Learning From the Shakers

Linda and I recently returned from a wonderful two-week vacation in New England and one of the highlights of our journey was a visit to the last community of Shakers, a grand total of two women and one man, located on a bucolic village farm called Chosen Land in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. I even had the opportunity to chat briefly with the lone male, Brother Arnold Hadd, whom I had corresponded with earlier.

Shakers are often confused with Quakers, from whom they are descended but who may marry, and the Amish, who eschew modern technology to live separate from the world. Yet even as Shakers embrace technological tools, their future existence is limited by their celibate lifestyle to converts from the outside world. Suffice it to say that they have their work cut out for them.

In her book God Among the Shakers: A Search for Stillness and Faith at Sabbathday Lake, author Suzanne Skees also visits the Maine Shaker Village and writes: “Current society loves what we perceive as the simple, pure life of Shakers because it stands in stark contrast to everything we have become.” In other words, people settle for admiring the Shaker lifestyle rather than adopting it.

And she continues, “Shakers seemed beyond the reach of attachment, while we other Americans lived immersed in material goods that lost their value almost as soon as they were acquired, scrambling in a flurry of activity that amounted to less than nothing at death.” As the Shakers love to sing, “Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free.” That is simply the truth.

Finally she concludes: “Our entire culture has been built upon the material. The ‘pursuit of happiness’ usually means money, property, food, and romance—the whole lot of which the Shakers have tossed out their two-hundred-year-old farmhouse window.” While converts to the Shaker lifestyle may be lacking, the rest of us could stand to learn from their simple ways of being and operating in the world.

A Currier and Ives Christmas

It may be the day after Christmas but the holiday season continues, at least according to the traditional 12 days of Christmas countdown. And while we may be well into the 21st century my wife and I are experiencing a Currier and Ives Christmas here in historic Franklin. The festivities kicked off with a Victorian-themed “Dickens of a Christmas” celebration downtown, complete with costumed characters and carolers.

Next we attended a Christmas service at our new church held in an old chapel with music and ministry by award-winning musician and founding pastor Michael W. (Smitty) Smith. Afterward, we watched our favorite movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” at the Franklin Theatre with a host of our fellow townspeople. On Christmas Eve, we attended our church’s candlelight service with carol singing led by Smitty.

On Christmas Day, we celebrated simply and quietly at home by opening our gifts, listening to Christmas music, relaxing around the house and eating my wife’s specialty pot roast before watching a favorite movie and calling it a day. Our only nods to today’s technology were reading on our new Kindle Paperwhite and contacting loved ones with our iPhones. Finally, we are swinging in another New Year in an old-fashioned way with the Glenn Miller Orchestra at the Franklin Theatre. Here is to simple living!

Going Paperless (More or Less)

I am a writer. Consequently, I deal with words. But for the last couple of years, the words coming in and out of my life have been increasingly of the digital variety. For me at least, the paperless future is largely here. And it hasn’t arrived by accident. I have been very intentional about getting to this point.

I read the other day that the average four-drawer file cabinet contains about 18,000 pieces of paper. Based on that estimate, my wife and I had upwards of 50,000 pieces of paper before endeavoring to limit it in our lives. It didn’t happen overnight but today I’d guess that we have less than 1,000 pieces of paper.

How did we get to this point? For starters, we cut off the flow at the spout. We started banking online, getting paperless statements, paying bills online, getting off mailing lists and canceling magazine subscriptions. We scanned photos, ripped music and got e-books. We created PDFs of important documents.

My wife and I processed reams and reams of paper, from receipts to cards to newspapers to copies to printouts. Ultimately, we got rid of our printer, scanner, rolodex and every other contraption that was paper-centric. Before going paperless two of the biggest business expenses I had were for paper and ink, but no more.

Like many people, I used to print stuff because I thought I needed a physical copy. But when you go mobile like my wife and I have done you quickly realize the weight of all that paper. We literally could not travel as lightly as we do if we had not limited our paper to the essentials of tax, insurance and other necessary documents. Try it, you’ll like it.

