Lectio Divina texts: the spirituality of simplicity, frugality & fallowing
"Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Mtt. 5:3, Jesus) those who recognize their spiritual neediness are blessed and will inherit (experience) the kingdom of God –AI
“purity of heart is to will one thing.” No wonder Jesus said that the pure of heart would see God (Matt. 5:8). They alone keep their eyes in one consistent direction, and thus overcome the divisions created by the divided loyalties which plague the rest of us. –Søren Kierkegaard
My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. — Jesus, John 4:34
I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me. — Jesus, John 5:30
Father… let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will. —Mtt 26:39 Richard Rohr finds a model of simplicity in Jesus’ single-mindedness and purity of heart. When we read the above statements, it’s quite clear that Jesus was entirely single-hearted. His life was all about doing the will of the One who sent him, the One he loved above all. To Jesus, it was that simple. As we grow spiritually, our lives become more and more centered and simple. There are only a few things that matter, and eventually really only one.
Ecological economist Herman Daly calls the process of building in downtimes “fallowing,” letting land [and our lives] regenerate after a period of cultivation. “Fallowing is investment in short-term non-production in order to maintain long-term yields” and is exemplified in the ancient Hebrew practice of Jubilee.
A welcomed poverty (poem)
A man sits bereft
he remembers vaguely now
another time and hopes
longingly for a new love, a new way.
Yet what arrives is poverty,
weakness, weariness, and fearfulness
that a new way has indeed found him,
the way of sorrow.
Then surprisingly poverty befriends him
he sits at rest, welcomed,
desirous and open-handed for only
what can be given and received freely, uncoerced.
— at denver botanic gardens, 12/15/10; PRH
What is wrong with the way we are keeping house,
the way we make our living, the way we live? What is happening to our souls?
---Wendell Berry: The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: a long conversation
Ancient humans did not have to practice restraint. They had neither the technical capacity nor the cultural habits of excess. Indigenous cultures, living much closer to the Earth than we do, have traditionally passed the habit of restraint from one generation to the next [since] restraint in consumption, behavior, lifeways and relationships also confers survival advantage to the tribe. When the word is used to describe truly sustainable relationships with provisions and resources, “restrained” is equivalent to “frugal”: being careful with the fruits of the Earth and of ones’ labors. The ancients and long-lasting indigenous cultures are habitually frugal. “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” were Henry David Thoreau’s three rules for living a life in harmony with Nature, that is, within our own and Earth’s means. For this to happen, the scale of our simplification and restraint will have to be as grand and far reaching as the scale of our complexification and consumption. Humans have balked at both voluntary and involuntary frugality ever since greed and wealth have been an option. On the other hand, we have also often found peace of mind, freed time and a sense of belonging, and self-worth when we have taken frugality up with the same passion with which we sought wealth. –Ellen Laconte, Life Rules.
We must consider our pleasures. . . . [There are] pleasures that are free or without a permanent cost. . . . These are the pleasures that we take in our own lives, our own wakefulness in this world, and in the company of other people and other creatures—pleasures innate in the Creation and in our own good work. It is in these pleasures that we possess the likeness to God that is spoken of in Genesis. [God looked upon all that God had created and saw that it was very good (Gen. 1:31).] Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?—Wendell Berry, “Economy and Pleasure” from The Art of the Commonplace
When we agree to live simply, we put ourselves outside of others’ ability to buy us off, reward us falsely, or control us by money, status, salary, punishment, and loss or gain. —Richard Rohr
Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters. —-last lines, A River Runs Through It, book by Norman Maclean
