How the Poor Teach us to Live Simply
“… lead, Savior, lead me home in childlike faith, home to my God.” – St. John Henry Newman
I’ve seen extreme and unexpected simplicity this year. Simplicity in the possessions people claim: a single person tent quietly set up under a highway on-ramp; a small backpack and a blanket; a recliner, groaning plastic lawn chair, and TV dinner tray in a void and lonely apartment. Simplicity in the way people live: walking across town for each meal; making “paint” out of spent coffee grounds and water, bathing in a public fountain, wearing the same black pants and shirt, and a funny white collar every day, working in a cramped office, on a too small desk.
Being witness to and sharing, for a short time, these simple ways of life was a shock to my perception of my own previous way of life. Initially, I felt a heavy guilt at the excess I had surrounded myself within. But what would that guilt achieve? In light of the Missionary Year God had placed me in, I instead had an invitation to emulate the simplicity I’d seen. Just maybe not in the same exact ways. I’m not asked to sleep in a doorway, or find a spot to pitch up a tent. Ultimately, what I’m asked is to try and live like Christ. To love like Christ. Christ, who is present to us in a way as simple as a piece of bread.
In the spirit of simplicity, we can go to the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If God is simply the Word, are we called to be much more complex? We were made to cultivate and marvel at God’s creation in the Garden, and since the Fall we have made the world incredibly more complex and distracting. An easy first step in becoming who God made us to be is to get back to marveling at His creation.
This can (and I argue, should) be in all the small, simple, mundane things: a nicely colored leaf -- gorgeous. The pink blossoms on that tree you’re walking by? They deserve a whiff and your acknowledgement -- “Yup!” -- from you. I’ve been learning this year to marvel in all the little things that God has made beautiful. Searching for this hidden joy has made life more alive, particularly in the days that seem mundane. We read of God loosening the laws of unclean eating to St. Peter in Acts (10:15) saying, “What God has made clean, you have no right to call common”. This cleaning of the animals also extends to all of creation, in light of Christ making all things new. There is nothing on this planet that is not worthy of our joy and awe, no matter how small.
“Anyone who is trustworthy in little things is trustworthy in great [things]” (Luke 16:10). I think it could also be said that “anyone who can find joy in little things will find joys in great things.” When we find ourselves reveling in the small, simple things with God, He helps us find a holy joy in the great things in life. God wants to give us those great things, those great joys. But first, we must lower our view, like little children, and search for, find, and bask in the simple wonders of this world.
This poem–one of my favorites–never fails to remind me to think like a child. Through finding wonder in all the simple, everyday creations of God.
Excerpt from “Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be” by Ross Gay
“…For now let me tell you about the bush called honeysuckle
that the sad call a weed, and how you could push your little
sun-licked face into the throngs and breathe and breathe.
Sweetness would be your name, and you would wonder why
four of your teeth are so sharp, and the tiny mountain range
of your knuckles so hard. And you would throw back your head
and open your mouth at the cows lowing their human songs
in the field, and the pigs swimming in [mud] and clover,
and everything on this earth, little dreamer, little dreamer
of the new world, holy, every rain drop and sand grain and blade
of grass worthy of gasp and joy and love…”
Samuel Stucki