The Strength of Simplicity

I finished reading an insightful book the other day titled Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Segall and it reminded me of the strength of simplicity. Segall is the one responsible for the “i” in iMac, etc. and as a member of Apple’s creative team he saw firsthand how simplicity made Apple the success it is today. According to Segall, simplicity is the “core” value at Apple and its leader Steve Jobs wielded the Simple Stick whenever things threatened to get complicated.

It was Henry David Thoreau who famously admonished: “Simplify. Simplify.” But Steve Jobs stated even more succinctly: “Simplify.” Segall says that Jobs insisted on the iPhone having only one button since one is the simplest number. He resisted creating three buttons for the functions people use the most: Internet, phone and iPod and made them front row icons on the iPhone’s home page instead. Consequently, even the silhouette of an iPhone distinguishes it from its competitors.

Before Apple’s iPhone, Segall writes, “People lived with their phones, but they didn’t love them.” But Apple changed all that. “It was technology that would make iPhone capable but Simplicity that would make iPhone lovable,” adds Segall. I have had my iPhone for several months and I must admit that I love it. Not simply my only phone, it multitasks daily as my camera, map, compass, radio, computer, watch, calculator, television, camcorder, etc. It is my all-in-one device…and that is the strength of simplicity.

Winter Wonderland

I am happy to report that since my last post Nantucket received the snowfall my wife and I had hoped for, with about five inches of fabulous white flakes covering the ground and creating a winter wonderland of serene scenery. According to our best recollections, it had been more than two decades since my wife and I last saw that much snow and we learned that it is relatively uncommon for here also.

And it could not have been more picture perfect. We awoke on a Saturday morning to a steady stream of snowflakes and it continued to gather virtually all day as wooly blankets of white fleece. We got dressed in our winter gear, headed down Main Street to the island wharf and photographed the breathtaking beauty of it all before heading home to share our excitement with Florida friends and family.

There is something special about the simple beauty of a winter snowfall that blends manmade structures like buildings and boats with the natural presence of flora and fauna to create a landscape that is theatre for the senses. And we loved our front row seats to the spectacular show that the picturesque snow presented our fellow residents and us on this dreamsicle of an island thirty miles out to sea.

The Gift of Simplicity

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is the 23rd Psalm. Early in my faith journey I had trouble understanding the concept espoused in the opening verse: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” For the life of me, I couldn’t grasp how anyone could say that they didn’t want anything. But of course, I eventually realized that what the psalmist was saying is that because the Lord is our source we needn’t lack any good thing.

And it is that concept that has become a hallmark of my faith ever since I comprehended its meaning. As we trust God to provide for our needs, we can rest in the gift of simplicity that comes with the faithfulness of God. I was reminded of this as I walked the streets of Nantucket during the holidays and realized that I didn’t need or even want anything that was for sale. It was a liberating feeling to say the least.

When a friend of mine heard of our radical downscaling this year she wrote to share similar news: “We continue to scale back. It’s so freeing. (Christmas is such a joy when you have absolutely no shopping to do!) We live quietly and simply, but our lives are still full—full of the things we love and not excess stuff we have to maintain.”

Along such lines, I love a quote from Socrates: “How many things are there which I do not want.” And a line from a Quaker hymn perhaps captures it best: “‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free.” Amen to that! And while the holidays are history, the present is a good time to unwrap the gift of simplicity. It is the gift that keeps on giving!

Nantucket Nomads

It is hard to believe that it has already been a month since my arrival here on the island of Nantucket with my wife and our stuff via ferry. Yet as hard as that is to believe it is even harder to fathom that in the six months or so since we sold our home we have downscaled our lifestyle from living in a 1400 square foot cottage to a 400 square foot studio.

And believe it or not, we fit virtually all our 400 or so possessions inside our Volvo convertible, [which rode with us half the way on Amtrak’s Auto Train before we drove it the other half of the way here]. Besides that, all we own is our Vespa scooter, [which we shipped to Cape Cod and brought over with us on the ferry from Hyannis], and a couple smallish storage bins with stuff at my mother’s in Florida.

