"True simplicity is not the rejection of beauty in our surroundings, but the refusal to allow concern for things to clutter our minds."

In my quest on how to live loudly but quietly, freely and yet simply in this cluttered world, I've stumbled upon a book that has truly inspired me. In this age of technological astuteness, accumulation of things and material affluence, of status and celebrity and relentless pursuit of personal security, I think-- and I'm just making a wild guess-- that perhaps the majority of us have forgotten to live for life's sake. Maybe? Quite often, at least? And with that I think we've nearly forgotten to find "joy from a sense of being, not on having," as quoted by Damaris Parker-Rhodes, in the book Plain Living, A Quaker Path to Simplicity, by Catherine Whitmire. Simplicity is a "protest [against extravagance] and must... be seen as a testimony against involvement with things which tend to dilute our energies and scatter our thoughts, reducing us to lives of triviality and mediocrity," observes Whitmire.

"We must set light to our possessions lest they come to possess us. Used as sales-talk in our glossy magazines, the phrase 'gracious living' has become a synonym for making a house an end in itself rather than a home to live in. Truly gracious living is a by-product of gracious thinking and doing, and in material things is expressed in 'what is simple and beautiful.' And true simplicity is not the rejection of beauty in our surroundings, but the refusal to allow concern for things to clutter our minds..." (Edgar Castle, 1961)

"Simplicity does not mean drabness or narrowness but is essentially positive, being the capacity for selectivity in one who holds attention on the goal. Thus simplicity is an appreciation of all that is helpful towards living as children of the living God." (Whitmire)

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