Advent Conspiracy

As Christmas approaches, we want to share these videos from adventconspiracy.org, which played an important role in changing our perspective on Christmas giving.  It’s about spending less but giving MORE.  More relationally, more meaningfully, more intentionally.  Here’s what Advent Conspiracy says:

“The story of Christ’s birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love.

So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists.

And when it’s all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?

Welcome to Advent Conspiracy.”

“Time is the real gift Christmas offers us, and no matter how hard we look, it can’t be found at the mall. Time to make a gift that turns into the next family heirloom. Time to write mom a letter. Time to take the kids sledding. Time to bake really good cookies and sing really bad Christmas carols. Time to make love visible through relational giving. Sounds a lot better than getting a sweater two sizes too big, right? Need a few ideas? Just click here and see what others have done to give more during the advent season.”

Making A Living: Voluntary Simplicity cont.

Chapter 3: Making A Living

“We must take time to dress for our jobs, commute to our jobs, think about our jobs at work and at home, ‘decompress’ from our jobs.  We must spend our evenings and weekends in mindless ‘escape entertainment’ in order to ‘recreate’ from our jobs.”

“How many people have you seen who are more alive at the end of the work day than they were at the beginning?”

“For most human history people only worked for two or three hours per day.”

“We’ve begun to lose the fabric of family, culture, and community that gave meaning to life outside the workplace. … Because life outside the workplace has lost vitality and meaning, work has ceased being a means to an end [financial support] and become an end in itself. … Our jobs now serve the function that traditionally  belonged to religion: they are the place where we seek answers to the perennial questions: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘What’s it all for?’”

“Having the financial independence to walk away rarely triggers people to do just that.  The reality is, making money is such hard work that it changes you.  It takes twice as long as anyone plans for. It requires more sacrifices than anyone expects. You become so emotionally invested in that world- and psychologically adapted to it- that you don’t really want to ditch it.”

There is this paradox between not letting your job be the center of your life and finding a job that you “come alive” doing.  With the amount of time we spend at our jobs (see first quote), it seems we should find something we truly enjoy doing.  But at the same time, our jobs aren’t necessarily supposed to be the one source of our satisfaction, nor the source of our identity- they’re a means for us to enjoy the rest of our life (assuming we have time and energy left to enjoy it).  I found a lot of “food for thought” in this chapter, and I welcome your comments and reflections.

Time: Voluntary Simplicity cont.

Chapter 4: Do  You Have the Time?

“Our task is to balance the many roles we play and refrain from volunteering to understudy everybody else’s.  It can be tough to say no, especially to causes we recognize as worthy.  The goal is to realize that, since we can’t help with everything, our time and stamina need to go into what truly speaks to our hearts.”

“The time you spend preserving your health  is like time invested in a savings account: you’ll get it back plus interest.”

“How much time do you choose to spend with electronic companionship?” (i.e. TV, internet, video games)

“If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert and a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of doing these things joyfully. With the cup in my hands, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the fragrance and flavor of the tea, together with the pleasure of drinking it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment. The time of dish-washing is as important as the time of meditation.”

Time is an interesting subject for all of us, I think.  As someone who is “a planner” and an “achiever,” I am constantly spending my thoughts on the future.  Pushing forward,  working toward, planning ahead. It’s a struggle to be present to the moment I’m in. Our time is such a precious thing because it passes without hesitation, like a strong current, and it doesn’t come back. Am I spending my limited time on what I’m passionate about? Am I using my limited time to invest in meaningful relationships or in TV shows? Am I joyful with what I’m doing now or am I always looking to the next thing?

Voluntary Simplicity

This is the title of a short discussion course by the Northwest Earth Institute I recently got to participate in with some college students.  Even if you can’t participate in a discussion group at some point, I highly recommend the reading materials for Voluntary Simplicity (which you can order off their website). I can’t think of a better way to express the things I’ve learned from this course than offering a few quotes from the book to speak for themselves.

Chapter 1: The Meaning of Simplicity

“Simple living is about making deliberately thoughtful choices. The difference is that you are fully aware of why you are living your particular life, and that life is one you have chosen thoughtfully.”

“Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.” Simone de Beauvoir

Chapter 2: Living More With Less

“Americans today [compared to the 1950's] own about twice as many cars per person, eat out more than twice as often, and commonly enjoy big screen color TVs, microwave ovens, home computers, air conditioning, Post-it notes, and gobs of other goodies. Materially, these are the best of times. … Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are ‘very happy’ has declined slightly, from 35 to 30 percent. We are twice as rich and no happier. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has more than doubled, and increasingly our teens and young adults are plagued by depression.  … We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose.”

To be continued…

Values

I read a quote once that went something like: “it’s not hard to make a decision when you know what your values are.”  It is not enough to say that you value something.  The true test of what you value is in how you spend your time, your money, and your energy.  When faced with a difficult choice, we have to weigh what is truly important to us.  Sometimes when we haven’t stopped to think about what really matters, to think through our values intentionally, we make choices based on whatever strikes our fancy at the time.  While this may not be such a horrible thing every once in a while, we do have to consider that the path we take in life is made up of choices.  Sometimes a single choice can drastically alter the course of our lives, for the better or for the worse.  Other times, it’s the small, seemingly meaningless choices that add up over time, quietly forming habits that shape our future.  Either way, in knowing our values and holding fast to them, we can be intentional about our choices, and in fact, the whole course of our lives.

Jedd and I recently had a head-on confrontation with our values.  The choice in front of us was that of buying a house.  At first, the values that came into play were not only financial (how much of our income and savings we were willing to sacrifice to own a property) but also what kind of environment we’d like to live in.  As we often tend to do, we seemed to have opposite views on these subjects only to find out later that deep down, we both wanted the same thing.

We determined that we value being able to host friends, to use our car as little as possible in getting to work, and things like that.  We looked at some condos because the more space we have, the more stuff we’ll “need” to fill it.    Having more stuff is one of the biggest pressures in our culture that is the hardest to fight, but one of our goals is that we’ll only buy things that we use on a regular basis.  Also, Jedd is helping me see that it is often more important to buy quality, durable items than whatever is cheapest in order to save money in the long run and to reduce the amount of needless waste.

Other values of ours that came into the house search were those of community and making a positive impact.  We found a great little house in a very unique community, a neighborhood that was once referred to as a “ghetto” and was intentionally restored.  The neighborhood includes privately-owned homes as well as rental units to allow for people of different income levels.  Various social service agencies, a Boys and Girls Club, and the Home Owner’s Association are present to offer community-building and support to people of diverse backgrounds.  The streets are active with children of all ethnicities- many of whom are from refugee families, single-parent households, etc.  While there are many difficult things about the neighborhood (mainly noise and safety), it’s a place we were very drawn to.  We felt we could be of use in this community, at the least as positive role models.  We considered buying the house as an investment in the community itself, more than in the property.  Sure, we could find somewhere safer, more private, more elegant, easier to live in- but we realized that’s not really what our values are about.

So you may be wondering why we haven’t bought this house.  The conditions were ripe- the economy was in our favor.  Well, we came very close.  But it turned out that there was a complication in the closing process that caused us to step back and re-evaluate if we valued the house enough to hang in there.  It was another intense moment in our relationship where I was very unsettled and thought Jedd was on a completely different page about the situation.  But it wasn’t so.  We looked at our values.  Yes, we value investing in a community and being somewhere that challenges us to reach out.  Yes, we are committed to Portland long-term.  Yes, we would prefer for our monthly home payment to be invested into our own house rather than go into a landlord’s pocket.  But we’re two young, entrepreneurial people in the midst of life transitions.  Who knows what we will be doing in two years?  And we still have a lot of traveling and adventuring we want to do.  We concluded that although we’d love to be in that house some day, right now we value the “freedom to change” even more.  Freedom to pick up and volunteer abroad, freedom to spend a short chapter of our lives doing something else, freedom to take an opportunity when it comes at us and not have to worry about being committed to a certain place or a mortgage payment.  We’ll sacrifice some rent payments to have those freedoms until we know we’re ready to really dig deep into a neighborhood and not be so mobile.

We will  be moving into a rental by the start of November that allows us both to commute without needing to drive.  If you’re in the area, we’ll likely have an “apartment warming” soon.  A big, heartfelt thanks to the Le’s who have graciously hosted us in their home for several months now!  We are blessed by their invaluable generosity and patience during this seemingly endless transition period.

Comfortable

An excerpt from Crazy Love by Francis Chan.

