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A Plain Life: Walking My Belief
In today's fast-paced, high-tech world, the most radical act of all might be to slow down . . . to try, in each moment, to be fully, truly present. Scott Savage, editor of the hand-produced Plain magazine, spent ten years trying to do just that--by embracing his Quaker faith and, with his family, rejecting the trappings of modern life, technology, and media. Then Scott decided to seal his commitment to the plain life by terminating his driver's license.
In this account of his week long walk across the state of Ohio to officially hand in his license at the state capitol, each moment of the road leads to contemplations of what the transition to the plain life has meant for Scott, his wife Mary Ann, and their children. We come to understand that the Savage family's chosen life is not easy by any means, but the rewards of place, presence, authenticity, and community which have accompanied their rejection of what most of us take for granted are the arbor of shade trees surrounding their house, the laughter of the children who without TV learn to create their own games and stories, the family activities of preparing food and tending the garden.
As Scott walks along in meditation, with trucks rumbling by on the nearby highway, he cannot help but think of Ned, the buggyhorse who, at the end of Scott's pilgrimage, will be the family's only engine.
There are vital, life-affirming lessons for all of us here--who might have only imagined taking some of the steps that the Savage family have put into practice. In A Plain Life, we walk into a smaller, revolutionary world, where the journey is sacred, and each step . . . a destination.
In this account of his week long walk across the state of Ohio to officially hand in his license at the state capitol, each moment of the road leads to contemplations of what the transition to the plain life has meant for Scott, his wife Mary Ann, and their children. We come to understand that the Savage family's chosen life is not easy by any means, but the rewards of place, presence, authenticity, and community which have accompanied their rejection of what most of us take for granted are the arbor of shade trees surrounding their house, the laughter of the children who without TV learn to create their own games and stories, the family activities of preparing food and tending the garden.
As Scott walks along in meditation, with trucks rumbling by on the nearby highway, he cannot help but think of Ned, the buggyhorse who, at the end of Scott's pilgrimage, will be the family's only engine.
There are vital, life-affirming lessons for all of us here--who might have only imagined taking some of the steps that the Savage family have put into practice. In A Plain Life, we walk into a smaller, revolutionary world, where the journey is sacred, and each step . . . a destination.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2000
60 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 19, 2017
I stumbled uplon this book at the library while looking for something else. I was immediately drawn to the cover, the subtitle ("Walking My Belief"), and the simple pull quote on the back of the book ("Walking always leaves me feeling I have exited time to participate in the eternal now of creation. It puts me in a relationship of reverie and praise for all I see." ) What joy! I feel the same way! I love walking (I deliberately try to walk as many places as I can) and thought this book would be a celebration/mediation on walking/slowing down/the simple life, etc. I was wrong.
Author Scott Savage has rejected modernity has decided to live life as a Quaker (no problem there -- live and let live). However, Savage wastes no opportunity reminding the rest of us who haven't forsaken modern ways that we are most definitely on the wrong path.
The main point of the book is to chronicle a journey that Savage will take, on foot, to personally surrender his driver's license at the DMV in Columbus, OH. It doesn't matter that his license *expires* on the day he is surrendering it. It also doesn't matter that there is a DMV just a few miles from his home. Nope, he sanctimoniously wants to surrender his license in the state capitol as a matter of principle. This will require an 8 day walk (during which time his pregnant wife will be at home with their 3 very young children, feeding the barn animals, pumping water from the cistern, cooking over a fire, washing clothes with a washboard, and taking care of all other household tasks "Little House on the Prairie" style).
Seems as though at the end of all this Savage accomplished his goal, but still didn't have any perspective, IMO.
Author Scott Savage has rejected modernity has decided to live life as a Quaker (no problem there -- live and let live). However, Savage wastes no opportunity reminding the rest of us who haven't forsaken modern ways that we are most definitely on the wrong path.
The main point of the book is to chronicle a journey that Savage will take, on foot, to personally surrender his driver's license at the DMV in Columbus, OH. It doesn't matter that his license *expires* on the day he is surrendering it. It also doesn't matter that there is a DMV just a few miles from his home. Nope, he sanctimoniously wants to surrender his license in the state capitol as a matter of principle. This will require an 8 day walk (during which time his pregnant wife will be at home with their 3 very young children, feeding the barn animals, pumping water from the cistern, cooking over a fire, washing clothes with a washboard, and taking care of all other household tasks "Little House on the Prairie" style).
Seems as though at the end of all this Savage accomplished his goal, but still didn't have any perspective, IMO.
