The Italians have a saying: dolce far niente. It means the “sweetness of doing nothing.” Basically, it encourages people to spend time not doing much, just enjoying themselves. This concept may seem completely foreign to those of us who live in the United States. Consumer culture and productivity culture are
One of our family’s favorite things to do in the summer is go to our local outdoor farmer’s market. Local farmers and business owners sell their produce and products there– but we don’t usually buy much, unless we see some good fruits or vegetables we know we will eat, or
While living our lives, there are so many things that feel super important in the moment– but when we look back later, we realize those things weren’t that important after all. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are things that we don’t think are that important, but then
Note: This is a guest post written by Will Platnick, husband to The Christian Minimalist. As a new parent, I need to be much more intentional about how I spend my time. I want to make sure that I’m spending as much time as I can with my wife and
When I was in seminary (graduate school for people called by God to public ministry), I broke my foot. If you’ve ever broken a bone, you know painful it can be. But even more than that, you know how inconvenient it can be. Simple actions that you could do with
Consumer culture is incredibly prevalent in the U.S., so much so that we often assume automatically that more is better. We are encouraged to spend our time, energy, and financial resources on accumulating more and more material possessions, while also continuously being dissatisfied so that we keep buying and consuming
In August, my husband Will and I went on a cruise with my parents. These family trips used to be a tradition (happening about every other year), but because of personal schedules and the pandemic, we hadn’t been on a trip together in five years. On our last trip five
Benjamin Franklin once wrote a famous quotation about money that still haunts us today: Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or
A few weeks ago, I took part in a contemplative prayer walk. Our small group started by walking slowly around the grounds of our seminary, on our own and yet together at the same time. When we had done that for a few minutes, the leader invited us to continue
Over the last few years, like many people, I’ve been in the job market searching for openings and applying to jobs. One phrase in particular kept standing out to me in many job postings– employers frequently wrote that they were looking for someone who went “above and beyond.” This struck