#voluntary poverty

[maiathebee]

One can get by if one's wants are modest. One can withdraw from the factory, refuse to make munitions, airplanes, atom bombs. In sections like this, rent is ten dollars a month, sometimes even five, and there are empty houses.  But city people are afraid -- afraid of the country, afraid of the dark, afraid of the silence.

Dorothy Day, 1948

[candlesofreason]

If you retreat to privacy, everything will be on a smaller scale, but you will be satisfied abundantly; in your present condition, however, there is no satisfaction in the plenty which is heaped upon you on all sides. Would you rather be poor and sated, or rich and hungry? Prosperity is not only greedy, but it also lies exposed to the greed of others. And as long as nothing satisfies you, you yourself cannot satisfy others.

Seneca

[jtbarnett]

I have zero interest in success.

J.T. Barnett

[ploughshares]

i’ve been having so many feelings lately about how planet/climate stewardship is just a call to voluntary poverty, the exact same thing we’ve been called to do for thousands of years now as Christians.

you know what? us poor people have been riding the bus, riding our bikes, practicing self-sufficiency, and reducing utility consumption and our consumer footprint all along without ever being asked. climate change denial is ALWAYS going to be the culture of that faction which prioritizes the wealthy because it is the most privileged among us who are responsible for the exploitation of our earth home. and it’s these folks who would literally rather watch the world burn than degrade themselves to mimic our habits, because their pride, their very identity, is born from the class divide.

[maiathebee]

Going around seeing such sights is not enough. To help the organizers, to give what you have for relief, to pledge yourself to voluntary poverty for life so that you can share with your brothers is not enough.  One must live with them share with them their suffering too.  Give up one's privacy and mental and spiritual comforts as well as physical.

Dorothy Day in the The Long Loneliness

[maiathebee]

Compassion--it is a word meaning to suffer with.  If we all carry a little of the burden, it will be lightened. If we share in the suffering of the world, then some will not have to endure so heavy an affliction.

Dorothy Day, drawing inspiration from the lives of Kathe Kollwitz and Mary Frecon

[candlesofreason]

Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain.'

-Abba Anthony

[candlesofreason]

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?”

Seneca