And how do I know we own about 400 things? Because I counted them, of course! I compiled a detailed inventory of our stuff and even broke it into categories for simple tracking. To that end, my wife and I each own about 100 articles of clothing so that is half our stuff, with the other half coming from about 100 media evenly distributed between books and music and another 100 miscellaneous items ranging from toothbrushes to computers.

So in about seven months we have transitioned from a seven-room house to moving here with about seven bags stuffed with the favorite of our possessions left after selling our house, as well as most of its furnishings through a couple of garage sales. And the truly amazing part of it all is that my wife and I embarked upon this downscaling adventure voluntarily and in total agreement about how it was to transpire. Stay tuned for more updates from these Nantucket Nomads!

The Simple Lifestyle

Henry David Thoreau’s timeless tome Walden speaks to us today at least as much it did to the readers of Thoreau’s time. While some of its language could understandably use an update the book’s principles are as timely as ever. In fact, author Robert Sullivan writes in The Thoreau You Don’t Know that Thoreau’s message was written during a time very similar to our own.

“It’s important to think about the economic climate. As the country reeled from market forces, as the gap between rich and poor widened, as people strained to make a living and saw their social and family life begin to change as a result, Thoreau was about to give a very practical answer to the question that Emerson asked, the question that was not just on the mind of philosophers past and present but on the mind of the country: ‘How shall I live?’”

For readers past and present Thoreau answered the question himself in Walden. “My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles…I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Elsewhere Thoreau wrote of “sucking the marrow out of life” rather than having the life sucked out of him…or living a life that sucks! But he was quick to state he wasn’t necessarily suggesting that others copy his lifestyle by retreating to the woods as he had. Rather it was an overall philosophy of simple living that he espoused and encouraged others to emulate.

As Sullivan reminds us: “Walden takes the long way around on purpose, making it in itself representative of Thoreau’s life. With the book, he was not suggesting everyone live as he did at the pond, or as he ever did at Concord: ‘I would not have any one adopt MY mode of living on any account.’” As with so much of life, simplicity is as much caught as taught. And what Thoreau was trying to communicate was the need for all of us to consider simplifying our lives, whatever that looks like for each of us.

Simpler Is Better

I remember hearing someone suggest that people should craft a personal philosophy of life if they desired to live wisely and since it made sense to me I thought about it and came up with one of my own. My philosophy of life is: “Simpler is better.”

If that sounds too simple to be a life philosophy, then so be it. But over the course of my forty-something years of living I’ve come to experience the beauty of simplicity in too many ways to think otherwise. I am convinced that simple living beats the alternative.

Fortunately for me, my wife and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to designing how to live our lives. Whenever we are faced with competing demands on our time, much more often than not the simpler alternative is the one we opt to adopt.

Both of us have suffered the consequences of not listening to that still, small voice inside of us reminding us to simplify. In my case, it was a life-threatening illness that caused me to trade stressful practices for simpler ones that enhance the overall quality of my life.

We have learned to live our lives at a sustainable pace rather than succumb to the pressures of daily living that threaten to overwhelm us if allowed. And we purposely concentrate more on celebrating experiences than collecting possessions that clutter.

The Quest Continues

Why two people, namely my wife and I, ever thought a collection of several DOZEN dishes was necessary for such a small family is beyond comprehension. We never planned on having a large family so that wasn’t the reason, and while we have hosted parties for as many as 50 people at our home they were a rarity and didn’t involve dishes. Suffice it to say that the quest for a simpler lifestyle calls for the purging of such culinary clutter.

And purge we have. From that unwieldy collection, including TEN each of matching large plates, small plates, bowls, cups, saucers, etc., we’ve cut our cupboard down to size by getting rid of all but a couple plates, bowls and glasses for my wife and I. So what about dinner guests? The place we are presently leasing is furnished so there are extra dishes if needed and we can simply meet friends at a restaurant to dine together if not as guests at their homes.

The lesson we are gleaning from the continuing quest to simplify our lives is to radically rethink what is necessary to live simply yet satisfyingly, with the measuring stick of mobility as our guide. As I posted here earlier, our family motto has become “minimize to mobilize.” Every item we possess has to pass the mobility test. And we draw inspiration from the life of Christ.

