Balancing monetisation and simplicity

The practice of simplicity and the art of relinquishment are necessary to the pursuit of truth and to personal freedom (see yesterday's post) because vested interest inevitably compromises freedom and truth. 

But though it is possible to live without money, few of us manage to scale those heights of simplicity; for most of us it is about living on and with less rather than cutting our ties with money altogether. 

It is urgently necessary for the life of all of us — for the survival of Earth — that we sharply cut back our habit of consumerism. Here in the UK this year, it was in May that we passed the day when, as a species, we had reached the limit of what it was possible for Earth to regenerate in our consumption for this year. Last year, because of the pandemic and lockdown, it was September. So just by living quietly and reducing what we do, we can radically lower our consumption and live within the limits Earth needs us to set.

So we know simplicity and relinquishment are necessary for truth and freedom, and also for life. We accept that some level of monetisation and consumerism will continue to be part of our reality. An obvious question arises — how much, and what, to monetise?

I personally believe each person's work should be like a bird singing its song, fashioning its nest — inextricably connected with and proceeding from who that bird really is. Our work — the way we earn the money we need to live simply — should express and develop our individual calling and natural contribution. There is a sweet spot we can find, where we give and let go, where we live humbly and quietly, where we take just enough and then stop, where we provide responsibly for ourselves and our families but ask for no more than that. "Problems arise where things accumulate" (Toinette Lippe, Nothing Left Over), and the signs of over-reaching ourselves are inauthenticity (lies and pretence, lack of enthusiasm for our work), exhaustion and complication. Our work, if we're in the right occupation, should actually generate energy as well as use it. If it leaves us drained and resentful, it's wrong for us.

In the aspects of life I have monetised in order to live simply, I have been most pleased with the work I did directly. For twenty years or so I officiated at a lot of funerals. If it was the funeral of someone I knew and loved, perhaps it should go without saying that I did not charge money for doing that. If it was someone with whom I had no connection at all and the family came looking for me just because they knew I'd do a good job for them, then I charged whatever was a standard fee (if this varied, I asked the lower amount). I felt conflicted in situations where I knew and cared about the person who had died because I was their minister and they were in my congregation, but the usual advice and practice was for a minister to accept a fee. I can't remember what I did about that, but I think I went with the advice of colleagues to accept the fee. Had I not, it would have unbalanced things for other people. I went with what I thought was right and sometimes I waived it. But what was really good about officiating at funerals was the direct nature of the work. The people who paid me — the family or friends of the deceased — sought me out for the quality of my work, I did not try to market anything or promote myself; they looked for me. They paid me, and they were directly on the receiving end of what I did. If what I offered had been substandard, that would have been the end of it. And though they did pay me a fee, I always asked myself what I could add that would simply be a gift; which was mostly the quality of what I gave, the care with which I listened to them and crafted the ceremony, the love I brought and the ability to anchor the Light into that place and occasion — the aspects you cannot buy.

I also like the route of self-publishing, in working as a writer. 

Writing has to be monetised in some sense if one's work is to be made available in book form (paper or e-book). If you have read my novels or my non-fiction, you will have touched an aspect of my life that I have monetised. It wouldn't have been possible for me to share my thoughts with you otherwise. All day long, every day, I make up stories in my head that you will never know; they are only for myself. In order to give them to you as a book, I'd have to process them in a manner that inevitably monetised them, because I don't have a printing press or an advertising and delivery system. But that said, I have given away my free copies (and even bought my own books to give away) and recorded some of my books on my YouTube channel and sometimes given away PDFs of my work; and I decline the opportunity to monetise this blog by permitting Google to place ads on it (the platform is Google Blogger). 

But writing, like funerals, is pleasingly direct, even if you publish with a publishing house instead of doing it yourself. A publisher won't be interested in Volume Two if Volume One didn't sell. It's not a racket, people just buy your books because they want them. Marie Kondo comes to mind. She wrote about what she really lives, and her book was a runaway success, because it's good — and the same is true of Fumio Sasaki. This is work that is honest and true, that flows from the wellspring of real life, that benefits the reader as well as the writer; and the Earth will also benefit from the practice of what those books advocate. They advance freedom, simplicity and truth even while they monetise it — and that's what true work is; the sweet spot.