“What are you doing right now that requires faith?”  That question affected me deeply because at the time I could think of nothing in my life that required faith.  I probably wouldn’t be living very differently if I didn’t believe in God; my life was neither ordered nor affected by my faith like I had assumed it was.  Furthermore, when I looked around, I realized I was surrounded by people who lived the same way I did.

Life is comfortable when you separate yourself from people who are different from you.  That epitomizes what my life was like: characterized by comfort.

But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable.  He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.

(See Isaiah 58:2-14)

This excerpt really hit home for me.  The people I’ve met in the Dominican Republic and Haiti showed me what it means to truly live with faith and trust in God every day.  It’s a challenge to live with that kind of trust when we have the means to “take care of ourselves” along with the temptation to keep ourselves safe above all else.  But is life supposed to be about being safe?  Do we really have the power to keep ourselves safe anyway?  What is “faith” if we never have to rely on God?

Low Car Diet #4

I can’t believe I’m in the last week of the Zipcar challenge already!  Looking back, I see several contributing factors to my ability to go car-free.  One: location, location, location!  Living just 1.3 miles from work with no hills in the way makes it easy to bike or walk.  Two: summer season!  Doing this in the summer helps because the weather is not an obstacle and I’m not quite as busy, so I can take my time getting from one place to another.  Three: incentives!   Having something to work toward and the extra benefits that Zipcar has provided makes the challenge worthwhile.  In summation, as with many challenges in life, the way to set yourself up for success is to: remove obstacles and add benefits.

Low Car Diet #3

Weather 7/29/09 = 107

I always thought that rain and snow would be the biggest weather deterrent from biking or walking to work- never did I expect to encounter 107 degree weather in Portland.  Sheesh!  Biking at least is a little more breezy and less effort than walking so I’ve been surviving.

In other news: I used a zipcar for the first time!  Made the reservation online, got dropped off at the local Prius, swiped my card, drove downtown, hung out with a friend, got back in, stopped for free gas, parked it back where I found it, and went home.  Altogether, it was a positive experience, and I was pleasantly surprised that the gas station attendant was already familiar with the zipcar gas cards!

Low Car Diet #2

I wasn’t able to blog by Friday this week because we’ve been traveling “out of range.”  I have been riding in cars quite a bit, though each time has been in a shared vehicle, so I haven’t been cheating!  Last weekend, Jedd and I traveled with our housemates to Vancouver, BC by car.  We thought about taking Amtrak, but paying for four train tickets would cost a lot more than the gas to carpool.  I also had to pick up a student from the airport who was returning from our East Africa Immersion pilot trip, however, I used a vehicle from the Moreau Center for Service and Leadership at U.P. (which is kinda like Zipcar for University volunteers).  Finally, I also got to take a long weekend to travel with my husband to Crater Lake and camp at Black Canyon.  Other than that, I’ve been enjoying walking and biking to work during the week!  As long as the weather holds up, I think I’ll be fine.

Low Car Diet

I am not one to accept a challenge if I’m not sure I can accomplish it.  Not too long ago, I received an e-mail from Zipcar, issuing a challenge to go car-free for a month.  I threw my name in the bucket and soon enough, I had been selected as one of 30 Portlanders to participate!  We can walk, bike, bus, carpool, or zipcar but no going solo in the cruiser.  Our car keys are locked up for the month, so to speak.

If you know where I work and where I lived all last year, you’d know that it took me a mere 8 minutes to wander over to the office by foot.  Driving to work would have actually increased my commute time, having to first get the car from the parking garage and then maneuver around construction while stopping periodically for pedestrians.  So I always walked.  I got some exercise, saved money on gas, avoided stressful traffic, and kept my carbon footprint to a minimum.  I could even eat lunch every day from the comfort of my own kitchen.  It was unbeatable.  I knew I was spoiled, and the dream commute couldn’t last forever.

Eventually it was time to move out (due to Jedd’s job transition).  We were blessed to have two different couples open their homes to us over the summer while we figured out what’s next on the horizon. Though still fairly close, our new locale(s) were no longer that convenient 8-minute walk away from my office.  I wanted to keep my commute car-free.  And Zipcar served me the incentive on a silver platter!

I’m sure the experience will have its challenges as well as its rewards.  I’ll be posting weekly about my unconventional “diet,” so I invite you to follow along as I go!