In October a friend from Holden Village spent a few days with me on her way to Alaska. It was like having a prophet visit. To my dinner table she brought her life as a worker for the Mennonite Central Committee in El Salvador, as a resident of a Catholic Worker house in Portland, Oregon, and as a peace activist who—like her fellow Mennonites, Quakers, and Brethren—earns only enough to support herself but not so much that she has to pay the ‘war tax.’

Because she doesn’t own a car, she didn’t find my carless life strange. She was fine riding the bus and bikes everywhere and sleeping on the floor of my teeny little house. Many details of my existence that strike people as odd were completely familiar to her. But watching her move through life with such principle sent me back to my Bible of simple living, Doris Janzen Longacre’s 1980 book, Living More with Less.

This classic taps the wisdom of Mennonite missionaries who refined their simple living skills on international assignments and kept living that way when they came home. Like my Alaska-bound friend Lisa, they always, always walked their talk.

Rejecting the term lifestyle, Doris proposed that Christians should seek to live by five Life Standards. Her book offers wise suggestions for implementing each one of these standards:

1. Do justice. Living by this standard will always draw us more deeply into economics and politics. It’s up to us to draw the lines that link our consumer ways with environmental and justice consequences around the world.
2. Learn from the world community. Our global partners have a lot to share, if we would only listen instead of continually insisting we know it all! Longacre’s book lifts up “overdevelopment” projects proposed by global Mennonites who would like to minister to North Americans drowning in materialism and “maldevelopment.”
3. Nurture people. What could happen if we cared more about other people than we cared about price, convenience, or comfort?
4. Cherish the natural order. What could happen if we remembered that we are stewards, not owners—that God’s world demands our respect, not our thoughtless consumption?
5. Nonconform freely. What could happen if we were more like my friend Lisa and the Mennonites, and a little less worried about what other people think?

Longacre’s gospel-based Life Standards offer a path out of the lifestyle that is choking us. They are also a tool we can us to “occupy ourselves,” as David Creech suggested (quoting David Brooks) in this post. Occupying ourselves can mean recognizing the consequences of our own habits, actions and purchases instead of reflexively seeking to blame scapegoats.

Mikka said the other day that, from a global perspective, almost all of us reading this blog are the One Percent. Instead of insisting we’re not privileged, asking “who, me?” and pointing fingers, let’s start Advent by following what Longacre calls “the path of health outlined by faith: Repent by recognizing and accepting our guilt, be forgiven, and change!”

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity

Happy Thanksgiving, Blogging Colleagues!

On Thanksgiving Day, we think about what we have and give thanks. However, sometimes this day seems increasingly like the “eve” to the real holiday, “Black Friday,” where we think about we do not have, but that we want.

Recently, I was sharing with a colleague about the last website I blogged about, and she suggested another—the “Global Rich List.” Very interesting…

From the site, “Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world. Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where would you sit on one of those lists? Here’s your chance to find out.”

According to the Global Rich List, I am the one percent (to use the catchphrase of the Occupy Wall Street Movement). The site uses a sliding scale to show your position of wealth within the global community. You can see your rich list position, as well as the percentage in which you fall. Simply select the currency of your salary, type in your annual income, and click “show me the money!”

So, I am the one percent. The site asks one follow up question, “how do you feel about that?” and then encourages us to give just one hour’s worth of our salary (calculated using the above information) to a worthy cause.

I will be giving ELCA Good Gifts this holiday season—a very worthy cause in my (admittedly biased) opinion. But on this day of thanks, I will be giving thanks for the many gifts of friends, family, good employment and yes, the wealth that is entrusted to me for good stewardship toward health, wholeness and fulfilling life for all. That is the mindset I want to take into the holiday frenzy…wish me luck!

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Check out the Global Rich List site, and post back your comments here. Looking forward to the conversation!

Privilege

This last weekend I was at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting. This is my one professional meeting that I am sure to attend each year because it provides an excellent opportunity to explore new ways to conceive of and articulate a Christian response to hunger and poverty. This year was no exception and as a result I am consolidating some new thoughts on 1) the role of the Bible in moral deliberation and 2) the apocalyptic imagination as a tool for resisting systems and structures that keep people impoverished. These will likely keep me occupied for the next year (or more!) and they will undoubtedly inform my seminary course at Trinity in Ohio this January.

