Thursday, February 27, 2014

Living the simple life?

Being a volunteer through BVS can be a radically different experience from person to person.  Some of us live in single apartments, plopped down in a city or town hundreds or thousands of miles from "home" and hit the ground running with their project.  Others end up living in intentional communities where they are immediately connected to other volunteers and a hosting congregation with a well-established role for them.  The gamut covers just about everything in between, too.

In the six-ish weeks since I arrived in Elgin, I have struggled some with the concept of living a simple life.  As volunteers, we have agreed to live simply, within our means, and without (too much) excess.  Having heard stories from other volunteers and seen some of their sites, some of them take this challenge quite seriously.  For example, the New Community Project in Harrisonburg, VA has a homemade table at which they eat their communal, second-hand gathered meals.  The kicker: the table is made of warehouse pallets.  The table's creator ballparked the cost of the entire process of making the table at around $20.  Check it out:


On the flip side, my new role as the BVS assistant recruiter has me traveling all over the country in the coming year.  Last week I was in the great commonwealth of Virginia, mostly hanging out down in the Shenandoah Valley.  Fast forward seven days after returning and I'm already back on the road, now in Pennsylvania.  I'll be pretty impressed if I manage to put together an entire month back at Elgin between trips the rest of my time here.  Granted, I knew this would likely be the case when I agreed to come back into BVS.  Still, I sometimes struggle with how simply I'm actually living when I jet-set around the country so much and end up with rental cars that look like this:


And this:


Driving around in these well-maintained, relatively new, kinda sporty-looking vehicles is, admittedly, a bit fun.  It's nice to not feel constantly concerned that the [random car part] might break.  They do get pretty decent gas mileage, too.  Still, there remains an internal struggle of what it really looks like to live simply and to what degree I'm being successful in that endeavor.

In the end, I don't have an answer to the justification for the life I lead here or how to alter it for the better.  For a guy who really likes having answers, this might be one that is left for pondering.  To that end, here are a few quotes that seem to grasp at the concept of a simple existence:

"Live simply, so that others may simply live." ~ St. Elizabeth Seton
"It is impossible to detach from the love of material things unless it is replaced by love for things unseen." ~ St. Teresa of Avila
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." ~ Confucius
May the road rise with you...

Ben

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing. I was the BVS recruiter in the early 90's. I was in the house that got "Bucky" the van if you have heard of that before. 20 years later, full-time job, family, house and two cars, I too still struggle with living simply. I believe that it is a life time struggle for balance. I learned to be conscious of how I lived and the impact I caused in BVS. I am glad to see that the "struggle" continues... From one BVS'er to another... Steve

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  2. How apt that Greg preached about living simply at ECoB when you came to visit! I definitely find simple living a constant work in progress and from what I read online, most do as well. You may have been driving fancy rentals, but you were still crashing on couches and staying with friends rather than spending the night in a fancy hotel. I'd say that's still a step in the simpler direction. Peace.

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  3. Ben, I totally had problems with renting these "fancy" cars when I went on recruitment trips. Once in a while I managed to get rides (to Bethany, for example) and the first time I actually rented a car, I went with the cheapest... no cruise. that was a mistake... going to PA without cruise control. Just try to stay with friends and invite people to dinner and that made me feel better, it fed me and I also made a BVSer happy with a nice meal :-) Enjoy recruiting, I had lots of fun... and found Steve , also a former recruiter... ;-)
    Anke

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