Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Hospitable Reception




One of the surprising experiences I (Joshua) have had during our month of spending in only seven places is the forced practice of reception.

Last week Alyssa and I were hanging out on a lazy evening. Our lazy evenings are valuable considering my schedule as a Resident Director tends to be consistently inconsistent and constantly moving and this night was particularly valuable because later on I had a meeting to attend and the next night was to be spent at a roller rink with 100+ students. This particular lazy evening had us thumbing through the chalky pages of the local paper only to find free screening of the film 51 Birch Street - since taking up this endeavor we have developed a bit of a radar for free things. We decided to attend the film and invite my colleague/friend and her husband.

I didn't think anything of my invitation, but in the conversation with our friends I realized it was a bit awkward. Going out to a movie almost always constitutes dinner before or after and this was no exception . . . except . . . my colleague suggested that they could pay for us. She needed to check with her husband and then get back to me. I supported her proposal of gender equality/marital communication and reluctantly accepted her offer. But I felt guilty. My mind pondered, “why should they pay because of a decision that we made?”

The next day went by and I didn't think of the matter much – I was busy making a fool of myself at the skate rink, feeling like a fawn learning how to walk. I had a meeting with faculty members on Friday and since academicians like to pontificate and split hairs, my meeting went long. Making it to the film and dinner beforehand was going to be impossible so we ended up going to the campus Dinning Commons, which is free for Residence Directors. The difference between my confidence in a meeting with a room full of doctorate degrees and talking to friends about money was unbelievable. I went from emboldened to baby in the short trek from the administration building to the Dinning Commons.

We enjoyed the movie and had pretty much put the issue of money at the back of our minds again. But once we got to the car we could feel the tension. The front seats of our Rav4 filled with unsureness. I decided to ask about the money, but as the words came out I didn't know how to be direct, it was like I was in 5th grade trying to tell Tiffany, that cute girl in the front row, that I was crushing on her. Somehow through my clumsiness our query fumbled out of my mouth. To our surprise, they said, “you didn't get our text? We already said we would pay.”

It is strange to think about how much trepidation we had. It felt wrong to receive and even more wrong to ask for something despite the fact it had already been offered.

When we can buy, when we have power and control, we don't often receive well.

We get a lot of things in our lives, Christmas and birthdays are filled with gifts. But getting and receiving are different. When we get things, it is about us. It is the expectation because of an event, it does not feel sacrificial or very relational. Getting can include lowered appreciation and a reduction to things. Most of us have been trained to say, “thank you” when we get a gift, but I question how thankful we actually are. How quickly those gifts pass away for something new or they are just forgotten amongst the many other things in our life. Our appreciation of the things we get wains quickly. Moreover, we reduce our perspective when we get “things.” The primary focus is often on the “thing”. We marvel at a new book, a new dress, a new knife (my Christmas gift this year), and displace the real gift, which is the love in the giving of another person. The “thing” should just be an outward expression.

An attitude of reception allows for the giver and relationship be the emphasis. Receiving means letting someone else do something for us that we can't do ourselves. This expands "gift" away from primarily the things we get - we have the ability to get things for ourselves - and refocuses us on the relationships, love, and care we receive be it in the gift of a new car, loaf of bread, help with a project, or quality time. In our scenario above, what Alyssa and I received wasn't the 30 bucks for appetizers and beers afterwards, it was hospitality and love. We let others meet us where we were, in our context, and care for us.


We don't receive very well in our culture, we like to go it alone or fake that “we got this.” It is an expression of strength, though often a faux strength, that we constantly propose. But receiving means acknowledging imperfection and incompleteness. That is hard. That honesty requires fighting the myth of the self made man and the pulled up by bootstraps mentality. It means giving up control and power.

