"Tis a Gift to be Simple"

Her voice was tired. It spoke of a heavy load carried too far for too long. “Rev. Chad, this is Trudy. I don’t know whether you remember me or not, but Unity helped my out last month with some used tires so I could get my car inspected.”

I recalled the tires, but couldn’t remember Trudy or her situation. She’s not alone. We receive sixty to seventy calls a month from children of God working out variations on Trudy’s predicament. My Mom called it “Surviving a champagne country on a beer budget.”

Mom knew whereof she spoke. Life had dealt her that hand in 1939 as a 28 year-old single parent of three kids five and under. We wound up down in Florida after a stopover at the family hog and tobacco farm “up the holler” in Sugar Grove, NC, and a few months in Tacoma Park, MD.

Survival was probably a little easier in those days. At least it seemed to be in Florida, which may well have influenced Mom’s choice to move there. Folks lived and worked in the same neighborhood. Owning a car wasn’t mandatory. Monthly payments, insurance, tags, gas and tires weren’t either. A pair of shorts and a tee-shirt sufficed as a wardrobe. Labels were irrelevant. Shoes were optional. Winter required only an occasional blanket to keep off the night chill. Kraft Dinner was a staple. The printing on the blue and yellow box read, “eight cents feeds a family of four.” And so it did . . . ever so often.

But no one complained. Trust me, there were no gourmets in the family. Even so, as my brother and I got a little older and more experienced, our “hunting, fishing and gathering” expeditions added an abundance of local culinary delights to our daily diet including delicacies like mangoes, oranges, bananas, tangerines, coconuts, clams, oysters, pompano, red snapper, mullet, shrimp, and the southern spiny lobster the locals called “bugs.”

My Florida childhood in the 40’s was way beyond survival. I remember it being a rich and exciting adventure played out in an unpolluted paradise free of both environmental degradation and TV driven commercialism. I didn’t have to deal with the fantasy that my life was impoverished because I wasn’t munching out regularly on “Happy Meals,” wearing Nike’s “swoosh” and faithfully collecting every new “Beanie Baby” that showed up in “Toys R Us.” I know it got a little dicey around the house when rent time or a trip to the grocery store came around. For sure, we weren’t, as Mom used to say, “living high off the hog,” but something was going on, unique to the times, that took most of the sting out of being, shall we say, poor as church mice. In addition to the blessing of being pre-TV, thus clueless about what we were missing, we were also living in a WWII culture of imposed simplicity.

Due to the war and the rationing that came with it, everyone was making do with a lot less. Conspicuous consumption was no longer envied or admired, it was deplored, while conservation and “tightening the belt” were applauded. I remember being proud of how our Spartan lifestyle was helping win the war. As artificial as it was, I was being introduced to the process that leads to what the Buddha called “the greatest gain” . . . an abiding sense of contentment that flows from living light on the land. But I doubt that Trudy and her kids think of themselves as either patriotic or spiritually blessed.

It seems our tendency to be preoccupied with the material world (aka worshiping Mammon) is a lot more evident now than it was fifty-five years ago. I suppose that’s primarily due to two undeniable facts. First, there’s a lot more stuff around these days to be discontent about not having. And second, we are as dumb as ever regarding the True Source of contentment. So many things to have . . . so little time . . . so little money . . . Alas, life is so empty! The tragedy now playing in the Theatre of Longing. Produced, written, directed by and starring . . . US! More is better. Now is best. Get it while it’s hot!

The multi-national makers and movers of stuff are leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to condition the planetary family to want as a way of life, to think that happiness emerges from accumulating more money, more material symbols of wealth, more fame, honor and notoriety, more power, sex, and education, the perfect job, the perfect mate, the perfect kids, ad infinitum . . . ad nauseum.

The seductive rationale of the wanting mind is that fulfillment, the realization of our desires, will make us happy. Not! Even a cursory look at that fairy tale will puncture the myth and show you that the practice of wanting more and more and more provides you with only one experience . . . a significantly enhanced sense of craving and frustration.

Interestingly enough, it's helpful to see that our dilemma is not about failing to satisfy our desires. The real problem lies in the fact that we constantly satisfy desire after desire and still find ourselves firmly stuck in the Theatre of Longing, wanting still more. Ask yourself. How many lovely sensations, evocative thoughts, inspiring sights, beautiful sounds, delicious tastes and rapturous feelings have you already experienced in your life? Countless, aren’t they. Infinitely more than we could ever possibly remember, but even all of that hasn’t come close to giving you a satisfied mind. Collecting experiences as the path to authentic contentment is like thinking you can make chicken salad out of the other stuff. It’s not going to happen.

Okay, if acquiring and consuming provide no lasting meaning or purpose to our lives, why do we continue? Because we are still dumb as lemons regarding the prime directives of all the masters of the conscious life regarding the path to true contentment. Jesus said it real clear.

Thanks, Trudy, for giving us the opportunity to express a little lovingkindness. And, remember, you are not alone in this. None of us are.