Living Simply, How Can This Idea Help Us When We Discuss the Budget Repair Bill?

Yesterday was Patch’s “Give 5” day where we take a day to volunteer and I chose to spend the day working with the Eco Justice Center in Caledonia.

And the experience I had rekindled several fond memories I have of growing up on a farm in Ohio. I was also reminded of the value of living a simple life.

For those of you who don’t know what the Eco Justice Center is, it is an ecology learning center, a self-sustaining farm, a respite for those want to reconnect with nature and God, and a place several Racine Dominican nuns call home.

Sister Janet Weyker, the center’s director, told me how the farm uses wind turbines, solar and geothermal energy. They keep bees, and have chickens and alpacas. And they have scouting troops, youth groups and schools constantly visiting and volunteering.

My task: scraping off the beeswax from several grates and picking straw out of the shorn off alpaca fur, gave me an opportunity to contemplate many aspects of a simple life.

Sister Janet asked if I wanted a radio on while I worked. No, I told her. I don’t mind the quiet and I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.

For several hours I sat in the Eco-Justice classroom, quietly scraping off the wax from the grates. I noticed a poster on the wall, “Live simply so others can simply live,” this is what I focused on as I worked.

How many of us live a simple life?  What is a simple life and what does one look like? When I was growing up on the farm in Ohio, we operated on that concept without really knowing it. We had our own little farm co-op with our neighbors. We traded pork for eggs, milk, chicken and beef.  We also operated under collective agreements where my father, who didn’t have a combine, bartered the use of our neighbors in exchange for providing our neighbor with space for his straw in our barn. And when we cut hay on our field, we helped our neighbors cut theirs as well.

This concept, one of community, served us well on so many different levels. Our neighbors were much more than just neighbors. They were more like extended family. We shared knowledge with one another, showed care and concern for each other’s wellbeing, and when things got tough – we were there for one another.

So what does this have to do with my own life now? Or even yours?

Well, I couldn’t help but think of the comments made about Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill and the greater context of the economy.

I’ve noticed an overall divisiveness between union and non-union workers, and between public versus private. This divisiveness is foreign to me and I don’t see the purpose of it. It just feels entirely wrong to take away someone’s right to bargain collectively, but it equally seems wrong to continue seeing taxes increase.

This is where community and creativity need to supersede emotions and rhetoric. As a nation, a state, a county and a community we need to find our purpose and tenacity. We need to stop busying ourselves with blame and realize we are all in this together.

And the key component in all of this, and what I find blatantly absent from these discussions, is asking how do we “live simply so that others can simply live?” Do we have to have $250,000 houses or is a $100,000 house enough? If someone has lost their house and their job, how do we lift our fellow neighbor up and make sure that they have their dignity and the support they need to become gainfully employed? How do we honor the sacrifices that so many workers have given so that our taxes didn’t increase at higher levels? And I can assure you… that after 10 years of being a reporter, there have been millions of dollars that have been sacrificed. But in saying that, I also understand that we have all been touched by a rotten economy. I personally was laid off for two years and went back to school to get a graduate certificate in advanced professional writing and communications.

We have all struggled. But these are the discussions we need to focus our attention on right now. And I am hopeful that we can learn “to live simply so that others can simply live.”