Living Out Simplicity

I went to a very small high school in Michigan; our graduating class was under 100 students.  We didn't have a wide curriculum back then, pretty much the basics.  Although our academic choices were somewhat limited,  I was blessed to have some great teachers who cared about their profession, who cared about me, and who helped prepare me for life.  One of my favorite teachers was Norma Suess who introduced me to "Walden." Thoreau's theme of living simply resonated with me, even as a teenager.

A few months ago I wrote "It's Complicated" as the opening post for this blog, and began a journey to live my life more simply.  This started with some smaller moves, like thinning our my wardrobe and managing our food stores.   Chris and I will be taking a much bigger step together over the next few weeks by selling our home and downsizing our livings space to less than half of what we have currently.  

Our home has been a great blessing to us these past 6 years, meeting our needs by providing a young man with special needs the space he needs to move about, and place where middle-schoolers enjoyed hanging out.  (We've had lots of kids in our home over the years.)  We've even used our home for ministry, hosting GCC Arts Team and Administrative Council meetings and using it as a film location from time to time.  I liked this one particularly and fortunately, I didn't get a letter from my homeowners association:

Grill Guys | Up In My Grill from Granger Community Church on Vimeo.

Chris and I really enjoy the home we live in today and we will miss our neighbors, but we realize that we are both active people and that much of what we have goes unused.  We have a 4th bedroom that has a visiting family member only a few nights a year, a swimming pool that gets used about 7 days a summer, and a finished basement that sits dormant most of the time.   It's wasteful for us, consuming our time for upkeep and our financial resources, while giving us only a small return on our lifestyle (more space to roam about.)

Over the next few months, we'll be increasing our complexity (moving and renovating) so that we can get to a state of more simplicity.  We are a bit nervous about this, as it represents some big changes over the summer and because it will increase our physical proximity as a family.  But I am confident that we will be the better for it in the long-haul as we prepare for our son to someday move into a group home setting and our daughter to finish out high school and move on to college.

Chris and I appreciate your prayers as we move to the adventure ahead.

Armchair Christian

It's been almost a month since my last post.  Sorry about that.  It's just that I've really been trying to live out a little bit more of what I have been writing to you about.  You see it's occurred to me that it's pretty easy to go to church and sit there.  And that can be a good thing - a really good thing.

Be still and know that I am God.
 - Psalm 46:10

It's so much easier to hear God when you're sitting still.  He speaks ever so softly. But eventually, after all that stillness and all the listening and all that sitting, you should probably do something, right?  Unlike football, Christianity is not a game you can play from your armchair on Sundays.  This is a concept my friend and pastor, Rob Wegner has been saying to me for years.  Back in February, I posted  Why Not Now?  In it I wrote "If not now, when will I ... help someone else with their dream?"

It was about that time that my wife, Chris introduced me to Jan Pilarski, a woman who had a dream.  Like Chris and me, Jan has a 20-something-year-old son with autism.  Jan told me she was starting a company called Green Bridge Growers, an Aquaponics Farm with a social mission to employ people with Autism.  Jan said that people with Autism, even high-functioning people with Autism, have a 90% unemployment rate.

Well, Jan decided to do something about it and start Green Bridge Growers.  To help gain insight and capital, Jan entered the McCloskey Business Plan Competition at the University of Notre Dame to earn funding for her startup.  Because I have some experience in the food service distribution industry, Jan asked if I would join her, her son, and a team of Notre Dame ESTEEM Fellows from Ireland to help.  I'm glad I said yes because I learned more from them than I could have possibly contributed to the team.  I learned about other cultures, about creativity, and about vision.  Most of all, I learned about tenacity.  Jan has spent thousands of hours on this project and I was excited to learn that her efforts culminated in winning one of the top prizes in the competition - The $15,000 Klau Family Award for Social Impact.  Simply terrific.

It's been a long time since I sold food to restaurants and I thought that chapter in my life was closed and useless.  God must have thought differently about that.  Honestly, seeing Jan and her team win this award brought me the most joy I've had in a long, long time.  I wish that kind of joy on anyone.  And so I encourage you to sit still and listen to God for a while and to be receptive to His leading on how you can use your experiences, your knowledge, your skills to help someone else with their dream.

It's Sunday afternoon.  It's game time.  Get out of the chair and into the game - you'll love it.