I have more thoughts about this but it's 12 minutes past 6 and if I don't get up and have a bath my morning will go wrong — besides which there are plenty of thoughts here and you will get tired if I go on and on. I want to say something about how monetisation and grace economy can interweave, but perhaps better leave that for tomorrow.

Freedom

If you've read much of this blog over the years we've been travelling along here on and off in each other's company, you'll have come across posts where I've written about a prison fellowship I used to attend in the first half of the 1990s. Here's one of the places where I mentioned it.

And in this post I touched upon something counter-intuitive that struck me in being part of that Tuesday night fellowship at the prison — the freedom a person finds in losing everything.

Everything that most of us value — our homes, families, pets, occupation, place in society, liberty to come and go as we please, to have what we want (according to our means), to spend time with friends, to go for a walk in the country, to eat what and where we like — all this you lose if you go to prison. Your freedom is taken away from you.

So I found it very striking to encounter this sense of freedom as I interacted with these men — that they didn't need to pretend or live up to anything; they were simply appreciative of the opportunity to meet together and spend time with us. We met them at the place of least pretence. 

The memory of that time was recalled for me today as I turned over in my mind the relationship between simplicity, freedom, truth and vested interest.

It seems to me that wherever there is vested interest — something a person is concerned not to lose, something to defend — then simplicity, freedom and truth quietly diminish.

The crucial components of this are belonging, money and shelter.

In the modern world, it is almost impossible for anyone to do anything without money. It can be done — Daniel Suelo, Peace Pilgrim and Heidemarie Schwermer have all borne witness to that — but for most of us it is so difficult as to be unthinkable; you need a powerful sense of call to manage it.

So if you can hook up a person's ideology to their income stream — as happens with clergy and politicians and (perhaps less obviously) health professionals, among others — their freedom flatlines. They are on a leash. They have to toe the party line. There is too much at stake if they don't.

If, in addition to their income, you can link their home to their ideology and their avowed perspective, it allows you to embed and establish them in that declared outlook on life for ever. Nobody wants to lose their home, and if they also have children and a spouse financially dependent upon them, the imperative to preserve the status quo substantially increases.

But even people whose home and income don't depend on adherence to a particular religious/political/moral/conventional/scientific stance can be brought into line by the desire to belong, to be included, to have others think well of them.

People don't want to lose their followers, their good standing, their status, their friends. The Amish practice of shunning is a most effective way of maintaining adherence to a world view and silencing dissent or scepticism.

So, to my way of thinking, part of the practice of gospel simplicity is abstaining from allowing vested interest to accrue. St Paul touches upon this in the first letter to the Corinthians, as part of his directions concerning marriage — he points out here how freedom diminishes as vested interest increases when a person accepts the responsibility of marriage relationship.

If being part of an ideological tribe is in the mix, or adherence to a scientific world view (often manipulated by commercial forces); or if a preacher of the gospel is committed to a theological standpoint if he wants to keep his house and job; or if political allegiance is linked to remuneration — then of one thing you can be absolutely certain: you will never hear the honest truth from that person again. They will not even be able to access it. There is too much at stake.

The bearded man in this video explains well the kind of thing I'm thinking about — the corrosion of freedom, truth and simplicity brought about by vested interest.

I don't see life quite as he does, because I know I am happy some of the time. To be fair, the question was dropped on him. Looking at his face, I see a kind and gentle man; I feel it likely that to help and to give and to heal makes him happy. I think the trust of a child, or a bird that would feed from his hand would make him happy. I know these are the kind of things that bring contentment to me. The simple things. As it says in Les Miserables, "To love another person is to see the face of God."

I share his heartache but, oddly (and I'm not sure why), not his sense of foreboding. Some stubborn, unquenchable whisper inside me says, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."  I know I might be wrong, but I cannot deny it.

But the pathway to wellbeing passes through simplicity, freedom and truth, and all three of those are corroded by vested interest.

