Currently Listening August and Everything After By Counting Crows see related

Beans Beans the Magical Fruit

My dear and very thrifty friend Crystal came over last week and taught me some of her money-saving grocery shopping tricks. Spending less money on things like groceries has suddenly become an imperative for more reason than one - the main need being simply economic, and the other need being a general desire to consume less.

Crystal suggests:

-Look at the websites of the stores in your area BEFORE you go shopping. Find out which items are on sale and plan menus around those items. Be willing to go to more than one store to get the best prices.

-Keep a notebook with the prices of the items you buy most often. Pay attention to how much those things cost regularly so that when they go "on sale" you can be sure you are really getting a deal and not just falling for a good ad.

-When something really does go on sale, buy a lot of it. Bread, butter, meat and other items can be frozen for future use without too much nutrient loss.

-Choose organic food wisely. Organics, while better in many ways, are of course more expensive, and many of the benefits of organics are lost in highly processed food. Minimally processed organic fresh fruits and vegetables can be a very good buy.

-Set a budget and stick to it. Take cash instead of a checkbook or credit card. Keep track of how much you are spending on your way through the store and when you have hit your budget amount, LEAVE.

-Eat less meat. Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot. Actually, Crystal didn't say that, it was me.

On that note, here's another good reason to eat less meat: It's enormously expensive, both financially and ecologically, to produce meat. Our Western over-consumption of meat and dairy products takes a lot of money out of our pockets that could be spent on other things, and it causes us serious health problems. The life expectancy figures for American women just went down for the first time since 1918. 

Our consumption of meat and over-consumption of food in general  is also potentially affecting the rest of the world. From an MSNBC article regarding the "silent tsunami of world hunger":

Many analysts, including Britain's opposition leader David Cameron, claim that people in the West will need to eat less meat — and consume, or waste, less food in general. Some expect the shift in attitudes to herald the end of supermarket giveaways and cost-cutting grocery stores that stack goods to the ceiling and sell in bulk.

Citizens in the West, China and India must realize that the meat on their plate and biofuels in their expensive cars carry a cost for those in the developing world, Evans said.

Sheeran believes many already understand the impact. "Much of the world is waking up to the fact that food does not spontaneously appear on grocery store shelves," she said.

I was a vegetarian for four years and eventually gave it up because I discovered that while I didn't morally disagree with killing animals for food, I did (and do) have a big problem with the way we humans think it's acceptable to treat our food sources, be they animal, vegetable, or mineral, along with the land and the people involved with producing that food, with total disrespect, our sole purpose being to get the most profit out of them. All take and no give - it just doesn't seem like a good way to be. I admit that not all my reasons for giving up vegetarianism were pure (a street-side vendor selling bratwurst in Berlin had something to do with it) but since then I have tried to maintain healthy responsible food-purchasing habits with more or less success over the years. Sitting here tonight I feel like I'm on some wierd tree-hugging Moebius strip, going from idealistic, self-righteous hippie vegetarianism to...whatever this is now - something to do with Our Risen Lord, and hopefully humility, and love.

Here's an article about the effects of reliance upon meat for those who may be interested:  http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp and here's a link to some information on NPR if that's more your style http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89676010&sc=emaf.

Anyone got any good vegetarian recipes to share?

Addendum

It occured to me after I wrote and posted yesterday that most of my readers will have already considered for themselves what it means to not store up treasures on earth. So, what does that look like for you? Do you have any hints or tips for living frugally? If there is something you do to reduce clutter, spending, or material consumption, what is it? I would be most happy if you could share your ideas with me here or in person.

Here's a tip from me to myself: Drive more conservatively. I always drive like I'm in a race, for which there is really no need. Aggressive driving uses more fuel, and at $3.34 a gallon I really can't afford it. Also I am going to turn the heat down in my car from 80 degrees (why it was set at 80 I'm not really sure - I guess I was cold?) to 60ish, or maybe turn it off altogether now that the weather is gettting nicer.  

Currently Reading Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions By John Piper see related

More Thoughts on Clutter

It's all well and good to talk about decluttering. It's pretty easy to say, "I loaded up a bunch of boxes and took them over to Empty Tomb and boy do I feel great."  Rationally I can admit that my belongings are just things, and that I shouldn't store up treasures on earth, and so on, and so forth. In reality, however, this "getting rid of things" is hard. There should not be a little hole in my heart where a bright yellow spice rack from my former days used to be, but so help me God, there is one. I've talked to other people about this sort of thing, and tears have sprung into eyes (and not only mine) at the mere thought of parting from various items. So, if you are contemplating decluttering and finding it emotionally difficult, I'm right there with you.