August 27, 2019
In my never ending quest to simplify, I stumbled across this book. Here was someone living out that simplicity I craved. The catch? He was a Luddite; a converted government worked turned Quaker who was on a quest to detach from the outer world to cling to his tight knit community.
Reader, I am not a Luddite.
However.
However! His quest and the musings on life and the environment and technology and it’s degrading to reduce humans to their data ring timely and true, almost twenty years after he wrote them.
Our lives and world would be healthier if we lived with such a little environmental footprint and rich community. There’s just got to be a way to create it without turning fully to the land.
Reader, I am not a Luddite.
However.
However! His quest and the musings on life and the environment and technology and it’s degrading to reduce humans to their data ring timely and true, almost twenty years after he wrote them.
Our lives and world would be healthier if we lived with such a little environmental footprint and rich community. There’s just got to be a way to create it without turning fully to the land.
October 21, 2020
Even though Savage provides a number of "take-aways" in this book, he does come across as extreme in his belief system, and self-righteous in his lifestyle. But I like that he promotes simple living and eschews modern technologies, most of which create more problems than they solve.
December 19, 2019
You have to be careful about working in a library. Sometimes books change your life. Scott Savage and his wife were both librarians whose environmental interests put them on a path – spurred by books — altogether different than they would have ever expected for themselves. For Scott, in particular, it would lead to an eight day pilgrimage to Columbus, Ohio, to surrender his license to drive — a purpose-filled ritual that for him would seal his decision to live more deliberately, to drop out of a noisy, frantic, and meaningless consumer existence. In A Plain Life, Savage reflects on his and his wife’s spiritual journey even as he makes his way to the city through Amish country.
All the answers are not in books, but they can point the way, and so it was that one introduced the Savages to a viable alternative to frenzied consumerism: the Amish. The plain folk were living proof that the technoid future was not inevitable; it was still possible to live in another way. The Amish made Scott aware that what he was most yearning for was community – something most of us in the United States have lost, living as we do in eternal placelessness. The Amish are not technophobes, but rather a community who thoughtfully consider a given technology’s potential for disruption of their home lives, community health, and spirituality. Neither Scott nor his wife were religious practitioners, and had consider themselves closed to any Christian tradition – and yet the Amish re-opened that door.
The tradition which the Savages would ultimately embrace, however, was not the Amish but rather the Quaker. Each chapter follows Scott on his day’s walk, and the text follows his thoughts – sometimes dwelling on the growth of his ‘plain’ practices, sometimes on the history of the area, sometimes on technology and modern life. What brings each day into focus in his religious practice, as he works on memorizing the Beatitudes throughout the sermon; these verses, and his hymns, often color his thoughts for the day — connecting “blessing are the meek”, for instance, with a reflection on humility and self-knowledge, connecting also to the places he is traveling through — like a peat island that is disintegrating.
A Plain Life has a lot to say, though how much is heard depends on the audience. Presumably few people would adopt a life like Scott’s — a home without electricity, for starters — but I imagine a much larger number would be willing to admit their own dissatisfaction with the atomized lives so many of us lead. In any case, a central lesson is that none of us are are free in the sense that we like to think we are, in that we escape the consequences of our actions; our uses of technology shape us, just as they shape our world, and not necessarily for the better. Scott may have been thinking of how televisions disrupt family life, and how automobiles spur people to continually hunt for satisfaction elsewhere, across the horizon — but today such inroads are even more invasive, the struggle more close-quarters. Conversations about technological disruption seem more common, as people looking for answers as to why politics on every side has gotten more vicious blame social media. The tech facilitates abuse, but we’re all the ones feeding the beast.
If Savage rings any interest, I would highly suggest his anthology, The Plain Reader. It’s stayed by my bedside ever since I read it.
All the answers are not in books, but they can point the way, and so it was that one introduced the Savages to a viable alternative to frenzied consumerism: the Amish. The plain folk were living proof that the technoid future was not inevitable; it was still possible to live in another way. The Amish made Scott aware that what he was most yearning for was community – something most of us in the United States have lost, living as we do in eternal placelessness. The Amish are not technophobes, but rather a community who thoughtfully consider a given technology’s potential for disruption of their home lives, community health, and spirituality. Neither Scott nor his wife were religious practitioners, and had consider themselves closed to any Christian tradition – and yet the Amish re-opened that door.
The tradition which the Savages would ultimately embrace, however, was not the Amish but rather the Quaker. Each chapter follows Scott on his day’s walk, and the text follows his thoughts – sometimes dwelling on the growth of his ‘plain’ practices, sometimes on the history of the area, sometimes on technology and modern life. What brings each day into focus in his religious practice, as he works on memorizing the Beatitudes throughout the sermon; these verses, and his hymns, often color his thoughts for the day — connecting “blessing are the meek”, for instance, with a reflection on humility and self-knowledge, connecting also to the places he is traveling through — like a peat island that is disintegrating.