Useful and realistic

 

For your joy.

A watchword

 When I was a little child, our family did not attend church, though my mother had an unshakeable faith in the unseen world — fairies mostly.

My father's father was a church organist, who knew the book of Psalms by heart, but was proud of his unbelief and used to leave the church to smoke his pipe during the sermon. I don't know what my father believed; he never spoke of it.

My family came from humble roots. My mother's family had worked their way up from poverty to substantial land-owning wealth by hard graft, thrift, and shrewd strategic decisions. Her father had paid for the fields he first rented then bought by working as a silver-service waiter on a cruise ship; so he moved through life close to affluence and watched its ways, which he then imposed on his family. When she left school, my mother trained as a nursery nurse (she would not say 'nanny') and moved from there into employment caring for the children of families who were either aristocratic or simply rich. She, like her father, watched and learned — determined to climb the social ladder and make her way in the world. She raised me and my sister strictly in accordance with all she had seen and absorbed, and shepherded us away from bad influences like poor children and Enid Blyton books. My sister rebelled and bought Enid Blyton at jumble sales. I couldn't tell the difference between poor children and rich ones — but she did her best with us. She wanted us to do well.

When I was eight, the chance came (I think my mother inherited some money) to move from the market town where we lived to a rich village characterised by social exclusivity. Some seriously upmarket people lived there. The village straggled around a road about a mile or two in length, and the end around the church had large imposing homes, some medieval, while the other end had council houses. At first we lived in the middle, but my mother had her eyes on the prize of the church end. Over time she achieved this, and by the time I was a teenager we lived in the medieval bishop's palace (but only the groom's cottage – ha!) built just behind the church.

When we made this move to the village, we immediately began to attend church. Over time my mother — who was charming, beautiful and delightful — became firm friends with several of the ladies there. My father became what they call a 'sidesman' (gave out hymn books to people coming in and cleared them away at the end). I don't think either of them really believed in the Christian faith, ever, but my mother absolutely perceived the social advantage of attending the village church. It was, if you see what I mean, culture you didn't have to pay for (we never had much money) and gave us access to established and socially admired families — our state school education lacked those entrées.

So it was that I started going to church and hearing the Bible read, and getting to know the humble pragmatism and beautiful language of Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer.

One day when I was about eleven, our parish priest (one Canon Leslie Dewar) said something that arrested my attention. 

It was not the done thing to laugh in church, or clap, or do anything vulgar and populist. We had to conduct ourselves with hushed modesty and dignity — actually I remember once when we were out for a walk near the church on a summer's day, my mother wanted to pop in to speak to someone she knew would be there cleaning it, but my sister had to sit outside on the bench in the porch because her shirt had short sleeves. There were unwritten rules, and customs, and I suppose that was why we went really.

But sometimes the no laughing was awkward because it was polite to laugh if a clergyman made a joke, and on this occasion Canon Dewar did, in his sermon.

He began it by saying, "A schoolboy once said that 'faith is believing in something you know isn't true'."

This was clearly intended to be amusing, which stimulated the curious response the congregation had evolved for such awkward moments when you must laugh because it's a joke but mustn't because it's church. A sort of undertone susurration of mirth, enough to encourage the speaker but not offend against the solemnity of sanctity.

I can't remember anything else our rector said in his sermon (or at any other time), but that entered my soul like an arrow and lodged there — permanently; it's still there. "Faith is believing in something you know isn't true."

It is one of the most useful things I have ever heard in a sermon. It's the thing that I believe to be the root of the child abuse that has been so widespread in the church — the habit church affiliation teaches you of stifling judgement, observation, thought, deduction, insight, logic and experience, in favour of doctrine and adherence/submission to tradition and ecclesiastical authority. It is, in my view, morally and intellectually dangerous.

In every church I have ever been (lots), most of the people, most of the time, say things they don't believe as though they were true, and have been doing so such a long time that they can no longer spot the difference.