It was said of Jesus, who was no less than the very Son of God, that he had “nowhere to lay his head.” Not that he was homeless, but he chose no permanent place to call his own. In other words, he adopted a mobile lifestyle in order to reach as many people as possible. As for us, we aren’t here to save the world, but our lifestyle does enable us to touch people we’d never meet otherwise. And that is good news.

Our Unframed Journey

As I alluded to in my last post, about a month ago my wife and I cashed in one version of the American dream and traded it for another, one more closely aligned with our renewed vision for simplicity, liquidity and mobility. I am happy to report that the transition has gone very smoothly and we are blissfully ensconced in our new digs at the master planned community of Celebration, originally created by the Walt Disney Company.

While the unincorporated town was originally a tad too “Mickey Mouse” for our liking when we first visited it at its founding almost 15 years ago, it has since grown up and thus grown on us. We ended up here via the good graces of a friend who heads north for the latter half of the year and needed someone to house sit in his absence, thus resulting in a win-win all around.

Our move has allowed us to continue enjoying the Florida lifestyle with our convertible and scooter while getting us closer to such signs of civilization as the mall and the airport. On our very first night in town we ate at a local restaurant that featured a map on its menu of an “unframed journey,” which I thought perfectly captured the essence of what we’ve embarked upon.

RIP the Flip

It was about three years ago today that I shared a post titled “Trying the Flip” about one of my favorite tech toys, the Flip Ultra Camcorder. It was, and is, a fun, user-friendly camcorder like no other, which is why it grieves me to report that it is being discontinued by its maker, a move that is roundly being criticized by the technorati, and rightly so.

A couple of years ago, the original owners of the Flip, Pure Digital, sold out to the giant conglomerate called Cisco, better known as the makers of Linksys routers, to the tune of $590 million. While you can’t fault entrepreneurs for striking it rich, it is a shame that a huge corporation sees the need to kill a successful product with a whopping 35% of the market because it no longer fits its portfolio, laying off 550 people in the process!

The least Cisco could have done was to sell the business rather than shutter it but speculation has it that they wanted the proprietary technology behind the camcorder rather than the device itself, which doesn’t make much sense to me, but whatever. If there is a silver lining it is that the company is at least planning to sell, service and support the Flip through 12/31/13. So I guess the 150 or so videos I’ve captured [about one per week] are salvaged for the time being, but I did get rid of my Linksys router…

My Simple Desk

A photo I submitted of my writing desk is featured today on a cool site called Simple Desks. The site is billed as “A Collection of Minimal Workspaces” curated by Pat Dryburgh and it features some other cool spaces also. The common denominator for most of the postings seems to be a Mac computer, whether a desktop or a laptop like mine. Click on the site to check it out for yourself and feel free to post that you like my minimalist setup.

Growing Green

Another often-overlooked way to simplify life is to grow green in our daily living. For years my wife and I allowed the conventional wisdom of the conservative movement, of which we were proudly a part, to convince us that being environmentally responsible meant being a “tree-hugger” or some such nonsense.

Over time, however, we found ourselves gradually embracing a philosophy of less is more as it relates to our daily consumption practices, particularly at the grocer. For example, due to a friend’s simple blog posting, we opted out of the “paper versus plastic” debate by buying a few reusable fiber bags for our grocery purchases.

Next, my wife and I decided to radically reduce the amount of incoming mail we received by opting out of direct mail lists and canceling our receipt of several catalogs that we used to order from regularly, whether we needed the stuff or not. Not only did we help save forests in the process, we also eliminated one of the chief enticements to our consumptive lifestyle.

Our latest move toward a smaller carbon footprint—words I never thought I’d use to describe my life—involves filtering our tap water instead of purchasing countless quantities of bottled water, which may or may not be of better quality than unfiltered tap water. The tipping point for us was an ad we saw featuring a bottle of water on an exercise machine with the caption [paraphrased]: “An evening at the gym…an eternity in a landfill.”

