it." This is not the first time I've made such a commitment. And it's not the first time I've failed at it. You would think I would learn. I just keep thinking, "This time it will be different!" Guess what? Not different.

So, my simplicity practice for the past.... four weeks.... is to let go of another failure. This particular failure is about a commitment to blog. But more broadly, letting go of failures is central to simplicity.

If I'm living in simplicity, I will fail. I will fail at:

1. Getting a new set of hubcaps for my car. Our car discards hubcaps like yesterday's Kleenex. Seriously, they never last more than a few months. We replaced them for a while - or, more accurately, a generous car dealership replaced them for free when we took the car in for an oil change. When they were gone again at the next oil change, I think the dealership gave up on us. Because we are choosing to live in simplicity, I will proudly not buy hubcaps. Which means I will also fail at...

2. Actually being okay with not buying hubcaps for my car. I know it's a waste of money. I know it's pointless and truly not a big deal. But still, every time I see another 2006 Toyota Corolla I check to see if that one also has the hubcap flaw. If I see bare wheels, I feel better about myself (See? They don't have hubcaps either! I'm okay!). If there are hubcaps, I feel the need to imagine that driver's life as one of endless hubcap replacements - that silly person! If they were as smart as me, they would proudly drive sans hubcaps! Oy.

3. My to-do lists. I will do my best to not overcommit myself, and I will screw it up. And then my to-do lists will be far too long and by the time I get to some of the things on them, they will be ancient history, and I'll cross them off because now they're pointless. And then I'll have to either tell someone I failed, or hope they don't notice. My blog will sit in silence for a month. I will fail.

4. Being everyone else. That person can exercise, and keep their house clean, and do a great job at work, and sleep, and spend time with friends, and keep up on the news, and, and, and. That person wrote a blog post literally days after she gave birth. And for all the sentiments that that person is not me, and I have things to give that are valuable that nobody else can give, and I don't know how much that person struggles - those sentiments are just hard to believe sometimes. Often. But if I'm living in simplicity, I will fail - utterly - to be that person. I'll fail at even tricking myself or others into thinking I'm that person. 


Actually, none of these failures are there because I'm trying to live in simplicity. I would be failing at all this stuff whether I was seeking simplicity or not. Perhaps if someday I find true simplicity, that will mean that I've learned to accept these failures as valuable and good. Here's hoping.

Right now, at least I can accept that these failures are certain. And even though they still bother me, I know that God's vision of me is not one of failures. That's good enough for now.

On Unsubscribing

Simplicity, Week 8: Unsubscribing

This week I've been simplifying my inbox. I've been actually opening every piece of mail, deciding whether I want to keep getting that particular update, sales pitch, newsletter, blog, and on and on and on.... and then, very often, scrolling to the bottom and clicking "Unsubscribe." I'm getting closer to only being subscribed to mailing lists I actually want to and will read.

I didn't realize that unsubscribing was simplifying at first. I just got tired of pushing "Delete" twelve times a day on junk email. But in talking with some friends yesterday, I realized that it didn't just clear out the junk from my inbox. It cleared my mind somewhat, too. I no longer need to feel guilty for not reading that newsletter that I've never, ever read. Many of the newsletters I was getting were intentionally trying to make me angry - I suppose as a way of getting me to open them, getting me to take action, getting my attention. But I don't need to deal with that anymore.

Hitting "Unsubscribe" gives me just a twinge of guilt each time: I know that real people put real effort into the material that they email me a dozen times each day. I know (or at least I think) that for some of the political material, just a name on a mailing list actually does make a bit of a difference, even if I don't open the email. But guess what? Nobody has called me to say, "You're ruining my life by getting off our mailing list." Nobody has called me to say, "You're failing to make a difference in the world by getting off our mailing list." Actually, I don't think it makes a bit of difference to them, and it's quite foolish for me to think that it does.

The other foolish thing has been that all of a sudden, my inbox feels very empty. It's ridiculous, but it makes me feel less important, less essential. Doesn't anyone have anything to say to me? I think, when the inbox is empty again. As though the primary measure of my importance is anything except that I am a child of God. And not only that, but it was clearly a false sense of importance, if I was measuring it based on the number of junk emails I had to delete every day. What a stupid illusion.

