Voluntary Simplicity
This focus area, also called "Simple Living," gets to the heart of our everyday lives: how we spend our time, deal with possessions, and how our actions affect the world around us.
Voluntary simplicity is about living closer to God and our core values. It seems so easy for our lives to become filled with clutter that distracts us from living our lives the way we would most like to live. What kind of life does our faith lead us toward? How much fuller can our lives be when we let our values lead us, rather than what our society find most important.
Voluntary simplicity is about living closer to God and our core values. It seems so easy for our lives to become filled with clutter that distracts us from living our lives the way we would most like to live. What kind of life does our faith lead us toward? How much fuller can our lives be when we let our values lead us, rather than what our society find most important.
Key Insights
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Intentionality
Voluntary simplicity is about living thoughtfully and deliberately, not just how our society might suggest. We are called to live in line with our values and ideals. |
What Owns Us?
Our possessions, time commitments, and lifestyles can "own" us rather than the other way around. Living more simply is a way to put our lives more in balance. |
How Much Is Enough?
We can become lost in a relentless desire for more, whether it be money, possessions, bigger homes, or more activities. How can we change our perspective so that we put God first, rather than these desires? |
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Liberation
The point is not austerity, sacrifice, frugality, or even how much money we spend. It is in becoming more free and more connected to Jesus. Consumer culture is not the way to Jesus. |
Enough For All
When we live more simply, we live more sustainably, so there is enough for everyone (worldwide). |
Voluntary
This is not an argument for poverty or limiting people's ability to make their own choices. When we speak of voluntary simplicity, we mean freely choosing a simpler lifestyle. |
Quotations
Church Documents
The human family is facing major choices regarding lifestyle. As economic and ecological issues are increasingly intertwined, we see more clearly that the earth's resources are not limitless. Industrialized nations consume more and more of what God created for all to enjoy, while developing nations can scarcely support their populations. |
As consumers, believers can promote social justice or injustice. In an affluent culture that suggests that what we have defines who we are, we can live more simply. When we purchase goods and services, we can choose to support companies that defend human life, treat workers fairly, protect creation, and respect other basic moral values at home and abroad. We can also make conscious efforts to consume less. Because the laity's call to holiness is a vocation in every sense of the word, it makes demands and poses challenges. Many challenges are embedded in the call to holiness on this eve of a new era, but we have raised up three as particularly apt for our time... (3) to reappropriate the Church's tradition of a simple lifestyle in light of the pressing need for justice, as well as preserving the earth for ourselves and for generations to come. |
Other Voices
Live simply, that others may simply live. Mahatma Gandi
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People today are attracted by things that are faster and faster: rapid Internet connections, speedy cars and planes, instant relationships. But at the same time we see a desperate need for calmness, I would even say slowness. Is the Church still able to move slowly: to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency? Dear brothers, let us recover the calm to be able to walk at the same pace as our pilgrims, keeping alongside them, remaining close to them, enabling them to speak of the disappointments present in their hearts and to let us address them. |
Articles
- Simple Living (Wikipedia)
- Simple Living: Knowing what is important and having no more than that (Lynda McDaniel, Beliefnet)
- The Message Is Real Simple: Buy More Stuff - How simplicity went from a movement to a trend (Karen Lehrman, Beliefnet)
- Living Simply: Author Struggles to Practice What She Preaches (Linda Baker, Religion News Service)
- Simple Gift Ideas: Inexpensive but unique holiday presents (The Center For a New American Dream)
- Choosing Simplicity Over Conspicuous Consumption: Unitarian Universalist congregations adopt simple living practices (Donald E. Skinner, UU World)
- 41 Lawnmowers (song by Billy Crocket)
- Practical Ideas for Simple Living (Ann Naffziger)
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