Within the Christian faith, rhetoric leads us to hospitably receive rather than transactionally get. Phrases about our faith are ,“Receive the Gospel” , “Receive the Sprit” , “Receive Redemption” . . . we do not talk about “getting.” Christianity values relationships with God and others. Salvation as a gift is not primarily about not going to hell, it is about being back in right relationship with God. It isn't just a “thing” of salvation, it is a relationship of reconciliation. A reconciliation that requires us to give-up control and power, expand out image of salvation, and receive the love of God.

Ultimately a real gifts are about receiving love.




Monday, January 23, 2012

Highs and Lows

I've also been reflecting on the highs and lows of our experiment so far this month. Here are mine:

HIGHS
-At the half way mark for the month, we had only spent half of what we normally do at this point
-The different situations that have come up, have allowed Josh and I to really talk and work through them...allowing us to connect more
-Being more aware of the impulse spending
-There are things we have learned so far this month that we would like to carry to the next few months

LOWS
-Feeling bad for having to turn people down when we can't do things we are invited to because it's not in our 7 places
-Tagging on to the first one, feeling "un fun to be around"
-Not being able to give in to what I'd like to do (buy a new shirt, buy yummy dessert from a bakery, eating out at a nice restaurant, etc)

Thanks to everyone who reads this!

Birthday Celebrations...what to do?!

I apologize for the lack of updating! Life seems to be passing by and while I've had good intentions of blogging, I just haven't :)

So, there's only about a week left of January! I can't believe it. I remember thinking that the first week was taking forever and wondering how I was ever going to get through the month with only spending money in 7 places. In actuality, it really hasn't been that hard. We have had to think through some things though.

We had 2 friends who had birthdays this month and we had been invited to their birthday celebrations...at restaurants that weren't on our list. Josh and I ended up taking a walk one evening and I asked how this was going to work. Both the birthday celebrations were last week. We decided that this 7 Experiment is to help us in our spiritual practice and that the point was not to be legalistic about it. So what were we going to do? We decided that we wanted to honor our friends and celebrate them, as their friendships are important to us and we want to love them. We decided that I would get to go to one party (an all women party) and that the both of us would go to the other and that we'd allow ourselves to spend money there. We also decided that we wouldn't eat out at Fresco for the rest of the month because of this. At that time, the task seemed daunting. In my mind, and I think I said it too, I thought, "NO MORE EATING OUT THIS MONTH?!?!!?!" And then I thought...we were more than half way through the month. I stopped and paused further and reminded myself that this isn't the end of the world and that there are so many people who are not able to have the freedom to eat out freely when they want to.

Also...it ended up that we didn't have to spend money at one of the events.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Money on my mind



One thing I am realizing this month is that money is often on my mind. Alyssa wrote about impulse spending a couple posts ago. I echo her struggle in wanting to buy things just because we have the ability. When if comes to buying things, we often ask ourselves "why not" instead of "why." We can use and manipulate both approaches to feed addiction to things, but I think the former is particularly complicated. When we ask "why not" we are assuming that we should have a certain item, our disposition is one that focuses on our lack of something. When we switch our disposition to asking "why", we can think deeper about the things we buy. "Why" makes us think: Do we need this item? Am I really going to use it? Is this REALLY going to make my life better/more enjoyable? Does this thing help me love others? Does this usage of my money glorify God?

At least once a day this week I have thought about an item I wanted or thought I needed: getting more music, sports equipment, books, motorcycle, surf/paddle board, a dog (we just lost one), things for our deck, even buying a house (a long way away). The desire for all of these things occupied my mind and time. Some of these things are mostly wishful thinking at this point in life (i.e house) and it isn't wrong to have fiscal responsibility and consider saving for large purchases. But none of these items are necessary or very important to life right now, yet they occupy the space in which the more important things could be.

I believe that God is hospitable in His relationship with us. He is not forceful, we have the ability to choose, He waits on us ("I stand at the door and knock" Rev 3:20), we have the option to make space for him. One view of evil is that it is the absence of God. Perhaps we should re-think what the Christian scriptures mean when it says, "the love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Tim 6:10). Money isn't just currency - that negates the reality of bartering which is what currency is based on -, money is status symbols, goods, items, etc. The love money includes the love of those things we buy and the love of the desire to buy and accumulate. When we love things, we don't leave space for God and He is thus absent.