So what do these relatively minor actions all have in common? For starters, they add up to make a profound difference and each one started with us making a conscious decision to change our personal habits on a practical level after diverse promptings. One or the other may not make a global difference on its own, but taken together such simple changes can do a world of good.

Less is More Too

For several years I have practiced many of the principles of the voluntary simplicity movement, including living within my means by limiting personal debt, etc. I don’t personally believe that life is a “zero-sum” proposition, meaning that if one succeeds others must suffer, so I never totally bought into the mantra of “live simply so others may simply live,” but I do get the spirit behind the sentiment.

On the other hand, when I used to hear the term minimalism I conjured up images of spare spaces devoid of warmth or welcome. However, over the course of this past month I have come across several blogs dealing with more of a minimalist message and must admit that I find myself embracing the “less is more” philosophy very much as my own.

One of the more revolutionary exercises in my newly invigorated move toward an ever simpler lifestyle has involved me going through our house room by room and excising everything according to the words of William Morris: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Consequently, my wife and I have methodically gone through our stuff together, gotten rid of much of it, and given more that remained to a local charity. For example, our small household of two does not need four telephones so we eliminated one and we downsized our Christmas decorations to fit into one large box instead of our attic.

As we did this, I identified some helpful principles that enabled us to move through the process of paring our possessions. First, choose quality over quantity by selecting the best and scuttling the rest. Second, challenge your assumptions by imagining a different space and structuring it accordingly. Third, leave no stone unturned by thoroughly going through things regardless of their sentimental value and such. If you don’t use it regularly, consider getting rid of it or giving it a better home. After all, simpler is better.

Speaking of Stuff

I came across a thought-provoking article in this weekend’s New York Times magazine titled “The Self-Storage Self” by Jon Mooallem and you can read it at www.nytimes.com. Whether or not you use self-storage (I do not), there is no denying the behemoth of a business it has become.

One of the more compelling points of the article captures the sheer size of the self-storage movement: “After a monumental building boom, the United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now ‘physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self-storage roofing.’)”

As the article further suggests: “Maybe the recession really is making American consumers serious about scaling back, about decluttering and deleveraging. But there are upward of 51,000 storage facilities across this country. Storage is part of our national infrastructure now. And all it is, is empty space.”

I can’t speak for others, but it sounds to me like people need to discipline themselves when it comes to acquiring stuff. Despite average home sizes doubling to more than 2,300 square feet, many people apparently have trouble fitting it all into their super-sized McMansions (that many also have no business buying).

I recently heard that for the typical buyer of a NEW Rolls Royce, it is the 17TH car in their collection! When the vast majority of the world subsists on about a dollar a day, I can’t help but think that too many of us have our priorities out of whack. I personally subscribe to the philosophy that “less is more” and am reminded of the admonition to “live simply that others may simply live.”

A Thoreau Primer

I recently finished reading a fascinating book titled The Thoreau You Don’t Know by Robert Sullivan. As a big fan of Henry David Thoreau and his classic Walden, it was fun learning more about his life sequestered in a 150-square-foot cottage he built on friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s property and lived in from 1845-1847. His book has been called the bible of simple living, a point supported by Thoreau’s own accounting that he spent all of $28.125 to build his home at Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts.

Much like me, he was a writer who had trained to be a minister before turning to writing. An excerpt from Sullivan’s book speaks to this point: “He had written that a writer publishing in the popular press had more influence that a preacher in a pulpit. Thoreau became a writer who was in no camp completely and, as such, eventually learned to write for two audiences simultaneously, the popular press and a reader he imagined to be like himself, who reads obsessively and is always thirsty for spiritual renewal.”

Another similarity is the era in which we each lived. Sullivan writes, “It’s important to think about the economic climate. As the country reeled from market forces, as the gap between rich and poor widened, as people strained to make a living and saw their social and family life begin to change as a result, Thoreau was about to give a very practical answer to the question that Emerson asked, the question that was not just on the mind of philosophers past and present but on the mind of the country: “‘How shall I live?’”