I found some unexpected encouragement from John Piper in "Let the Nations Be Glad!", subtitled "The Supremacy of God in Missons".  Piper says, "Even though it is true that we should thankfully enjoy what we have, there is a relentless call in the Bible not to accumulate more and more things, but to give more and more, and to be deprived of things if love demands it. There are no easy rules to tell us whether the call on our lives is the call of the rich young ruler to give away all that we have, or the call of Zacchaeus to give away half of what we have." I had read the story of the rich young man who was told to give away all that he had. I could see the importance of the utter rejection of wealth in his life that was so strongly predicated on worldly goods. I very much admire those who follow this path, but the command to give everything away is clearly not applicable to everyone. The rich young ruler I am not, but the verse in Amos about selling the poor for a pair of sandals cuts deep - and I can identify with Zacchaeus. Piper continues, "What is clear from the New Testament is that, while we live on earth, suffering with joy, not gratitude in wealth, is the way the worth of Jesus shines most brightly."  

I like that. I like it that Piper divides all Christians into only two camps - those called to own nothing, and those called to own half of what the world entitles them to own. It's easy to think in halves. How about owning half as many things as we do now? I could easily do with only half the number of some things I own, like comforters or flower pots or silverware sets or easter baskets or...you get the picture. That has the added advantage of allowing us to fit better in our house so that we won't need to buy a bigger house just to keep all our stuff in, which people do all the time. How about taking half as many showers to conserve water and money? Or spending half as much at the grocery store - well, I don't know about that (yikes!) but at least it's a recognizable goal to aim for. And in the future, I can aim at passing by half the opportunities I have to acquire more stuff. It's kind of cool to think that if I cut my consumption of some things in half, two families could begin to live on what formerly provided for one. 

More from Piper:

"You cannot show the preciousness of a person by being happy with his gifts. Ingratitude will certainly prove that the giver is not loved. But gratitude for gifts does not prove that the giver is precious. What proves that the giver is precious is the glad readiness to leave all his gifts to be with him. This is why suffering is so central in the mission of the church. The goal of our mission is that people from all nations worship the true God. But worship means cherishing the preciousness of God above all else, including life itself. It will be very hard to bring the nations to love God from a lifestyle that communicates a love of things. Therefore God ordains in the lives of his messengers that suffering sever our bondage to the world. When joy and love survive this severing, we are fit to say to the nations with authenticity and power: Hope in God."

1100 Years Later

A friend and I started reading the Book of Ruth today. We didn't get very far verse-wise, but I learned so many things that made so many other things make sense I feel compelled to write them down.

Despite various attempts I still have not read the whole OT and am continually surprised by the number and the strangeness of the things I am only just now discovering.

Here's what I learned:

In the days when the judges ruled  In other words, sometime between approximately 1400 BC to 1100 BC. When a judge was in place the people would look to the Lord for guidance and everything would be well, but when that judge died things would deteriorate and everyone would do what was right in their own eyes. Samson was the last judge.  there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab. Moab is a country to the East of Israel, bordering the Dead Sea. The people of Moab are descendents of a man named Moab who was the product of an incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters. The Moabites and the Israelites therefore had common heritage but a tumultuous relationship, the Israelites being none too fond of their distant cousins. Moab was considered a terrible place and the famine must have been quite bad for the man and his wife and his two sons to go there. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife was Naomi which means Pleasant and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. We tried and tried to figure out what Ephrathites were, since normally when such an epithet is given to a group of people it describes what tribe they are from - Benjaminites for example - but that doesn't seem applicable here since clearly "in Judah" describes the family's ancestry. I looked it up just now and here's the answer from Easton's Bible Dictionary:

Ephratah Fruitful. (1.) The second wife of Caleb, the son of Hezron, mother of Hur, and grandmother of Caleb, who was one of those that were sent to spy the land (Ch1 2:19, Ch1 2:50). (2.) The ancient name of Bethlehem in Judah (Gen 35:16, Gen 35:19; Gen 48:7). In Rut 1:2 it is called "Bethlehem-Judah," but the inhabitants are called "Ephrathites;" in Mic 5:2, "Bethlehem -Ephratah;" in Mat 2:6, "Bethlehem in the land of Judah." In Psa 132:6 it is mentioned as the place where David spent his youth, and where he heard much of the ark, although he never saw it till he found it long afterwards at Kirjath-jearim; i.e., the "city of the wood," or the "forest-town" (Sa1 7:1; compare Sa2 6:3, Sa2 6:4).

So perhaps to say they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem was to say they had been there a long time. They were townies. And that leads me to the really cool stuff, which is the family history. Eventually Naomi returns from Moab with the widow of her deceased son, which would have been a very long walk over mountains and rivers to get around the Dead Sea and back to Israel. In Bethlehem "the whole town was stirred" over the arrival of the two widows.