One of the stuggles I often have in my spiritual life is making time for God. We often get caught up in the busyness of the life we create and push God off to the side. Some of the busyness comes from our overcommitment and our hyper-active, overstimulated American culture, however there is a busyness interwoven with our addiction to buying and keeping up with material things More insidious is the mental busyness that comes from our "a desire to have." Our minds and hearts become saturated with wanting things and we forget to want God. It is not just that we over consume or overspend, we are over-concerned with wanting and loving material things. This mindset is unfortunately, normalized within our culture and the human existence. And the overconcern detracts from what should be our ultimate concern (God). The overconcern with things is the distraction the Christ is alluding to when he says, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19: 23 - 24).

I don't believe the solution to our addiction to things and wanting things is found, solely, in fervently maintaining a morning or evening quiet time. Those are both important disciplines within the Christian life, but something more is necessary in addressing our excessive impulsive and normalized material desires. We have to be cognizant of our desires and then take the effort to refocus them. This type of simplicity is a spiritual practice because it is not about having or not having things, but our disposition towards what we have and desire.

We need to be aware when we think about the material things we want and try to refocus on our desire for God: for His wisdom, for holiness, for Shalom, for restoration and reconciliation, for the already/not yet Kingdom of God. Those are the things I wish to occupy my mind, heart, and actions.


Sunday, January 8, 2012

To Spend Or Not To Spend

As I mentioned in our post before we gave ourselves wiggle room and can spend in one more location than we have slated. However, a couple tensions came up already.

We are planning a vacation to Toronto with some good friends of ours from Indiana. We are splitting some of the costs and responsibilities of planning, and Alyssa and I were given the task of finding a place to stay. We are down to two potential locations, but then I realized that we have to spend money to reserve the space. I know we made this decision before this month, so in some ways I think it could be an exception. But we would still be spending money. When it came down to it, we decided that this was something already in the works and was not a "choice" to spend money in January, but the consequence of a previous decision and following through with a responsibility . . . 

Also, I was planning on attending the Interfaith Initiative of Santa Barbara's "Religion & the Environment" dinner. The dinner is a time for leaders and lay folks from various local faith communities to come together, form relationships, and discuss mutual areas of concern for the Santa Barbara community. It costs $25 and like the Toronto vacation, this is something I had decided on attending a while ago, but I never registered. I decided not to attend because, technically, we'd still be spending money. . .

On Thursday, Alyssa went stand up paddle boarding with a friend. I was at our apartment doing some work and I got a call. Alyssa asked if it would be breaking the rules to pay for extra-time since the excursion was paid for a couple months ago. After talking we decided that "yes" it would still be spending money to pay for an extension so we didn't . . .


Thursday, January 5, 2012

Impulse Spending...

Yesterday was quite an interesting day for me. It was only day 4 of this month, and I was already struggling with spending and looking to find loopholes.

We decided that if we have gift cards to a store that is not on our list that we could still go to that store with our gift card, as long as we didn't spend our own money. I had a bit of a break yesterday morning and decided to go to Starbucks with a gift card to do some reading. The Starbucks I was at is in a strip mall that has all different stores. As I was leaving Starbucks, I had a thought of walking in to the stores to browse and see if I needed anything. Before I even made a move, I thought about how I really shouldn't go in to any of the stores because 1) the stores weren't on my list, 2) I really didn't "need" anything, and 3) I could see how this would be a slippery slope---going in to a store just to browse and see if I needed anything and the chances of me finding something to buy just to buy, would be high. This was just an example of how I could have fallen in to impulse buying and how so often I end up buying something I really don't need because I'm bored and because it would be nice to have.