Churches are institutions, organisations, big groupings — it stands to reason that one person's real view on life will never be an exact profile match with the institution's creeds and tradition: so the church requires the suffocation of what a person really thinks in favour of what the church teaches. If you want to belong, you have to conform. During the years I was a Methodist minister, the Faith and Order Committee moved from requiring that ordained people not teach anything contrary to Methodist doctrine to requiring that they not think anything contrary to it. If your family home and income depend on what you think and teach, it does concentrate the mind in the required direction.

In general in church circles, though, what you actually believe is not of great importance. So my grandfather who didn't believe a thing, my father who (I think) was a sceptic, and my mother whose only certainty was fairies, were all included and accepted because they wanted to belong. My grandfather wanted the stipend to augment the money he made as a greengrocer, and my mother wanted to climb the social tree, and my father went along with it. And they never said what they actually thought or believed, indeed it was not socially comme-il-faut to discuss religion; a hangover, perhaps, from the days when dissension meant certain death.

Recently, I have been exploring into the Orthodox Church. There is so much I love about it. I love the Catholic Church too (I was a Catholic for a decade of my life). I have thought wistfully about going back to Catholicism, but my inner watcher murmurs, "Yeah, but what about when Pope Francis dies? Anything could happen." So I've been reading and watching and listening about Orthodoxy.

I was suppressing in myself (faith means believing in things you know aren't true, remember?) how the Russian Orthodox Church turns a blind eye to gay-bashing, and the Orthodox Church rolls out the old tired rationales for excluding women from priesthood and refuses gay marriage; and I am very sorry that I permitted that voice inside me to be silenced. I suppressed in myself the reservations I felt about kissing the priest's ring and the warnings to the laity never to criticise bishops, and the veneration of relics; I thought I could get over that — because I wanted to. I set aside the instinct in me against clutter and paraphernalia and religion-by-stuff. I mean, I like icons and a bit of ecclesiastical bling and the actual monastics and hermits and priests seem to be humble and gentle and kind and good. I suppressed my misgivings about the Orthodox habit of constantly declaring one's own uselessness and sinfulness and inadequacy and unimportance — I understand the good motive it arises from, but it has a shadow side, I think, too.

I was drawn, most of all, by the utter luminosity I have seen in a friend who is progressing through to ordination — the authentic peaceful joy, that I recognise as indwelling Holy Spirit. That, I trust.

But then this morning I asked Google about the Orthodox Church stance on astrology; because this is always revealing. A friend of mine, a gay priest in London, once said to me, "Homosexuality is a touchstone," and the same is true of astrology. 

Astrology and homosexuality are reliable ideological touchstones. I read article after article explaining why astrology is sinful and wrong from the Orthodox Church point of view. I respect their view as a view, what they had to say about astrology was based and argued on presuppositions I know for a fact are incorrect. What I read was arrogant, and mistaken.

And my eleven-year-old self, sitting in the sunlight filtering through stained glass set into stone-mullioned windows in an old flint church, looking up at a wooden pulpit, remembered those words: "Faith is believing in what you know isn't true." My inner snail drew silently back into its shell. 

The Orthodox Church — beautiful, holy, shimmering, admirable, and showing forth so much from which I can learn; but, as a tribe, a sanctuary to which I could entrust my heart, not for me. "This also is Thou; neither is this Thou." Lord Jesus, lead me on. Help me find my tribe.

In the intermission

There is a brief intermission (we are doing something) while our Alice and our Hebe do their washing up and make some tea. So I will try to be quick.

What I wanted to say to you is this.

I have been exploring into the Orthodox Church, and oh my, it is so complicated! Today I was reading about fasting, only to discover that (as a kind of killer blow) not only do you have to eat vegan on a fast day (easy) but also not have olive oil. Oh. That changes the frame, does it not? So I was thinking about the Orthodox Church and how tricksy it is and all the things you have to learn and know and how lofty and rather . . . er . . . dismissive and lip-curling are the things they typically say about the seeker who tries to make sense of it. To teach us humility, I know. And possibly to make it hard to get in (successful, if so, I should think).

What follows is not unconnected.

Have you seen (you'd need Disney plus) or read The Mysterious Benedict Society? No? I so recommend it.