Jewish law made provision for widows as follows, from Deuteronomy 25:

 5^(E) "If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her^(F) husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. 6And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that^(G) his name may not be blotted out of Israel. 7And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall^(H) go up to the gate to the elders and say, 'My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.' 8Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying,^(I) 'I do not wish to take her,' 9then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and^(J) pull his sandal off his foot and^(K) spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, 'So shall it be done to the man who does not^(L) build up his brother’s house.' 10And the name of his house^[a] shall be called in Israel, 'The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.'

Ruth 4.7 says "7^(A) Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, the one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other, and this was the manner of attesting in Israel." Fascinating that if a man refused to take his brother's wife, she could rightfully (if symbolically) remove his power to perform economically, and spit in his face while she was at it. I wonder how many times that actually happened?  

So Boaz had a vested interest in taking care of Ruth. Perhaps this explains why Naomi told Ruth to uncover his feet while he was sleeping - a sort of not-so-gentle reminder of his duties. As we know Boaz does accept Ruth as his wife, and gladly it would appear, which makes sense given his own family history. Boaz was the son of Rahab, the harlot from Jericho whose story is told in Joshua and who appears again in the so-called "Halls of Faith" in the Book of Hebrews. His mother was a person of suspect heritage but remarkable faith, much like Ruth.  

Boaz and Ruth become the parents of Obed, who is given to Naomi as her own son. Obed of course became the father of Jesse who became the father of David, who was a shepherd boy in Bethlehem. All this is even more amazing when you consider that the Christ was eventually born in Bethlehem, where his father's family still lived more than 1100 years later.

Confessions of a Recovering Clutter Addict

There's an old Leonard Cohen song about all the different ways people might die, and one of my favorite lines is "some in their greed, and some in their hunger." It's true - people die when they don't have enough, and people die when they have too much - literally, as in the case of a woman in Washington who suffocated under a heap of clothes in her home that was so full of stuff that it killed her.

There's a fascinating article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23510145/ about hoarders. The article says that hoarding in the OCD, compulsive-obsessive sense is a genetic thing, passed from generation to generation, and seeing as how I'm sitting a few feet away from a pile of not mine, and not my mother's, but my grandmother's stationary, which she hung on to and then my mother hung on to and now I'm hanging on to, I'd have to say I'd agree. Who knows, I might want to write a letter to someone someday, and they might think it is really cool to get a letter written on stationary printed before World War II!

Now, I'm not quite as bad as some of the people in the article. There are not "goat paths" in my house that you have to follow to get from place to place (except maybe out in the garage), we only have one pet (not thousands of cats), and really, I'm going to use all this stuff someday! wink wink

I've had this clutter addiction for as long as I can remember - certain items have memories associated with them, and you just never know what sorts of things you could turn into art someday, and I always have a sneaking suspicion that as soon as I get rid of something I'm going to need it. Therefore I keep, nay, hoard, scarves that are too short, ancient photo negatives, fabric and yarn of all shapes, colors, and varieties, and kitchen utensils that are equally of all shapes, colors, and varieties. After our second son was born we became so busy just getting through each day that decluttering seemed to be a luxurious but remote impossibility. Eventually the house began to be difficult to clean. We couldn't find the things we needed because they were buried under all the useless things we had. We began to keep things that were plain old garbage because we couldn't escape the gravitional pull of all the stuff.

Hopefully we've gotten past that now. Hopefully.

We've been going room by room, taking everything out and putting back only the things that we use on a regular basis. Many many useless/old/broken things have been thrown away. Many more things which seemed useful or valuable, just not to us, have been sold or donated. Empty Tomb here in Champaign offers a great service in this regard - they take household goods and clothes and give them away free in Jesus' name to people who really need them. They especially need toys and kid's clothes. As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure. In our garage I found an entire box of holiday decorations that I had never seen - they have been in my house as long as my husband has and have moved with us three times. Rediculous. The new decluttered rooms are infinitely easier to clean. I have discovered the joy of a feather duster on a bare surface.

My goal is to know what I own, and to only own things that I know about. No mysteries. No boxes full of unidentified notebook paper. One colander, not three. Enough toys for the boys to play with, but not so many toys that I can't find the boys.  It's very enlightening, really. I think the more things you own, the less you know who you are. You spend a lot of time living in the past with the memories or in the future with the possibilities and both tend to produce distinct feelings of paranoid ennui, if there is such a thing. We aren't exactly traveling light yet, but we're getting there.

At least we aren't saving jam packets, like this lady from the article whom I have been giggling about all afternoon:

"Elise Davis, 41, of Seattle, says her grandmother is in “total denial” about her hoarding problem even though the 86-year-old’s spare bedrooms are crammed to capacity and her kitchen drawers are jammed shut with “those little free packets of jam you get from Denny’s.”

“She’s gets really feisty if you try to approach her about it,” says Davis. “You can’t even clean up a pile of paper because she’s petrified that you’re going to get rid of something that she needs, even though it’s all just packets of jam and $4 half-slips from Penneys and geology textbooks from when my mom was in high school.” "