An Ironic Dialogue between Generosity & Simplicity

The picture above is of duck tape shoes made by one of our Lake House church girls. She has been embracing the idea of simplicity in creative ways and I gotta say I really loved her idea. At our meeting tonight on of the guys that lives in a nearby boarding house was sitting next to her. I noticed him staring at her feet throughout the evening. When the meeting ended he went over and asked her if she was in need of shoes. This man who has very little felt bad for this girl who he felt pity for because of her shoes. He asked her about five times throughout the evening if she wanted him to help buy her some shoes. She has a place to live, works, goes to school, has a car and in comparison with him is quite well off.
I am proud of both of them. I am proud of her for breaking herself out of compulsive buying so that she may do more meaningful things with the resources that God has given her. I am proud of him for being so generous with the very little that he has. The Kingdom of God is a funny place.

The Serenity Prayer

God, Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Amen.

- Reinhold Niebuhr

House Day: September 2011

Once each month, the whole lot of us Lake Housemates spend the day together. Very often we spend the time doing some kind of work, a project for productive bonding. This September's house day saw us working on our property to streamline the needless clutter, and to take better care of what we have.

The Spiritual Discipline of Sweating

Tomorrow will be the first day of June and we have yet to use our air conditioning (except for home church nights and one weekend that we hosted a few guests). We have done everything we can to stay cool. We have drug the oven to the front porch so as not to produce heat in the house, we have put screens on every window so that we can have the house fully ventilated, and we have pretty much (by necessity) all begun taking quick and cold showers to cool off and rinse of all the funk, and we have all begun drinking more water. We are pushing ourselves to fore go this luxury for the sake of both our own formation as well as in protest to our consumptive and entitled culture that recklessly burns huge amounts of coal to keep our dens comfy. I thank God every time I see one of my sweaty and lethargic community members. They resemble the poor that I have seen throughout the world a little more each day. Yes, because they are hot and sweaty, because they can see air conditioning for what it is....Luxurious, and not a necessity. Each day they are a little more set free from their addiction to comfort. Each day they have to fight a little bit to keep going. Each day they get a little stronger as their conviction and discipline have to meet and wrestle a little deeper within. We have chosen creativity over compromise and I am proud of my guys and my gal. They are living as best as they know how in a way that they believe the world could sustain and I am in awe. It is an honor so sweat with them. I don't care what anybody says I know that sweating is spiritual.

Integration: How do you rejoin society? Thoughts after 30 day local food experiment

Local Food, Sharing Groceries, and Creativity

So as my 100 mile food experiment has come to a close I realize that I am not excited to go back. I look at things around me in our house and just don’t want them. I don’t want to eat food that you unwrap and I don’t want oreos or soda or cake or cereal. At least at this point I seem to have a craving for the foods that I have been eating over the last month. It’s actually quite shocking. I knew I wanted to try to keep eating as locally as possible but never could have anticipated this strange aversion to foods that I have loved and craved. It’s just gone. So I kept my contribution to the houses food money back last month during the experiment so that I could get my own local food to eat. They were fine with that. But now the experiment is over and I need to contribute again and share groceries again. I do want to but am also conflicted about almost everything they normally get to eat. And that’s saying something because I live in a community that has a lot of food convictions already. They strive to find fair trade products and environmentally conscious products. I am still nervous because I read labels on packages and stickers on fruit. Over the last month I realized that all of the fruit that they eat comes from other countries all together (By the way I have nothing against trade with foreign nations but we just don’t need FOOD to travel like that) and all of the processed foods they buy are full of crap. There is nothing natural about Nature’s Valley. I want to share my convictions and continue to experiment with food and I also want to be sensitive to their wants and habits. I requested that my grocery contribution as well as Ryan’s contribution be set aside for us to take care of produce and butter. That means that at least we will get locally grown organic produce and real butter from a local dairy farm. They were game and I will purchase the food and eat it but will also see it used by the guys in the house as ingredients in their own cooking and recipes. As we discussed this option Robby brought up a really great question. Since local food is more expensive then how are we gonna balance this growing conviction with our core principles of hospitality and sharing? I really thought this was a great question for us to wrestle with. It’s one I could see myself asking if it was someone else making the request and I am really glad he put it out there for us to discuss. It is true that we will spend more on less food and it just isn’t enough to say God will provide (even though he always does.) We can’t be buying this food unless we are going to share it freely. We can’t buy food that we don’t have enough of. My response was that he is right but that we solve these problems by creativity rather than compromise. We are growing as much food as we can, I have places where I am looking to salvage ‘local trash’ (I don’t care where food came from once we start wasting it), and we also have a network of gardens throughout our community that we installed and can grow a row to supplement our grocery supply for meals we serve. There are ways for us to hold tight to both convictions rather that feel like they need to be pitted against each other. I am excited to learn new ways and I am excited to be a part of a family that is open to new ways. May God guide us.