Why

why not? i run into people frequently who ask me about our chosen way of life. frankly, it is a process…i struggle with constantly reducing the complexity in my life. and then… i look… and i’ve filled my day and my time with “stuff”. it’s an ongoing process.

the sub-title of this blog is taken from an interview i heard with Maya Angelou - i thought it captured where i am at this time in my life… and i’m constantly working through it - learning and relearning that.

In essence, I’m working through the process of choosing a smaller footprint in order to have a bigger handprint.
doing this by minimizing needs (in terms of using less, to be sure, but also consciously no longer being a slave to: debt, stuff, a job, etc.) in order to maximize my impact on the world around me (serving and being an active participant with my wife, my children, and the community we live in).

I start with a quotation from Thomas Merton:
“The rush and pressure of modern life are forms, perhaps the most common form of innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation with violence. The frenzy of the activity neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys her own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”