Simply the best: Paul Hodgkin’s Thought for the week
‘Today’s testimony to simplicity is an act of defiance.’
Advices and queries 41 tells us that ‘a simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength’. But what if it isn’t freely chosen? What happens as climate breakdown and habitat destruction enforce simplicity on us? What does a testimony to simplicity mean today?
he early Quakers tried to live simply because they saw that extravagances take us away from God, from awe and the sacred. We still feel this. To live simply is to come closer to the light, to let go of ego and attachment. This is part of a long tradition stretching back through Francis of Assisi, to Jesus and the Buddha, all of whom saw living as a form of worship or spiritual practice.
The early Quakers lived at the start of the great pulse of fossilised energy that gave us both Mozart and the holocaust, both science and slavery. By contrast, the Earth has now reached the limit of what it can tolerate. How should this change our testimony?
Firstly, I think the traditional sense of simplicity as worship becomes even stronger: to practice simplicity now is a way to lovingly accept the inevitable. It can be the route to acceptance of things that previously we found intolerable.
Secondly, just as Francis of Assisi’s simplicity expressed solidarity with the poor, today, simplicity is a deep and practical way to express our solidarity and repentance with the Earth and all her peoples and creatures.
Thirdly, simplicity is social witness. When we choose not to consume we are taking a political stand. It aligns our soul against the market and its commodification of our hearts.
Simplicity now has a metric – our carbon footprint. But focussing on a carbon budget, or recycling, can easily make simplicity into something very transactional. To move beyond this we need to speak the language of the sacred. We need words that acknowledge and celebrate an emerging covenant with the wounded Earth. I think one of those words is ‘sacrifice’.
It is in the interests of consumer capitalism to say that sacrifice is for suckers. Why live in black and white when you can live in colour? Why be sad when you can just book that flight to Corfu? But sacrifice, in its original sense, comes from ‘sanctus’, the Latin word for holy, and ‘facere’, the Latin word for making or doing. So to sacrifice something means to make something holy, or to do something that is touched with holiness. A refusal to fly is a sacrifice to the holiness of the air. A refusal to eat meat is a sacrifice to the holy sentience of animals. Foregoing a holiday is to honour the societies on whom we foist our hotels and night clubs.
Today’s testimony to simplicity is an act of defiance against the market and a holy gift to the Earth. It shows us the way to less ego, and to solidarity with other creatures. It stands as a witness against growth and consumption. But beyond all this, our testimony of simplicity calls us to see that ‘having to make sacrifices’ is not about making do with some sad, limited, version of life, but a way to renew our joy in the holiness of creation.
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