Well, today we were watching it on Disney +, having loved the books. It is all about truth, and tests, and empathy, and being there for one another, and resourcefulness, and the tests that life puts in front of you.

This Covid year has been like that for me. One test after another — church, family, health, finance (in no particular order). 

If I look it straight in the eye, I have to acknowledge, I failed them all. Now what?

But there on the floor (as I was mulling this over), oddly (our house is like this; we have artists who restore ecclesiastical artefacts) there lay a very large crucifix with a very dead Jesus with bleeding knees. It hurts my heart to look at him.

But I did look at him, and I thought about all my failed life tests, and confronted the reality — he carried all that; for me (and for you too, of course).

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And I thought . . . He's the Liver! That's what he is! The Liver!

Because right there, slap dab in the middle of you and pulsing out serenity and peace, your liver day by day patiently and constantly cleans all the toxic rubbish out of your circulation and binds it up and keeps you safe. He is like that. He is the Liver. That strikes me as absolutely perfect. Resurrection. Eternal life. Healing. Hope. Restoration. And of course, the liver can make itself again.

That is the only insight I have for today.

They have made the tea. Catch you later. 

I suppose you can always fall back on coconut oil.

The bee in the window

 I used to subscribe to Resurgence magazine — which is beautiful as well as interesting, and I took it for some years. I liked the articles and the pictures, but also read the small ads with interest; and month by month there used to be one in the section advertising holiday accommodation which always stopped my eye. It said, "Bed only in a quiet street". And every time I read it my soul responded wit a definite "Amen".

In seeking out family dwellings, I have always looked for somewhere we could live without a car — because our income has always been precarious and small, and cars confer scant blessing upon the wellbeing of creation. So I chose places where the grocery stores and post office and bus routes, and everything else necessary for the routines of life, were easily accessed on foot. The magic combination, to my mind, is a quiet residential street off a main highway with a conglomeration of commercial premises on it. So the amenities are nearby but the road is peaceful and secluded. Which describes well the street we live in now.

The end of our road has been blocked off because otherwise it would run straight into a big crossroad with a complicated nexus of traffic lights.

At the top of our road, just past the way down to the park that passes the business centre that used to be the doctors' surgery, is a shop that used to be a store selling carpet and rugs and vinyl flooring, but has now become an outlet for overstocked groceries and kitchen sundries. It has a generous car park at the back, and at the front a little forecourt where they put out stands of bedding plants. The front and half the side of the shop are glazed with large plate glass windows, and the big front doors stand open to welcome in customers all through the hours the shop is open, in this warm, summery season.

I have never been in to this shop since it changed hands — though we did get several carpets there in years gone by.

Today I been down to the town centre on the bus, to buy some salad and fruit and cream and sourdough bread, and was returning home toward the end of the afternoon.

I passed the shop at the end of our road, with its bedding plants stacked in the front yard and its doors wide open, and saw that inside, bumping fruitlessly against the big windows, was the most enormous bumble bee.

I felt so worried about it. I wanted it to be outside, and be free.

I don't have much energy, and I find encounters with people difficult. I was tired, and my foot was hurting. I thought about retracing my steps and going in to the shop to speak to the shop owners, ask them to catch the bee gently in a glass and release it outside. But you can't always tell how people will respond to insects, can you? I was worried they'd freak out about it, or tell me they'd set it free and then secretly kill it when I wasn't looking. And I was tired and my foot hurt and I wanted to be home. So apart from praying for the bee and asking Jesus to help it find its way out, and asking him to send an angel for it, and asking St Melangell and St Paisos to intercede for it, I didn't do anything.

I felt wretched and guilty and sad and sorry and worried. Poor little thing.

I thought about the choices we make and the fixes we get into — how much time we spend bashing uselessly against unyielding obstacles when there is a massive doorway to freedom standing open wide three feet away. I thought about how we all need someone to help us and show us the way and set us free, and how I am not that for so many people and wasn't that for the poor trapped bee.

I hope it got out. I hope no one killed it. 

