Living simply

By Joan Robertson in All Sorts

Can we resist the culture of consumerism?

My sister from Melbourne stayed a week with us recently. She and her husband had walked the Routeburn track with another couple, and had loved it. It had rained the whole four days, and the bush was lovely, and so clean and the waterfalls magnificent!

My sister is never fussed about going out to cafes or doing "expensive" things. The Botanic gardens, a walk up Flagstaff, and Brighton beach are all good! One year she joined us at Queenstown with our extended family. After we had all "done" the gondola, taken a trip on the Earnslaw, and were wondering what we could afford to do next, she suggested we went to the river at Arrowtown, where we spent a happy afternoon building dams with the children.

When she left this time I gave her a belated birthday present to take to her daughter, and a little board book for her nine month old grandson. It was a cute little book with flaps that lifted and said "Peek-a-boo! I love you!"

Well, he liked the book, I was told, but the huge success was the green paper bag the other presie was in!! He waved it around for ages!

At Explorers last week David Kitchingman introduced us to a book entitled "Voluntary simplicity", a collection of essays on living simply, or resisting the consumerism that is the way of life in our society today. Then I remembered the series of lectures by Andrew Bradstock I attended recently. "Today, we are defined as 'consumers'." "'I shop, therefore I am' - or, as they say in Britain 'Tesco ergo sum'". The Normans built castles, he said, the people of the Middle ages cathedrals, the Victorians railway stations, and we build supermarkets. And now we can shop seven days a week!

Well, in the middle of that paragraph, I must admit, I went off to town to buy some flannelette sheets! I confess it, I am a consumer! And I don't have answers! I am sure we have all cut back on luxuries in the last few years, whether it was in so-called discretionary spending, or by using less electricity, or saving water. The benefits of simple living, as summarised by David, are threefold. One is time, time for emphasis on the inner life, and personal growth. Secondly, simplicity can be an act of sharing, an act of human solidarity (helping to narrow the gap between rich and poor). And thirdly, to save our planet!

I look in a volume of Michael Leunig for some end-words. Thank you Michael! He knew about simplicity all the time.

We simplify our lives.
We live gladly with less.
We let go the illusion that we can possess.
We create instead.
We let go the illusion of mobility.
We travel in stillness. We travel at home.
By candlelight and in stillness,
In the presence of flowers,
We make our pilgrimage.
We simplify our lives. (From: Common prayers collection. 1993)

Joan Robertson

First printed as a Connections article in the Parish church bulletin, May 2, 2010.