A Plain Life has a lot to say, though how much is heard depends on the audience. Presumably few people would adopt a life like Scott’s — a home without electricity, for starters — but I imagine a much larger number would be willing to admit their own dissatisfaction with the atomized lives so many of us lead. In any case, a central lesson is that none of us are are free in the sense that we like to think we are, in that we escape the consequences of our actions; our uses of technology shape us, just as they shape our world, and not necessarily for the better. Scott may have been thinking of how televisions disrupt family life, and how automobiles spur people to continually hunt for satisfaction elsewhere, across the horizon — but today such inroads are even more invasive, the struggle more close-quarters. Conversations about technological disruption seem more common, as people looking for answers as to why politics on every side has gotten more vicious blame social media. The tech facilitates abuse, but we’re all the ones feeding the beast.
If Savage rings any interest, I would highly suggest his anthology, The Plain Reader. It’s stayed by my bedside ever since I read it.
April 28, 2009
This is a fairly interesting book though it takes a bit to get into it as for all his words about 'Judge not, lest ye be judged' that seems to be all he does for quite a bit of the book, preaching at you about needing God and making you feel as though he's looking down his nose at you because you wear bright colours, because you drive cars, because you are not a Quaker and thus not as rightous as him.
I'd definitely recommend this book if you could stick to it though because about halfway through it does start to get better, he starts examining himself more than other people and near the end I even found myself reading parts of it out loud because there were paragraphs that grabbed you and just couldn't be left on pages, couldn't be kept to yourself.
I'd definitely recommend this book if you could stick to it though because about halfway through it does start to get better, he starts examining himself more than other people and near the end I even found myself reading parts of it out loud because there were paragraphs that grabbed you and just couldn't be left on pages, couldn't be kept to yourself.
February 5, 2011
Hmmm...so far it's quite interesting in its presentation of an alternate lifestyle that one can choose that is outside of the realm of modernity. The tone of the book at this point seems so self-righteous that as a reader I'm feeling pretty defensive. We'll see if it gets better.
12/08 - Truly enjoyed this one once I got through my defensiveness. I have to wonder whether the chapters are divided by Savage's thoughts for the day which he probably captured in his journal each night. I once did a 200 mile hike and I can verify that as you amble along all you have to do is think and try not to fall down. I picked up the Plain Reader as a companion read, and it's even better.
12/08 - Truly enjoyed this one once I got through my defensiveness. I have to wonder whether the chapters are divided by Savage's thoughts for the day which he probably captured in his journal each night. I once did a 200 mile hike and I can verify that as you amble along all you have to do is think and try not to fall down. I picked up the Plain Reader as a companion read, and it's even better.
September 8, 2012
This book caught my eye as I walked down the aisle at the library. I didn't check it out that visit, but eventually got around to taking it home. The author is a solid writer, and I got through it quickly. Unfortunately, I did feel welcomed by him. Instead of the simple man, humble before God, that he made himself out to be, he came across as arrogant and judgemental. He did, however, tone that down in the last two or three chapters, which got it back up to three stars. But I still feel that if I bumped into him on the street and wanted to talk about how I might simplify my life, he would just tell me I'm far too inferior to him, and I could never hope to accomplish it.
July 17, 2016
After several fits and starts, I finally finished it and am not sure I enthusiastically enjoyed it. Overall it was good, though at times the author, I felt, tried his case a little too hard. It did have a rather very interesting twist at the end. I might read it again only to see if I've been too hard on the author (I'd also like to see what he is doing today, 16 years later. I'll look him up on the internet which he wasn't very fond of!).
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June 24, 2011I loved that Mr. Savage made a pilgrimage out of giving up his driver's license. Since I'm using the internet (and rather like my car), I'm not nearly as minimalist/simple living-driven as the author, but I greatly appreciated and enjoyed his book and journey toward a slower-paced, more meaningful life. Highly recommend for anyone interested in downshifting.
June 5, 2020
This was a re-read. I had bought this book back in the early 2000s when I was reading a lot of Anabaptist books and it still fascinates me. It is really good writing and I love the explanations of Scott’s beliefs and the insights into his life. I admire his courage to do what he did and enjoyed walking his journey with him.
June 15, 2010
Simple can be better, but am not sure I'd do it Scott's way. Like the 'back to the basics', but not in excess. Don't know that the Quaker lifestyle is tolerant enough for my way of thinking, although I appreciate their pacifist stance.
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March 11, 2010Great book. Really enjoyed it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews