Living Simply

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about living simply. It is a concept that though my parents never (that I remember) explicitly said we are trying to live simply, is something of their faith that I adopted for myself. And blessedly, my husband too, believes in living simply. We have tried to live without a lot of stuff. But since moving to Maputo we have had to reevaluate what living simply means for us.

One reason we’ve had to re-examine it is because we had to furnish an apartment, which made us feel like we were buying a lot of stuff (we were but that comes with the territory). One of the key questions was the durability of whatever we purchased, thinking ahead to whatever MCCer comes after us and inherits our purchases. An important factor for me in living simply is the difference between frugality and cheapness. Something might have a low price tag, which appeals to my wanting to be a good steward of MCC’s money, but if it isn’t good quality, it really isn’t worth buying.

Another reason that causes me to think about ‘what does it mean to live simply’ is encountering wealthy Mozambicans. Recently, I arranged a host family for our new SALT participant. Katie, the SALT participant, will be here for a year. After CCM sending out a letter requesting volunteers for host family, the only one that volunteered was a woman in Matola, a suburb of Maputo. The family has money and I know she does not understand MCC’s desire to live simply. In their house, they have multiple televisions in one room, several guest cottages out back and a couple of gazebo-like places for hanging out outside. They are definitely not the norm of Mozambique that I know.

For most of my life I have thought about living simply as an attempt to identify with the majority of the world’s populace—living simply so that others my simply live. Embarrassingly, only recently has the idea of living simply occurred to me as a spiritual discipline, like prayer or fellowship with other believers. Living simply, as spiritual discipline is a means for pursuing a closer relationship with Christ because I am not burdened by a lot of material things.

Living simply as a spiritual discipline opens the discussion to the poor. If I live simply in order to identify with the poor, it doesn’t make sense to those who are poor and could be construed as patronizing. A spiritual discipline opens the door for all to enter and journey together, drawing closer together and to Christ. So then for me, as I am coming to understand it, living simply is living with enough and being content with what I have. It can also mean taking into consideration what others have and eliciting others’ advice about purchases and lifestyle decisions.

The concept of enough is an odd one. It doesn’t make sense to my selfish desires of wanting more or hoarding what I have. Having enough means different things for different people. I’m sure that some people think that Joél and I live a bit too austere and other people think we have too much. It’s probably a little of both. But I am content with what I have? Not all the time. For example, I would really like a new pair of strappy sandals. I can easily justify it, especially since the ones I have just broke this morning. I could easily go to a cobbler—there are two within a block of our apartment to have him sew the strap back onto the shoe, but really I want to use it as an excuse to buy a new pair of sandals. If I would ask people I knew in Chimoio, what to do, they would recommend a cobbler and our nanny here would too. I don’t know what our new work colleagues would recommend. Friends and family in the States, would recommend I buy a new pair of shoes—it’s not worth hunting down a cobbler in the States to repair 10 year old shoes. I hear both sets of advice in my head.

Yesterday we took Nadia to a park where she could run around and play outside. We left the park feeling very alone. We don’t really fit in at the park, though it is filled with other foreigners, their children and nannies. There is a really nice café, a play ground, soccer field, and paths for walking or riding bike. We feel like we do not fit in at the park because we bring our own child and watch her instead of bringing our nanny (who only watches her when I’m at work). Also, we chose not to go to the café—it’s a bit too expensive for our taste—where all the adults hang out. So we are on the grass, playing with our daughter, where the nannies are congregated, looking after other people’s children. We normally walk to the park, though yesterday we drove. Our car, a MCC car with its bush road wornness, does not compete with the shiny new luxury SUV’s. Going to the park makes us feel lonely and like we are doing something odd in trying to live with enough. However, when we get home to our apartment, it feels like we are making the right decisions for us—choosing to live in a Mozambican neighborhood, choosing to live in a small apartment with primarily locally made furniture, choosing to buy the majority of our food and groceries from street vendors and local shops.

I am also coming to understand living simply as how I govern my time. If I try to live with fewer material goods in order to not be encumbered by things in my pursuit of a relationship with Christ, the same should also be applied in how I spend my time. Living in Mozambique has given us the luxury of a lot of family time. We do not have evening engagements very often which take one of us away. I have found that I really value the long dark evenings (the sun goes down early year round) with Joél and it’s been good for our relationship. Living in a different culture has its challenges and for Joél and I who are processors, there have been many evenings when we have talked about what we are experiencing, trying to understand, and ending in prayer.

A spiritual discipline is something that is a process. One does not attain perfection or reach a place where one can say that he/she accomplished it. Thankfully, in pursuing a relationship with Christ, he walks along side of us and teaches us what we need for our own journey.