Make a list of your normal activities (before physical distancing). Label them: absolutely essential, important but not essential, helpful but not necessary, or trivial. Reflect on whether there are any activities you would like to refrain from starting again once physical distancing measures are over (from Richard Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity).
For two hours this week, practice the spiritual discipline of silence. Use this time to reflect on those moments when you use words to flatter, gain favour, gossip, or make yourself feel important.
hate putting my bathers on.
But anyway. I do. Occasionally. Put them on. And swim.
Public pools are weird. Like a big bath we all jump in and frolic around in the water, and because we know that we are all dirty, germy and prone to defecating in the water we make sure it is full of heart stoppingly strong chemicals. We don our bathers (swimsuits, trunks, swimmers, costumes, the things you wear when swimming because you can’t wear jeans in the pool), we make sure not to make eye contact with anyone, and we enjoy the buoyancy of chemically treated water. Bliss.
I still fart in India.
You know, in case you thought going to India meant I was the pure and holy type whose farts rise straight to the heavens like an offering of incense to God.
Nup.
All bodily functions remain intact… in fact, enhanced.
I was quite happily bundled up in my life of consumption until God rudely interrupted me. I thought I had taken my brush with poverty quite well. I’d rationalised my childish thoughts about “what would Jesus do” and all those annoying passages in the bible about the poor and decided that having a mortgage was what following Jesus was all about. I was #blessed I guess.
So anyway, there was that awkward moment when I was supposed to be all about Jesus and save the poor people but accidentally realised I was a bloated oppressor. Read on.
After praying a dangerous prayer asking God to help me to not be consumed with the things of this world and that I would know God’s heart and find freedom in him, I found myself walking into India’s largest red light district…
There are a litany of big, worldwide issues competing for our attention. There are droughts and wars, political turmoil – both domestically and internationally, exploitative systems that negatively affect workers, animals, and the environment.
Consumption is my jam. I love consuming. I mean, before sitting down to pen this powerful prose I made myself a coffee… because it’s important to consume mild stimulants whilst waxing lyrical about the pitfalls of consumption.
I don’t want to talk about consumption. I need consumption. Consumption is the sedation I need, the antidote to life.
Don’t take it away.
Unless it’s kale. I don’t need to consume kale. No one needs to consume kale.
Buy your fruit and veg this month without using plastic packaging. You can do this by avoiding pre-packaged fruit and veg and by not using little plastic bags provided for fruit and veg. Use the brown paper bags provided for mushrooms if you need to use a bag.
Consumption is my jam. I love consuming. I mean, before sitting down to pen this powerful prose I made myself a coffee… because it’s important to consume mild stimulants whilst waxing lyrical about the pitfalls of consumption.
I don’t want to talk about consumption. I need consumption. Consumption is the sedation I need, the antidote to life.
Don’t take it away.
Unless it’s kale. I don’t need to consume kale. No one needs to consume kale.
Flanders challenges the notion that the Christmas customs of the past were primarily religious. She does not deny their spiritual significance for the believer, but she does contest the idea “that Christmas was once religious, and only in our debased, commercial age has been reduced to its current shabby, market-driven modern form.” In other words, she disputes the presumption that the holiday was in the beginning primarily or even exclusively observed by devout Christians and that only in the last 200 years has its “real” significance been displaced by the forces of secularism and consumerism….