Former Archbishop
of Canterbury
Dr Rowan Williams
By Roland Ashby
Christians are called to a life of simplicity because they believe that human beings are made in the image of God, former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said recently. “That means that as we learn simplicity in our lives we are engaged in rediscovering, re-entering our gifted existence as God’s image,” he said.
Dr Williams was speaking on 15 February as part of an online series of talks entitled ‘Unified Consciousness: One Mind One Heart’, organised by the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM). He said that far from simplicity being “a kind of lack”, it is actually “a kind of fullness ... a kind of completeness, just as in God all that God is is poured out in all that God does. No lack, no shortage there!”
And the more we re-orient and re-establish our lives as a “place where the divine life happens ... God looks at what God has made and God sees God”.
Simplicity, he said, “is the freedom in this moment simply to turn to God and to mirror God”.
“The task of simplicity is recognising that in this moment it is possible to turn and possible to reflect the gift that’s poured out. In this moment. We don’t have to wait until tomorrow and we don’t have to lament the fact that we did it better yesterday. Simplicity is the belief that a new creation starts now. Here ... It is possible. It is given to us; to turn to God and to reflect God.
“We may not do it with the wholeness of heart we’d like. We may not feel that we’re making a particularly good job of it. Never mind, it’s not about success and achievement, it’s about recognising that something is possible and if this is my desire, to turn to God, to mirror God, then in that moment while that freedom is realised, something happens in me and through me which makes a difference around me.
“If what I truly want is to turn to God and to mirror the divine life of gift, then one thing that will no longer be true about me is that I’m a slave of obsessions, acquisitive craving impulses; I’m no longer out to excavate and occupy and dig in to a place in the world at other people’s expense.
“If I’ve turned to God and know that I can mirror God, wanting to be with God ... then the last thing that will be on my mind is the question of how can I secure myself, how can I acquire what will keep me safe, how can I plug all the gaps in myself with the goods of this world?
“The simple person is the person who is not a threat to those around. God isn’t a threat to us because God doesn’t have an agenda, God doesn’t want to use us or exploit us, make something of us, in order to satisfy his own mysterious purposes. God simply wants us to be there, receiving the divine love and radiating it back. And so when we are living in and from that life, there’s going to be something about our lives that is more deeply hospitable, more deeply welcoming.”
And “as the door opens more and more widely”, he said we discover “more and more things we can do without. Not because we despise them, hate them, reject them, but because we recognise that at some almost unconscious level it doesn’t really matter in my journey towards God and alignment with God. And if that joyful sense of being on a journey of alignment with God, if that joyful sense is what dominates, then our lives will be open and welcoming.”
Simple living, he added, necessarily involved asking ourselves tough questions, particularly in our own era, with “the massive damage we’ve inflicted on our environment by unbridled consumption”.
Moreover, simple living is also about learning “more and more deeply how my sense of myself or my worth, my place in the world, doesn’t depend on success, control and accumulation of goods. A simple life is a life in which I become more free, and if I become more free then those around me become more free likewise.”
Simplicity, he said, is about learning “to see God’s grace as the root of my very being”. It is also learning “to speak and act from one place, the place deep in us that resonates with the life and gift of God, that echoes the life and gift of God because we’re made in the divine image. Somewhere in each one of us there is that reality that resonates, which gives out the same note of the divine action that creates it ... Resonating with the gift and act of God that calls it into being. And simplicity is really just the liberty and the capacity to say yes to that gift, to let our note sound in unity and harmony with the note of God’s voice as it addresses us.”
During the Q and A following the talk, Dr Williams was asked by someone describing himself “as a person of relative wealth” how best he could discern how God would want him to reflect His image. Dr Williams replied: “I suppose the question I’d like to start with is, How can my life and my actions be good news for those who don’t have wealth ... How does [my wealth] become transforming for others?”
A long-time meditator, Dr Williams said he meditated “because I have a sense of my need, my urgent need, to open up ... [to that which] supremely is, and is active; and as a Christian, I believe that activity is what is literally embodied, crystallised in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus ... I meditate to be fed”. He added that his meditation practice depends on “responding to what is pouring out towards me from an immeasurable and infinite source”.
For more information about ‘Unified Consciousness: One Mind One Heart’, see: https://wccm.org/events/unified-consciousness/
This is a version of an article which first appeared in the April edition of The Melbourne Anglican.