Lesson 13 – Living Simply, August, 2008

Adapted from Rev. Calvin O. Dame

 

Chalice:  'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free, 'tis a gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight.

American Shaker tune

Check – in:

Reading:  Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition.  It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life.  It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance in life in other directions.  It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose.

Richard Gregg from Voluntary Simplicity

Quotes from the Common Bowl

Life Questions:

1.      What are the demands in your life that keep me too busy?  What things do I push aside?

2.     Does Thoreau's experience at Walden with solitary living appeal to you?  Why or why not?

3.     What are some ways we can simplify our lives without isolating ourselves from the greater community?

4.     Is simpler necessarily better? 

5.     Is simplicity mostly about having fewer “things” or is it mostly about a state of mind?

 

Closing ritual:

We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth

The warmth of community

Or the fire of commitment

These we carry in our hearts until we are together again.

 

Check-out

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Quotes for Lesson 13 – Living Simply, August, 2008

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.

Albert Einstein

See simplicity and distrust it.

Alfred North Whitehead

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!  Live the life you’ve imagined.  As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Henry David Thoreau

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

Lao-tzu

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.

E. F. Shumaker

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

Charles Mingus

Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty.

Mahlon Hoagland

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others.  There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow.  Simplification of life is one of them.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hoffman