By David A. Heitmiller (Talk at Interfaith Community Church May 22, 2005)

Many of us have poor vision and need the help of eyeglasses or contact lenses to see clearly. I’ve worn glasses since I was seven years old for example. I put on my glasses first thing in the morning and don’t take them off until my head hits the pillow. Without them I can’t read and my surroundings are a blur. My mother had corneal ulcers in the 1950s that left scar tissue on her left eye that has caused her to see through a fog in that eye ever since. Now at 84 years old she has cataracts. This means she now sees through a fog in both eyes! Fortunately, modern technology has advanced so that she can have cataract removal surgery and once again see clearly at least through her right eye. She’ll have that operation in June.

But how might we improve how we see through our Third Eye…our Mind’s Eye?

This is a question that I have been working with since 1991 when Jacque and I began our simple living journey. We started following the Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL)program that year and one of the early steps asked us to track our spending in fine detail for a few months. To actually keep track of every cent that came into and went out of our lives! And then at the end of the month to do a tabulation to actually SEE where our money was coming from and where it was going – in detail.

At first I didn’t want to do it. It was bother and besides, I might not actually LIKE what I saw. The TRUTH might hurt. Maybe I was frittering away money on beer and candy or spending too much on clothes or bicycles. Did I really want to clearly SEE where my money was going? Despite these doubts, we decided to give it a try anyway. I bought Quicken and set up categories and we began to save receipts and carry around little notebooks to write down cash expenditures.

The next Your Money or Your Life step asked us to look at the results of our tracking effort and then ask ourselves whether those expenditures were WORTH IT compared to the time we spent working to get the money to buy them. And more importantly, to SEE if our expenditures were in alignment with our core values and life purpose. Whew! Now this was getting tough! What in the heck were our core values and life purpose anyway? At the time we had no spiritual grounding to look to for guidance, so we began a slow process of reflection about what our values were and what we really wanted our lives to be about.

Month after month we asked ourselves these questions and we began to SEE that much of our spending was, indeed, out of alignment with what we began to recognize as our values and purpose.

For example, we had always thought one of our values was preserving the environment but as we examined our spending behavior that value wasn’t reflected. We drove a luxury car and a SUV and we paid little attention who made or what was in the products we consumed. We wrote a few checks to environmental organizations but never actually did any hands-on work to support this value.

We began to modify our spending behavior and as result spent less and simplified our lives in the process. By tracking our expenses, we began to SEE clearly and as we gradually brought our behavior into alignment with our newly clarified values, we also felt better. The internal tension of our spending being misaligned with our values dissipated. We still track our spending every month. Because the process has become so ingrained over the years, we don’t formally ask ourselves the questions anymore. A look at our monthly tabulation of expenditures through our Mind’s Eye reminds us when we fall out of synch.

This same method can help us SEE when it comes to time. How are we spending our time? Let’s say for example we decide one of our important values is centered on our children and family. Are we in alignment with this value if we veg out in front of the TV or computer for hours every night? Or if one of our values is social equity, do the companies we invest in and support with our purchases reflect that value? Do we ever volunteer our time to help those less fortunate?

Try actually keeping track of your time for a few weeks. You’ll probably be surprised where your time actually goes. The truth may hurt but once we SEE where our time goes we can make changes little by little. Little by little we can begin to live more in the present moment and with the serenity that we are doing what we are meant to do in each moment.

Another area where we might NOT want to see clearly is how our current lifestyles and consumption patterns affect our natural environment, poor people around the world or future generations. When we started down the simplicity path we were only concerned with our personal situation. For me that particularly focused on a way to get out of a distasteful and meaningless job. But as we progressed, we began to SEE bigger implications. Not only was our old high-spending, high-consuming lifestyle bad for our budget and personal health it was bad for the planet and our grandchildren. Native Americans had the vision to SEE into the future seven generations and tried to live in harmony with nature and preserve the earth’s resources. We can barely see beyond our next paycheck.

In 1998 we came across a concept called the Ecological Footprint. It’s a way for individuals and nations to see how much of the earth’s resources we use based on our lifestyle. We learned that Americans in particular are gobbling up the resources of the planet at an unsustainable rate. Our over-consumption of resources is killing the planet and, as a society, we are “stealing” from those yet to be born and those suffering around the world. Practicing and promoting simple living is a way that we can make a difference. Every day, day in and day out, how we spend (or don’t spend) our money is our Vote on how we want the world to be.

Speaking of voting on how we want the world to be, Bill Bennett and I are representing this church at an interfaith group here in the Seattle area that began earlier this year as a vision of our friend Rabbi Ted Falcon. It’s called Voting with Your Dollars. You’ll be hearing more about this initiative in the months to come but the main idea is to provide information to faith communities about products and services and businesses and organizations in the area that support our common values.

All this leads me to talk for a minute about one more thing we really don’t want to see… our own mortality. Twenty-two years ago last Saturday, my first wife Carole died suddenly at age 36. For years I searched for meaning in her too-short life and untimely death. One of the things I recognized was that I wasn’t going to live forever either and that maybe I should get about doing something meaningful with my life…or like Thoreau, not be one of those who live a life of quiet desperation.

This was brought home more clearly in one of the early chapters of YMOYL where they offered an average life expectancy chart showing how long we might expect to live given our current age. They even broke it down into HOURS! When I started the YMOYL program in 1991 I was 45 and my life expectancy was 33 years or 289,298 hours. Now I’m 59 and my life expectancy is about 21 years or about 180,000 hours. Seeing this chart brought home to me the reality of our limited time here on earth. What was I doing with my precious time? My life could be over tomorrow. Am I spending my time and money in a way that really matters? I’ve tried to make the most of whatever time I have left ever since.

For those of you who might want to know more detail about how we came to SEE more clearly, I invite you take a look at the book Jacque and I wrote titled Getting a Life. It also includes the stories of folks in different life situations who used the YMOYL program to simplify their life and transform their relationship with money. The bad news is that our book went out of print last December. But the good news is that we bought the remainders and can offer signed copies to you today! Jacque will have copies available downstairs after services. I’ll also put in a plug here for my website www.gettingalife.org which offers information, articles, stories and news about simple and sustainable living.

Living a life based on our deepest spiritual values is, as Jamal likes to say, simple but not easy. It sometimes involves taking an unpopular stand and going against the grain but it’s worth it. Realigning my life with my values has been like a person with poor vision putting on glasses for the first time…or like I’ve heard it is when people have cataracts removed. I can see clearly now. I still don’t always like what I see but at least now, with clear vision through all three eyes, I can act to change, whether it’s my personal behavior, working for social equity or some other cause that I believe in.

I’d like to close with a poem that I came across last year by Linda Ellis that I think speaks to what I’ve been trying to say today. It’s titled “How to Live Your Dash.”

(Note: Because of copyright I cannot reprint the poem here but I encourage you to look for it on the Web. I found it recently at: http://www.webedelic.com/church/dasht.htm )