And I still honestly don't know if it was better to leave the bee to figure things out on its own, or if I should have gone in and done something about it. Every path, every decision, every choice at every fork in the road, brings its own unfolding consequences — for ourselves and for others, including bees — but we cannot always predict them, or manage the onward flow of situations according to the way we imagined.

May all living beings be at ease. May all living beings be free. 

St Peter and the three shelters

 In the story of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain-top, there's a moment with St Peter that has resonance, going forward, for our experience of church in general.

Confronted with the intense spiritual experience of this insight into who Jesus is, in garments of light and flanked by those who stand for the Law and the Prophets — the two pillars of their tradition — Peter, overwhelmed, reaches for something that will allow him to contain it, manage it, allow him to encompass it and take charge. He looks for a job to do, a role to play, and a corresponding physical expression that will allow him to pigeonhole it.

One of the temptations of religion is to settle for less; to opt for its body not its soul.

Many of us feel uncomfortable on holy ground. It asks a lot of us. Its power vibrates at a level that winnows and sifts us. It's always easy to try and parcel it up into manageable segments: a building, a role, a job to be getting on with.

If we can make it about the pulpit, the altar and accoutrements, the vestments, the organ and choir, the sheet music, the liturgy, the fund for mending the roof, the burglar alarm in the vicarage, sealing the floor and what the candles are made of and when it's time to service the boiler and deal with the damp in the church hall — we will. There is enough in all that to offer grist to our mill for a lifetime. 

But establishing our role and getting busy with our task and building our holy shelters comes at a terrible price. All of this allows us to set up a distraction until the moment has gone and the vision has passed.

How blessed are those who have the courage, the preparedness of heart and mind, and the hunger, to sit and gaze upon the glory of the Lord on the bare mountaintop, and feed the spirit, and satisfy the thirst of the soul.

The buildings will crumble and the organ will pack up; the three little shelters will be one with the earth again in due course: but to the one who has been called into the presence of Jesus, to gaze upon the transfiguration of the Lord, is offered the chance to see past the veil of the physical into the light of eternity.

If this ever comes to you, let your hands be still. Give it your full attention. Bear the weight of glory. Not often in one lifetime is such a chance held out.

Yes, altars and sanctuaries and robes and perpetual lights and clergy housing are part of what we do. They express and recall and direct us to the central reality of the holy — but they are not all of it. As Augustine said, "This also is Thou; neither is this Thou."

When the clouds break and the ray of heaven shines through, may you be ready, may you look up, may your heart open, may you be unafraid.

"And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed; and all flesh shall see it together."

730 things hits the buffers

 I haven't by any means run out of things to give away — I have a sack of clothing (laundered and individually wrapped) to send to the Shelter (homeless charity) shop when their van collection comes by our road tomorrow — but they are things I swapped out in exchange for things coming in, so they don't count as diminishing my stash of possessions. 

So I haven't managed to find 730 things to give away. I could persevere, but I am sad that in the course of the year I gave away two tops that I got very cheaply on eBay which I think I should have kept — I could replace them because they are still sold by the firm that makes them, but they are expensive to buy new so I'll just leave it. And I think if I look for things to give away simply to make up the number target, I'll be making mistakes now that I'd have to rectify later and it would be expensive. Also I was starting to feel a bit "uh-oh" about falling into what I think of as an Instagram mentality — creating an appearance that hasn't true congruence with reality, because you can on the internet, so easily. And if one's life isn't about truth then what's the point of it? So I'll stop.

It was interesting anyway; and perhaps I'm glad that I didn't have 730 things lying about unnoticed.

But I have so many thoughts about other things that I think we can go on chatting forever. I've been thinking about St Peter and his three shelters . . .

730 things — Day 143 of 365

Have you come across the St Elisabeth Convent at Minsk in Belarus? They have a channel on Youtube, which I warmly recommend. They made a short video giving an overview of their life, here.

About a hundred nuns live at the convent, and some of them make videos about their lives and faith.

I loved this one about Sister Ioanna. 

What a beautiful, shining, courageous soul. 

There are not that many videos I watch more than once, but I could watch that one over and over.

I am running out of things to dispose of, but I still have some bits and pieces for today, and here they are —