portions...

Dawn and I have decided that it will be difficult to control how much we spend on food and not consider how much we eat (both in quantity and frequency). Genius, no? So, for the month of August, as we try and whittle away our grocery budget, we will use the small side dish plates for our dinners. That's right, we will use the "kid's plates". Maybe they can use the saucers.

Here are some interesting numbers. They make the "kiddie plates" not seem so small.

simple and sacrificial living...

I think that a definition would be a great place to start when evaluating these disciplines. I must know what they mean, to me and to others, before I can begin to own them and implement the actions that will make them part my daily life and routine. I have had some great conversations with my friends Josh and Ariah about what it means to live simply and sacrificially, and what the ramifications for that kind of a lifestyle are. There are some larger questions that arise when the details of this kind of change enters conversations, such as "how much sacrifice is enough?" and "how can you justify one purchase and not another?" but I won't be tackling the difficulties of the details, at least not anytime soon, just focusing on direct actions that I can take to practice the disciplines and reporting on how things are going and what kinds of revelations I am having about my faith, if any.

Simplifying my life is something that I have had the opportunity to take a long look at, but have only applied it to my own life, to be honest, in ways that benefit me. I have been thinking lately about how to implement a tangible element of this discipline in my life that might begin to bear some fruit, not just in my life and the life of my family, but in the lives of others around me and beyond. I'm hoping to create actions that are not only practical, but truly sacrificial. I have to consider that my family must agree if I choose something that affects their lives. I also have to be careful not to make my initial actions so dramatic that I lose my focus on incremental change.

One of the immediate changes that I have noticed since we left our community in Nashville is a spike in our grocery bill. This is something that I was anticipating, but not really prepared for. One of the things that I try to do is to shop locally and stay close to my house. There are no grocery stores in walking distance except Hy-Vee, which is pretty expensive and not really local. A wise man once told me, "never underestimate the value of proximity," (Ariah Fine, 2007). I don't really know how much we have spent on groceries this month, but I am well aware that it is more than most of the world makes in a month. (check out this article about global incomes.) This has been weighing on me lately.

So, as a first step in sacricifial simplification, I will be taking my family through the month of August on a grocery budget of $120. That is roughly $1 a day per person. I do this with some confidence, because I have spent the last year shopping and cooking for seven adults and my two children, and doing so for about that much money. It will be harder now, since it is less economical to cook for four than for seven. Also, I do not have the expertise of my roommates at rummaging food from various receptacles around town. (Although this would be a good time to take on that mission myself, eh?) I will avoid Hy-Vee mostly, and get the majority of my groceries at Aldi. I will continue to evaluate more parts of my life as the experiment wears on, but for now it is the grocery budget, and I hope to have money left.

the journey... a little closer to home

My family and I have just left a community, where we lived for almost a year, in which we lived with other people that shared our values, challenged the ways we lived out our convictions, and lovingly held us accountable for our actions. We are now living comfortably in Iowa (just a short drive from my home state of Missouri), and the strides that we made in taking hold of our lives and living them more intentionally while supported by our pillars of community will carry us to places that we can not dream. Geography has made the support of those pillars less emphatic now, since the community mentioned is still functioning in Nashville, Tennessee, and I want to find a way to continue my walk into a life that I can lead with purpose, one that embraces my gifts and connects me with the communities surrounding me and my God whom I have grown to know and love. The first week that we moved to Coralville (about three weeks ago now), my family and I attended the Methodist church down the street. We wanted to go somewhere that was in walking distance, so we started with the nearest church. That Sunday, Doug Williams, the pastor, was beginning his sermon series in re-creation and the spiritual disciplines. The service was short and simple, and I was refreshed. I felt more spiritually renewed than I had been in a long time. I decided to begin studying the disciplines and use the conversations that are born around me to begin to cultivate a dialogue about who and where I am in my walk with Jesus. I'm excited about this new time in my life and I hope that the journey is worth the walk and that some of you will visit me along the way.

My wife and I have had long and hard conversations about simple and sacrificial lifestyles, so I am going to begin there. I think its best to start where I have some experience (however brief and inadequate it might be.) I am going to do some reading and thinking and I will begin my assault in the next few days.