I was particularly drawn to Sullivan’s depiction of Thoreau as a marketplace minister: “Thoreau had trained to be a preacher and, like Emerson, he was one in the end. He was working in the culture, not apart from it, and the culture was the culture of enterprise, as in business. Business was now a moral term, as in the business of your life. Your commerce was your work in resisting the mass culture, what you are told to do. Your profit was your virtue, your principal your principles.”

For the first several years after I left pastoral ministry to follow journalistic pursuits I struggled from time to time with my calling. It was the faithful words of a friend that finally helped me to break through my self-imposed funk: “You are still in the pastoral ministry, you just traded pulpits.” While I may not track with Thoreau’s transcendentalist leanings, I do sync with his message of simplicity, as well as his means of sharing it through the printed word.

Traveling Lightly

I like the simple life. It is a way of living that has appealed to me for as long as I can remember. From my boyhood days of reading My Side of the Mountain, the tale of a boy who ran away to the woods in search of himself, to adulthood readings of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, another tale of a guy who wandered into the wild for a renewed perspective, I’ve enjoyed stories of learning to travel lightly through life.

Speaking of Thoreau, his stated philosophy was simplicity personified: “The rule is to carry as little as possible.” And other kindred spirits include Harper Lee, the reclusive bestselling author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who is quoted as saying, “All I need is a good bed, a bathroom and a typewriter…books are the things I care about.” Amen to that.

Jesus charged his followers to “keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” So what does it mean to live freely and lightly? For starters, I think it means that we own our possessions instead of them owning us. Also, we can’t be drowning in debt if we hope to keep our heads above water. In other words, learning to live with less is key.

My personal journey with living lightly is typified by a move to Cape Cod for the summer of 1985, when I shared a room with a friend of mine in a boarding house just blocks from the beach. I moved there with a couple duffle bags of stuff and, except for the Aiwa portable sound system and the Schwinn ten-speed bicycle I bought, I left there about as lightly as I arrived.

Of course, living lightly as a bachelor at the beach is different than living as a couple in a community but the principles of simple living are the same and can be adapted to fit any lifestyle. Far from an ascetic existence, my life is designed with aesthetics in mind, from the Cape Cod-style cottage I inhabit to the Volvo and Vespa I drive. But I am mindful of the cost of consumption and consequently strive to live and travel as lightly as possible.

Trying the Flip

As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and the enclosed one is of my latest tech toy, the Flip Ultra Camcorder. If the elegant design of the device doesn’t sell it, its utter simplicity of use closes the deal.

I first heard about it last month via the weekly “Circuits” newsletter distributed by New York Times technology columnist David Pogue. You can learn more about the Flip at www.theflip.com.

As Pogue succinctly stated, “Instead of crippling this ‘camcorder,’ the simplicity elevates it. Comparisons with a real camcorder are nonsensical, because the Flip is something else altogether: it’s the video equivalent of a Kodak point-and-shoot camera. It’s the very definition of ‘less is more.’”

According to Pogue, the Flip has been the top selling camcorder at Amazon.com since its debut about a year ago and it has already garnered about 13% of the camcorder market. I am loving mine and sold my mother on getting her own after she saw how user-friendly and fun it is. Try the Flip, you’ll like it.

Less is More

As I have been planning my year, I’ve reflected about how little I actually need to enjoy life, particularly as it applies to my library. I love books but I estimate that I presently own more than one thousand volumes, half of which I’ve never read and a quarter of which I’ll likely never read. With that said, I have made it my regular practice to clear out books in the latter category to make room for ones in the former and to create space for new acquisitions rather than buy more bookshelves.

Alas, with the big annual used book sale coming to my hometown this weekend, I am challenged to discipline myself anew. But what I’ve actually been considering lately is drastically reducing the number of volumes in my library so that virtually all the books I own are ones that I’ve either read or realistically plan to read in the foreseeable future.

Regarding my philosophy of “less is more,” I recently read a relevant posting by Richard Watson on the Fast Company Blog: “One of the key challenges for the twenty-first century will be how to cope with the almost infinite amount of information that will be produced. According to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, one of the most valuable skills in the future will thus be the ability to select and synthesize information. This in turn means the ability to develop criteria for filtering what’s valuable and what’s not will become highly prized.”