HELLO!

When I lived in Winnipeg I spent a lot of time with liberal Mennonites. I came to know and respect the work of the Mennonite Central Committee. And when I would be welcomed to the table of a gathering of Mennonite friends, I would see VW Rabbits, parked outside the host’s home, with bumper stickers that read, “Live Simply, so Others May Simply Live” and “Less is More”. When I have shared my experience of living among liberal Mennonites with United Church friends, I am often asked, “what were the similarities/differences you noted?” There is the obvious, Mennonites are pacifists and the United Church, though many members are pacifists, officially are not pacifists. Specifically, many UCC clergy serve in the Canadian Forces, we participate in Remembrance services, and memorials to soldiers who died in conflicts are to be found in our churches. And there is culture. Many UCC folks have names like MacDonald and MacLean and MacLeod. In UCC directories typically the M last names are almost as numerous as A-L and N-Z. Mennonites, in contrast, historically come from eastern Europe and Swiss/German backgrounds, though “newer converts” to the Mennonite denominations have come places outside Europe.

But the major difference I experienced had to do with the word “simple”, the notion that simple living was enough was foreign to my mainline Christian upbringing. Though the United Church is NOT guilty of what we now call “the Prosperity Gospel”, that segment of the evangelical Protestant church that equates wealth with faithfulness, we talk in the UCC about “abundance”, that is if only we shared our wealth, there would be no poverty. I have often thought while the “abundance” talk was helpful to push back on “scarcity”, when governments tell us we don’t have resources to help the poor, it undermines efforts to address Climate Change. Consumption is one of the major causes of climate change. Surely, we can advocate on one hand for a more equitable distribution of wealth and for lifestyles that supports a healthy planet.

Do we really need so much to be happy? Have we become addicted to consumption, affluence, greed? Do we really need all this “stuff”? Of course, our current economic system is based on growth, and growth requires consumption. But how much growth and consumption can our planet sustain? And, how much of it undermines our sense of what is truly important in life, namely relationship (community), justice, and healing?

My time living with Mennonites, in Winnipeg, helped me ponder such questions. “Abundant living” is real but so is “Simple living”. Peace, Kevin