For many years, I have felt an urge to try to simplify my life. It would be very easy to point out that it never had to get this complicated in the first place, but the person who could have kept it simpler just isn’t me. So now I feel I am reaching a turning point; my 5 kids are growing up fast, I have recognised that my marriage will never be like other marriages, I have drifted away from my old church and found safe haven elsewhere, and my worries about the state & future of the world around me have reached the point where inaction is no longer an option. At the same time, however, I’ve re-entered the workaday world & lost my allotment, both of which have cost me dear in terms of serenity. In order to regain that serenity, & have the time & energy to make a difference in the world, I need to restore some simplicity to my manic life.
It seems to me that simplicity means working out what really matters to me, concentrating on those things and “letting go” of as many of the other drains on my time & energy as I reasonably can. There is any amount of advice out there about how to achieve physical simplicity; books & websites on decluttering abound. But empty, easily-cleaned rooms & wardrobes (which I’m still very far from achieving!) would mean nothing to me without spiritual simplicity, which is not quite so easily attained.
So I’ve been attending the local meeting of the Quakers, properly known as the Religious Society of Friends of the Truth, for a year now. Although I have some Quaker ancestry, I was born and raised a CofE Christian, and found my own way into the Good Shepherd’s sheltering arms after years of teenage & twenty-something rebellion & spiritual blundering in the dark. But after years of unquestioning Church membership, increasingly I’ve found myself wincing through services & sermons, wondering how people could think, sing & say some of the things they did in the name of the Prince of Peace & the God of Love. So the simple silence of Friends’ meetings, where we become still and “wait upon the Lord” seemed like a refreshing homecoming, and has given me the internal space & tranquility, away from the noise & bustle of the world, to start to let the Light shine inside me and cast my chaotic life & thoughts into stark relief. This has not been a comfortable process! This is a part of it; the way my mind works, I need to write out my thoughts, which forces me to put them into some kind of logical order, and possibly have some feedback on them, if anyone can be bothered. So I shall post this, then follow up with posts on the individual topics that seem important for me to think through properly, living my life where & how I do.
Angie 
Tags: simplicity