So, here's to unsubscribing - which, for me, has also meant getting rid of a few more illusions and focusing on what actually is. That's what simplicity does - gets rid of those illusions and brings reality to light. Praise God!

5 Things We Learned from the SNAP Challenge

Simplicity, Week 7: SNAP Challenge

Last week, Erik and I took a step I didn't expect. We tried out the SNAP challenge. SNAP is what many of us know as food stamps - it stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The challenge is to experience what life is like for our brothers and sisters living on an average daily allowance of $4.15 per person per day. Years ago, we actually did live on a similar budget, but with this difference: We knew we were in college and life would not always be like that. Also, it's been a while since we lived that life, so last week was quite an experience.

Here are some things we learned last week:

1. Read the instructions...
...before you take the challenge (not after, like us). We thought it was $4.00 per person per day (it's actually $4.15), and I assure you that the extra 30 cents a day - 15 cents for each of us - would have made a difference. We also didn't know that we should avoid accepting free food; it's part of my job to eat with folks and that often happens for free, but we would have been more prepared for that if we had read the instructions first.

2. Meat is expensive.
We always knew that, but our meal of spaghetti with hamburger cost over $1.50 per person per meal. Most of our other meals were between 50-75 cents per person per meal.

3. Breakfast is expensive.
Erik eats cereal and I eat fruit, yogurt, and a hard boiled egg. Both meals cost over $1.00 per person per meal. I skipped the coffee that week, and part of me really regrets that; coffee functions as a very mild anti-anxiety medicine for me.

4. There is abundance in communities.
Here's our list of free food from last week:

-We received lunch on Sunday from the church (it was a fundraiser, and we may not have taken sandwiches had we not been able to donate; I'm not sure if that was quite within the rules or not, and we didn't count our donation as part of the food budget.)

-We received dinner on Sunday from my parents - a long-standing tradition that is really wonderful for a pastor family.

-I received lunch on Tuesday at a church potluck (to which I didn't contribute).

-Wednesday was my mom's birthday and we went to dinner with my parents. They insist on paying for those things even when we're not taking the SNAP challenge.

-Thursday dinner was another one at church - this one rotates between families providing dinner, and it wasn't our week.

By this time, we were feeling a little foolish and like we weren't getting the full sense of the challenge. I'm sure we weren't. But this also meant that on Friday evening, we got to invite friends over for dinner, which we paid for (within the SNAP budget). It wasn't a full repayment for all we had received, but it was a wonderful opportunity to pass along the abundance we had experienced - and we wouldn't have been able to do that if we had paid for every one of the other meals.

I don't know how this does or doesn't reflect the life of those living within the SNAP budget, but it drove home for me the reality that life is truly more abundant when we live it together.

5. The margins are very small.
Our budget for the week was $56. We rationed Girl Scout cookies (25 cents for one Samoa or two Thin Mints). I rationed fruit snacks - which normally keep me going at work. I had to eat out once because I was traveling, and I worried because my Taco Bell lunch cost $2.19 instead of our established budget of $2.00.

At the end of the week, we had over $6 to spare. We were amazed! That was not how we expected to end the week. Our big celebration? A few more Girl Scout cookies each.


I'm grateful for the experience, and grateful that it was only a week. And I hope we can keep working to make sure everyone has enough.

Simplicity, Week 8: Honesty

Simplicity in speech is about being honest; being honest even when it's hard; being honest even when it's painful. It's following Jesus, who said, "Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no" (Matthew 5:37). That's what I'm committing to, starting this week, but certainly not ending this week.

Simplicity, Weeks 5 & 6: Lent Adjustments...

Things never go quite the way they were planned. For instance, the work of the Holy Spirit (this borrowed from maryhomegirl.tumblr.com):

How the Holy Spirit works in our lives: Usually unseen...

But sometimes just barely glimpsed:

Unexpected, unplanned.

And so here's my unexpected simplicity story at this point.