Today’s post, however, will not explore such heady (and pedantic?) topics (I understand if you just breathed a sigh of relief!). I want to reflect on a dinner conversation I shared with old friends from seminary. Over the meal I suggested that in spite of its claims about liberating ideas and free thinking, the academy is an incredibly hierarchical institution. Your academic pedigree–where you studied and where you teach (God forbid you do not work in an academic institution!) determines your credibility. Both of my friends vigorously denied than any such criteria existed. One received his PhD from an Ivy League school and now teaches at a large and well respected seminary, the other from one of the best schools in the south and now teaches at a strong research institution. They denied my experience and assured me I was wrong… as the one who graduated from a good (but not great) university and now works in the church.

The awkward moment (and it was awkward!) revealed to me in a new way the power of privilege. My friends (who are intelligent and generally committed to social justice) are blind to the hegemonic forces of the academy because they are beneficiaries of the system. And they worked hard to maintain the system, insisting that my impressions were surely misguided. As a white, well-educated male who is financially secure and holds a position of (minor) authority in a national church office, it is not often that my experience is denied so flatly. I did not like it.

Here is the scary question, though. How often do I (who am generally intelligent and firmly committed to social justice) do exactly the same thing? Whose experiences have I unwittingly trampled simply because I am unaware of dynamics of privilege in a given situation? Race, gender, class, and age (to name a few–humans are exceedingly skilled at coming up with arbitrary ways to keep people disenfranchised) are all used to create and maintain (often unspoken) power differentials. In the case of my dinner it was an awkward moment. In more critical situations it can be the difference between being fed or going hungry, having access to medical care or suffering from preventable and treatable diseases.

I am not sure about the take aways from this experience just yet. Here are few initial thoughts: 1) Privilege does exist and too often we operate in it unconsciously. 2) The first step to addressing privilege has to be critical self reflection and repentance. 3) The system will work hard to maintain itself and those with privilege must actively work against it (through awareness and education, among other things). 4) If those who are privileged are unaware of the dynamic they need to be reminded. 5) If they are aware but unwilling to address the problem, perhaps they should be resisted.

David Creech

Hello Blogging Colleagues! Since we last shared “screen time” together, many things have happened. We celebrated All Saints Day, Día de los Muertos, Halloween or All Hallows’ Eve and Reformation Sunday just to name a few. But wait– I’ve missed one.

On October 31, we welcomed the 7 BILLIONTH person to this planet and place we call home (United Nations). In honor of this occasion, I have keyed a letter to our newest member:

Dear 7 Billionth Person,

“Happy birthday to you,” child born somewhere in the human family! Welcome! Welcome to this place that displays all the depth and breadth and beauty and chaos that God is and creates– the land and the sky and seas, the flora and fauna, all the languages and phenotypes.

The New York Times posits that you may have been born somewhere in India and opens with the question “Feeling claustrophobic?” The article goes on to haggle over statistics, but that is not the most compelling focus for me.

I am told* that the global population will continue to increase during my lifetime—10 billion people by 2083. I’m also told that currently, 43% of the global population is about my age. Isn’t that amazing?

However, it is also estimated that in the country I live in, the United States, we consume double the resources used by the rest of the world. That means that if the current population and current consumption trends continue, by 2030, we’ll need the equivalent of two Earths to support you, me and the rest of our global family.

Well, 7 Billionth Person, we’ve got our work cut out for us. And, for the record, I’m not “feeling claustrophobic.” Yes, I’m feeling a sense of urgency that to live my life is to live it alongside and with attention to 7 billion other people’s well being and fullness of life…but I’m not claustrophobic.

In fact, I’m feeling more connected than ever. I know that it is that sense of connected commitment that will help us work and serve together to find balance and promise in this place we collectively call “home.”

Your Global Sister,

Mikka

*Want to learn more about what I was “told?” Visit this great site to find out how many people were alive when you were born and much more. Once you’re “told” post it back here! I look forward to read more about your story.