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Friends United Meeting |
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Soul Simplicity, Part 2Frank Levering and his wife, Wanda Urbanska have just published a book, Nothing’s Too Small to Make a Difference in conjunction with their new PBS program Simple Living. I caught up with Frank one afternoon after he had spent the day in the apple orchard. The following is Part 2 of our conversation.
QL: The one thing I loved about the final chapter, “Soul Work,” was the example you gave about your Mom, Miriam Lindsey Levering, and Moses and the Red Sea. She said, “Moses had his body in the water before the Red Sea parted. You take the self that you have, and put it in the water.”
How true the story is for helping us as we begin to shed and abandon ourselves more and more to God, to know it isn’t just a passive activity, but in fact there is an action which has to follow the shedding and abandonment part. You can’t just stand there and watch something happen; you have to be an active participant in the movement. Her quote reminded me that action has to follow the inward work. We move out into the world in an action form of whatever our Red Sea is, which is different for different people and certainly different for different portions of our lives.
Frank: I could have gone on and on about my mother and I had to rein myself in because they wanted us to keep these chapters short. But she would have agreed totally with you. Mom accomplished so much, especially considering there were so many limitations placed on her—the orchard was always in debt and we were struggling fi nancially plus she was raising six kids. And this was her mantra you might say; “take action, put that foot in the Red Sea and get going!”
Mom was a little impatient with people who wanted to be perfect spiritually. She thought there wasn’t time for that. It’s great to try to perfect yourself but you also have to be doing something to help the world. At the same time, she was trying to connect the inner life to the outer life. She felt a little estranged from people whose energies were mostly devoted to inner attentiveness without much outward work going on. So that is the tradition in our family. My father was very much like that, too.
They were folks who believed very strongly in the whole Quaker testimony of simple living, but it wasn’t simple living where you contemplated your navel. You simplifi ed your life so you had energy and time to do really important things. Their point was, (and I am certainly an heir to that way of thinking) keep your life as simple as you can, at least your material needs, so that you can do things that make a real contribution.
QL: And debt is something that encumbers us to a point where we’re not able when God calls us to step out to do that which He calls us to do. That and time mismanagement are parts of simple living, which isn’t so simple, is it?
Frank: That’s kind of the rub here because it’s not particularly simple, but simplicity in the sense of the old Quaker notion of cumber, the many things that can encumber us in a way that really prevents us from doing important and valuable things. Or cumber can be things that just burden or slow us down, maybe even paralyze us. It’s a big problem culturally now, you know, things we just think we gotta have—the great big house and the whole nine yards of material things that just take so much time and effort to acquire and maintain. When you get those things, so often you have lost sight of other really important things.
And for me, it’s one of the core messages of the New Testament Jesus keeps talking about —don’t get bogged down and don’t be afraid. So often we are afraid to let go and follow God.
QL: We all have different calls and until you finally learn that, you try to be something that you’re not. So you have to learn what your call is, what it is that God wants you to do on this earth. Which leads us to fi nding your purpose in life. I appreciated the section in your book about the deathbed scenario. I had heard the fi rst one—no one ever says I wish I had spent more time at work. But I had not heard the second—and I wish I had a more meaningless job.
Frank: You’re right, the fi rst part is very familiar. The second part about a more meaningless job (which is meant to be a joke) is another big issue—this whole problem that we are all facing culturally of overwork, and work that’s not necessarily meaningful. Both of these problems are endemic now. And in my view there’s no one-size-fi ts-all solution. Getting a sense of the purpose of your life reminds me of an inspiring little story about my father, Sam Levering. When he was graduating from Cornell in the early 1930s, he heard Rufus Jones speak. Dad always quoted that speech because it made a lasting impression on him. Jones was talking about finding the purpose of your life. And what Dad particularly remembered was Jones saying, “It’s a really good idea to find one thing to really focus on, one thing in your life where you can really make a difference and have an impact, where you can become sort of an expert in one area and then were able to have an impact in that area.” And Dad’s interpretation of that was to go into peace work. Jones was also talking about the whole idea of simplicity in the sense of making sure you had the time and energy to accomplish that important thing and not get bogged down in other less important things. And Dad took that to heart; it was a real life lesson for him, directly from Rufus Jones, in the flesh. And this story made a real impression on me when I was growing up. It always struck me as basically true that one way to really make a difference is to become very knowledgeable about one thing and then that’s where you focus a lot of your energy.
Of course, that’s just one of many ways to be useful. But it’s a good story.
QL: It is. For people who are trying to discover the will of God in their lives, which is similar to what is the purpose of my life, it’s really simple to just fi nd that one thing. But fi nding that one thing isn’t always so simple.
Frank: That’s really true. And I think especially for younger folks, it’s really important to give yourself a little time to do that, to sort things out. These days especially I think there’s so much pressure to jump right in as soon as you are out of school. There’s financial pressure and social pressure. I see that happening and I find it very distressing a lot of times. I feel that so often the person is not yet formed and doesn’t really know yet what their purpose is. It seems like a waste and premature.
QL: Then you get stuck in a bunch of things that just takes you more and more time to shed eventually to get back to your purpose in life.
Frank: Exactly. At Guilford College, there’s the Quaker Leadership program and they come to the orchard every August. I always try to tell them that. I hope not in an overbearing kind of way but I want to impress upon them that they have time to really sort things through and not to feel so much pressure.
QL: Do you have any thing else you want to say to the readers of Quaker Life magazine?
Frank: I think Quaker Life is so important, and you’re doing it beautifully. We need to just affirm what’s already in our Quaker tradition. I want to recommend Cathy’s book. And of course, John Woolman is such a great example, although not anyone in our family can emulate him. Woolman is certainly someone who doesn’t go away in terms of being significant; he just continues to be very relevant. And Rufus Jones was a great Quaker leader and had many wonderful things to say on these topics.
Simplicity’s a great tradition, one of the traditions in Quakerism that has a lot to offer other folks in other denominations. It is something that is transportable out of the Quaker tradition into other faith traditions—it really speaks to others. Quakers have a lot to offer other people right now, in this moment in history. It is good to be mindful of that.
On behalf of Quaker Life, Editor Trish Edwards-Konic interviewed Frank Levering via telephone. The conversation flowed between two new Friends. Part 1 is found in Quaker Life, November 2004. .