Week 5: Lent Adjustments

I planned to fast (from food) for 24 hours each week during Lent, and donate the money. But... things don't always work out the way we plan.

It's become clear that God is not calling me to fast from food right now. I feel weird about that because I've just asked our congregation to try fasting. Weird or not, though, this is my call right now.

But practicing some sort of fasting during Lent is important to me. It's a way to remember that this is a special time, a time set apart from the rest of the year. It's a way to remind me that even right now as I'm sitting at my computer, the Holy Spirit is probably dancing behind me.

So instead of fasting from food, I'll be fasting from television on the Sabbath each week (thanks Austin for the idea). So far I'm LOVING it. I like watching TV, I love the stories and I love the creativity, and I love imagining a different world a little bit at a time. But it's easy to get sucked in. So during Lent, on Fridays, no TV. Sometimes simplicity means getting rid of the extra noise, allowing ourselves to enter the (somewhat scary) spaces of quiet. The spaces that we normally fill by turning to a screen.

Week 6: The Active Life

If you're counting, you know that I didn't post last week. I was discerning the whole Lent thing and didn't find my way until the end of the week, so I decided to do two posts in one this week.

This week's practice is reading The Active Life by Parker Palmer. We're reading it for one of the groups at church, and I've rarely found a book that holds these two things together so well:

1. It is amazingly encouraging and uplifting. It's a book that says: you can do it, simply trust your gifts and the grace of God. (Simplicity doesn't necessarily mean doing less stuff, but doing the things that are most central to who you are and to your calling from God. This book encourages that.)
2. I believe it.

I believe it because it looks at the shadow side of our actions - the motivations that come from fear and shame and seeking after power. It moves into and through those darker motivations and desires - not to say that we shouldn't act, but to help us be more free (and simple) in our actions. It's not just encouraging - it's encouraging and honest, and so I believe the encouragement.

For instance, Palmer uses the poem "Active Life" by Chaung Tzu to explore the shadow side of acting. Here's the poem:

"Active Life" (as quoted in The Active Life by Parker Palmer)

If an expert does not have some problem to vex him, he is unhappy!
If a philosopher's teaching is never attacked, she pines away!
If critics have no one on whom to exercise their spite, they are unhappy.
All such people are prisoners in the world of objects.

He who wants followers, seeks political power.
She who wants reputation, holds an office.
The strong man looks for weights to lift.
The brave woman looks for an emergency in which she can show bravery.
The swordsman wants a battle in which he can swing his sword.
People past their prime prefer a dignified retirement, in which they may seem profound.
People experienced in law seek difficult cases to extend the application of laws.
Liturgists and musicians like festivals in which they parade their ceremonious talents.
The benevolent, the dutiful, are always looking for chances to display virtue.

Where would the gardener be if there were no more weeds?
What would become of business without a market of fools?
Where would the masses be if there were no pretext for getting jammed together and making noise?
What would become of labor if there were no superfluous objects to be made?
Produce! Get results! Make money! Make friends! Make changes!
Or you will die of despair!

Those who are caught in the machinery of power take no joy except in activity and change - the whirring of the machine! Whenever an occasion for action presents itself, they are compelled to act; they cannot help themselves. They are inexorably moved, like the machine of which they are a part. Prisoners in the world of objects, they have no choice but to submit to the demands of the matter! They are pressed down and crushed by external forces, fashion, the market, events, public opinion. Never in a whole lifetime do they recover their right mind! The active life! What a pity!

This comes pretty early in the book. Doesn't it make you curious - how could a book that encourages, that celebrates, that recognizes the value of an active life, include this poem? Palmer's writing admits the truth in this poem, and still comes to a place that values right action, action that flows from the center of who we are, that flows from who we are created and called to be. That's another way of describing simplicity: Simplicity is acting out of the center of who we are. Simplicity is acting out of who we are created and called to be. Though the word "simplicity" isn't prominent in this book, the book is about simplicity.

So I'm going to read this book... and then maybe read it again. And maybe again. I may keep reading this book all year. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and it's a book I need to keep coming back to.

How is God calling you to simplify your life?

Happy simplifying!