My other dilemma was that I was going to meet up with a friend for coffee/snack after my day of internship. I found myself having to be honest with her in where I could go (I had told her a few days ago about this experiment). It was quite humbling! I wished I didn't have to put boundaries on where we could go and that we could have gone to a place that would have been fun for both of us. I was upset about not having the freedom to choose. But, as I reflect on this today, Josh and I are so lucky that we have the freedom and resources to choose where we spend our money. There are so many others out there that don't have the resources or freedom to go out with friends for coffee or food whenever they want.

I really think that this month will be stretching for me. I'm used to spending my money in whatever way I want because I have the resources to. However, there are so many other fruitful ways to spend my money and I think this month will be a month of me evaluating what this is like in my life.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Month One: Spending

In our first month we will be restricting our spending to seven places.

Trader Joe's
Von's
Fresco Cafe
The Good Cup
USA Gas Station
Spectrum Clubs

We are making some exceptions for bills, loans, insurance, etc. As you can see, we actually reduced our locations down to six. This gives us a little wiggle room just in case something comes up.

We were a little surprised that we struggled putting together seven places (especially because we chose two grocery stores). We both could think of plenty of places where we spend money, but when it came down to it, they simply weren't very important. It reminded me that spending is often compulsive: we see something at the store, we crave a drink from a coffee shop, we want to go out for dinner because we are tired, we think we are going to take-up a new hobby etc. A lot of time our desire opens us up to let money control us.

But the fact that some places are dismissible doesn't mean those areas of "unimportant" spending have not had an impact. Things have already come up that have made our commitment annoying. I (Joshua) realized that I have a coffee appointment with a a friend today (Tuesday) that isn't at the Good Cup and that I have two more meetings this week. One of the other meetings is going to be at the Good Cup and I am being treated for the other (I didn't ask, they offered). Moreover, I didn't factor in the breakfast that I have every other week with my buddy Christopher. None of these are insurmountable, but definitely an inconvenience.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

In the Beginning . . .


It is the beginning of a new year. 2011 has passed and 2012 has come. Typically my wife (Alyssa) and I (Joshua) don't do big “resolutions” for the new year. We are both crtical of how impactful these actually are and tend to make “goals” for the upcoming months and have some good conversation about what we want to be "different" about our life as a couple and lives as individuals. We discussed several things: budgeting better to get out of student debt, slowing life down, concentrating on friendships and being present, and greater authenticity with each other, friends, and colleagues. But we also decided to do something unique. 

In November I was looking through the Free Methodist (the denomination we belong to) website and found an article by Jen Hatmaker called  'Tis the Season to Simplify . In the post she tells of her family's journey of eliminating/changing seven things in their life each month for seven months. She called it the Seven Experiment, utilizing a number of wholeness, order, completion, etc in the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The Hatmakers approach included the following elements:
Food
 We ate only seven foods.Clothes
 We wore the same seven items of clothing. No, I am not kidding.Possessions
 We gave away seven things a day that we owned.Media 
We took away seven forms of media, gaming and social networking, and imposed radio silence. The kids feigned aneurysms.Spending
 We spent money in only seven places. Waste
 We adopted seven substantial habits for a greener life, including gardening, composting, extensive recycling and buying only thrift or local.Stress
 We followed the “Seven Sacred Pauses,” pausing for prayer and worship seven times a day, in addition to observing the traditional Sabbath each week.
We are taking up this same basic format, but changing the order and adding technology to the media category. As we go we may make some adjustments before each month begins too.

Over the next seven months,  Alyssa and I will post about why we decided to do this experiment, how it is going, what we are learning, etc. We decided not to give a long explanation why we are doing this. This omission is for two reasons: 1) The title of the blog explains it, "Simpler Life" and 2) it takes too long to post why simplicity is valuable so we will just be posting about it throughout the seven months. Our post may not be daily and will vary in size, but we will try to be consistent so as people can stay in the loop.

We are humbly taking up this challenge because we think it is an important practical and spiritual exercise, but we don't expect to it to be easy and we will be honest when we have failures. We would love to hear your comments, questions, concerns, encouragements etc, so please post and vitually come on this journey with us.