Sister Joan Chittister - Becoming Fully Human: The Greatest Glory of God

If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will God not much more clothe you?

T here is a story in the annals of monastic literature that has always both charmed and troubled me.

Once upon a time, this story tells, a seeker stopped at the cell of one of the monastics of the Egyptian desert seeking a word from the Spirit.

But when he entered the old monastics cell, the seeker was shocked at the sight of it. In the cell were a mat, a table, some utensils, a book, and a prayer corner. Nothing else. Not one thing else.

Where is your furniture? the seeker said.

Well, where is yours? the monastic answered.

Why would I have furniture? the seeker said. After all, Im only passing through.

Exactly, the old monastic said. And so am I. Is that it? I asked myself. Is that simplicity of life? Is simplicity poverty, and is poverty a virtue? And, if so, what good is poverty when people everywhereincluding here in the richest country of the worldare dying because of it?

Ive given a lot of thought to this topicnot simply in regard to you and your life but with my own life in mind as well.

After all, as I write to you about simplicity, my CD player is playing a Bach violin concerto softly and the fire-place glows behind me. And fireplace and quiet notwithstanding, I spend hours on the phone talking to technicians as I try to arm-wrestle into compliance the little three-pound computer on which I now write since I long ago put away my yellow pad and ballpoint pen.

What is simplicity of life? And is it possible at all anymore in a culture surrounded by the gadgetsthe food processors and microwave ovens and cell phones and camcorders and e-mail and UPS tracking systemsthat we never actually foresaw but now cant live without?

It all depends on what you mean by simplicity of life. I myself am less sure than ever that what we have called simplicity in the past has ever really been simplicity at all. Deprivation, maybe. The cultural norm, maybe. But simplicity? Not necessarily. Not in the spiritual sense of the word. Not in the way the ancients used it, at least.

Simplicity is a talent for going with the flow in life. When we have to affect our simplicityplan it, impose it, strategize itwere in real trouble. There is more simplicity in the one who eats caviar on impulse, Chesterton wrote, than in the one who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

If simplicity doesnt have more to do with living well than with the number of things we own, it is a virtue only for those who have things to forgo.

G. C. Lichtenberg wrote, The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of those who observe it. Even the one-celled organism is made up of atoms and molecules beyond count. Simplicity doesnt really exist, in other words. We make it up. Its a sobering thought, spiritually as well as scientifically.

Life is not simple. There is no controlling it, no shaping it in the style of a slower, calmer, idyllic worldlong gone, if ever here. Instead, we need to learn how to deal with our complexities with simplicity.

Life without necessitiesgrueling, unfair, and involuntary povertyis not simplicity at all. Life without its essentials is, in fact, social obscenity, a moral responsibility that is incumbent on society at large. God judges the poor on their honesty but the comfortable on their generosity.

Simplicity of life is more what poet Sister Madeleva Wolff, CSC, called the habitually relaxed grasp than it is life without gadgets that we never really wanted in the first place but realize are now part of the air we breathe.

Simplicity of life is the ability to handle with single-minded unity of soul and serenity of heart whatever life brings.

When our well-intentioned vegetarianism becomes rigid to the point that it puts other people under a great deal of strain cooking for us, how simple is that?

When we handle our own life schedule very well because we refuse to have our own priorities interrupted by anyone elses needs, is that simplicity of life?

Who is really living a simple life, the people with controlled menus, controlled physical environments, and controlled schedules or the people whose lives are twisted and stretched to make that kind of simplicity possible?

Simplicity of life in a complex and complicated world is marked by four characteristics: It is honest, detached, conscious, and serene. Simplicity is an attitude of heart, not a checklist of belongings. Or, as Art Buchwald wrote, The best things in life arent things.

Simplicity of life requires that we be honest about who and what we are. We live a simple life when we do not pretend to be something we are not.

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves, the social scientist Ivan Illich wrote, the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. Simple people dont buy what they cant afford, or take on airs they havent earned, or hide behind titles and pedigrees, masks, and patinas designed to protect us from the truth about ourselves.

Everybody is from somewhere: from the broken family, from the alcoholic home, from the wrong side of town. It is those who reach back to where theyre from to give a hand today to those who are also trying to grow beyond it, who live the virtues of simplicity of life.

Simplicity has something to do with remembering who we are. It means being willing to have it known that I am from Bethlehem, not from Beverly Hills.

Simplicity is authenticity. Etty Hillesum puts it this way: Dont make ripples all around you; dont try so hard to be interesting; keep your distance; be honest; fight the desire to be thought fascinating by the outside world.

Simplicity is not inverse classism, a kind of social pretense that is at base secure enough to risk nothing in giving something away.