I think I need to look at the subject of penance sometime.

I have become more and more uncomfortable as I’ve done my own searching and reading and praying with the idea of spartan living. I know that extremly simply living is something I do to almost punish myself when I feel like I’ve sinned. I know that it’s something that I basically see as a pentance when my depression is at it’s worse. I know that I delight in giving gifts and receiving gifts. I love making pretty things to give to people. They have no useful function, but they are beautiful and bring happiness and joy to those I give them to.

I think I say all this to say, through reading your blog and knowing that I don’t want to be consumed with everything physical – I’m starting to believe and understand there is a balance. I cringed a little because I think the goal is not for the world to be spartan, which is what you write and encourage often comes across as, but that we do not take up so much that our brothers and sisters have nothing. I want to give everyone things that there only function is to be pretty and lovely.

But perhaps this also depends on one’s theology of body and soul? I am not sure. I do not believe the soul is more important than the body or even that we are going to leave this body behind, but that it will be made perfect at the second coming and eternal life. These thoughts also come out of my years of fighting the demons of my depression and knowing what brings me closer to the light of Christ and what makes me stray back to the darkness.

I agree, smaller or at least more practical home designs would be more helpful, but viewers don’t want practical. They want drama. It’s all about ratings and profit for the network. The family is only a tool.

I am stil waiting for responses as to organizing a Plain Convocation. Please pray about this and ask others you knowwho might be interested.

I will be praying that your ‘higher-ups’ will treat you with a little more support and civility. Once again, I fervently think organizing such a meeting as you invisage is NOT riding rough-shod over your bishop; Ordained minister or no, I perceive anything like this you organize would be as much about one plain, modest soul reaching out for contact and spiritual fellowship from other plain, and simply modest souls.

You’re perfectly correct re technology ( touch of irony…) Skype etc make video conferencing for those of us far, far away a real possibility. And as for the older method… I had to smile! it is rather amazing to post modern insensibilities that anything thus transmitted ever made it to its destination let alone survived down through the ages, but obviously it has, from the Vindalander letters (excuse spelling) to far eastern documents, we’ve got them even now…how much electronic letters, musings, documents etc will have survived into the centuries (if our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ delays his return for some reason for a few hundred years)…

on a local television programme on Wednesday night, some interesting statistics were shared. in the UK, during and post wwII, virtually all the nation’s fruit and vegetable needs were met locally, more often than not through the allotment system. Now, half to two thirds of their fruit and vegetables are imported…as the anti simple and tragically enslaving new post war ecconimy has been fully realized in all its diabolical inglory. As of around 2002, 2003, the world’s population tipped from the agricultural majority to the urban majority. coupled with the multinationals tightening the stranglehold on seed production etc,the ordinary man and woman are being forced into a mould of dependancy upon an economically and eccologically unsustainable system. I could go on about local and state government future planning strategies actively forcing out local agriculture, meaning cities can no longer feed themselves as they once did, more or les, even 30-40 years ago, but that would require a post in own right!

should we strive to address and rectify this state of affairs for the sake of our children and theirs, or is it an unavoidable symptom of the ‘last days’?

I look at young couples I know who both commute long distances to work, but cannot afford to do anything less if they are to keep a roof over their heads, as in this part of the world, even rental prices for questionable acomodation is scandellous. Furthermore, this modern, diabolical way of doing things divides and conquers re family, as many grown children can simply no longer to afford to live in the locale of their parents, due to disgraceful rises in the housing market; thus parents and children are separated; young couples are far from support of either family…sometimes folk can live and settle locally to one another, but all too often, this is proving increasingly difficult. Then there’s the state of the family itself; the last 40 years have seen an unprecedented breakdown of the family unit. ‘Last days’?

blessings,

Sarah,
Sydney,
Australia.