I was listening to the radio the other morning - well half listening would be a better description. There was a debate between a couple of people, one a psychologist and the other someone with his own swimming pool. They were talking about what makes us truly happy. The psychologist said that there have been various studies that say money really doesn’t make people happy. What makes us truly happy is what we would call spiritual values and having a bigger vision. Great riches do not on their own bring that. The man with the swimming pool agreed to a point, but went on to say that having a swimming pool made him pretty happy at times and he wasn’t going to tell anyone that they wouldn’t enjoy having one too. I suppose this goes to prove the old adage that money doesn’t make you happy, but it does help you be miserable in comfort.

There was something of this in our first reading from the prophet Isaiah (55:1-9). Written long before people had anywhere near the wealth even those of us who think we are ‘hard done by’ have, it expresses itself in exasperated and imploring tones. A rough translation would be something like: ‘Why do you fuss about with all that rubbish, it is just a distraction from what you really need. Surely you can see that?’ Of course, the reading also uses the whole language of richness and fine food to make its point. So its imagery rather buys into that view of the world.

What I am finding so impressive about our Lent speakers this year is that so far both of them have deliberately embraced a simple life-style. Indeed, as one writer has put it, they have dumped the ‘style’ nonsense in life-style and just got on with having a life.

This week we welcomed sister Pam from the Order of the Holy Paraclete at Whitby. She lives a life with no possessions of her own, though they have just voted themselves £30 a year spending money. She wasn’t crushed under the weight of her poverty. It was rather a source of liberation.

Well, the thing about nuns and monks is that they are not really that poor. They have a roof over their heads, food on the table and clothes and warmth - which with a duff boiler is more than I can say at the moment! But they don’t have secure incomes, they don’t know where they are going to be next year and give up the control over their lives to the community that nurtures and challenges them. They live by faith and some how manage to fund what needs to be financed. They don’t have the latest designer styles and positively reject them. They don’t go on several holidays a year or feel they have to have a certain type of car. They realise with disarming simplicity that these things can be useful and enjoyable, but we will not find our worth and fundamental value in them.

Our Lent series began with Tom Keighley, a deacon in the diocese who is also part of the Third Order of St Francis. This group follow a Franciscan rule of life in their ordinary daily lives, in whatever work they do and in living in their own homes and families. He also spoke about a vow to live simply. Again this is to realise that our hope and our true worth do not rest in bank balances and the trimmings we acquire; it is a desire to live modestly and be content with sufficient; to challenge what we mean by sufficient.

Many who try this, and I try to live that way too, find that it has links with all the debates about how we can live in a sustainable way. It touches the quest for renewable energy sources. It has ecological considerations and is concerned with all that pollutes or takes out more of the earth’s resources than is replaced. When we allow this to really get inside us, it can go further to ask challenging questions about investments and their ethical basis. It looks at how international, even local, trading works; it finds itself looking at fair trade and can lead to a passionate concern for those who produce the goods we enjoy. We realise that these people are our brothers and sisters and so we damage, even pull apart, our own identity if we ignore their plight or build our prosperity at their cost.

Seeking to live simply is a radical notion in our society. We are told from so many angles that without certain products we are nothing. One advert tells us that even our mobile phone can embarrass us if it is not up-to-date with the latest WAP and photo-imaging technology! But as a comedian said the other day, we have all this appliance of science so that someone can send a photo of his bottom via his phone on a drunken night out!

‘Why do we buy that which is not bread and labour for that which does not satisfy?’, was Isaiah’s question (55:2). Having said the other week that we could do with a little pampering in Lent, paradoxically today I am arguing for the traditional side - Lent as a paring back to live more simply, to remove the clutter. Actually they are not opposites. We need to pamper sometimes, to give ourselves treats and the nuns at Whitby recognise this and have feasts and celebrations. Their life is not all austerity. But there is a difference between that and pursuing the unsustainable consumption that our Western life-style markets press upon us.

This is one of those areas where we can see how spirituality has practical and far reaching consequences. It affects our psychological well-being; it has ecological implications and knock-on affects that impact on world development issues. It redirects us from the displacement activity of consuming to the spiritual ground of what it is to be human and created in the image of God.

It is hard for those who are rich to do this, to live simply, though some manage it. It is hard for churches and cathedrals that are built on a history of wealth and even opulence under the guise of glorifying God to live simply. Actually there is enough wealth to go round, it just needs sharing more equitably. We can have places that lift the spirits and imagination, that inspire and make use of ‘craftsmen’s art and music’s measure’. But they require a vision that looks over the fence - locally, nationally and internationally - to ensure that our inspiration is not at the expense of someone else’s sustenance. As the Christian Aid tag line puts it, we live simply so that others may simply live.

Living simply stops us being eaten up by our own and others consumption. It stops us being consumed by greed and envy. It stops us taking out more than can be put back in terms of the earth’s resources and also in what we demand of people. It stops us choking the world with our waste. It is a radical spirituality with far reaching consequences for ourselves, for others and for the world.

© Ian Black 2004

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