The Essenes, the historian says, did not change their garments or shoes until they were torn to shreds or worn out with age. They ate one dish, enough and no more, in silence, as into a sanctuary. They despised riches and held all things in common, so that among them no one was rich and no one poor. They did not anoint themselves with oil, counting it a defilement. The philosopher says they had no slaves, no weapons, no trade in luxuries, and that they had become, by these refusals, free men.
The fellowship calls this practice simplicity, and we hold that it is not about deprivation but about freedom. The one who needs little cannot be bought, cannot be frightened by loss, and has time. The Essenes had time for a third of every night. We have time for very little, and the reason is not that our days are shorter.
The Simple Table
The fellowship's first practice of simplicity is the table, and it is the practice of the teaching of the Sanctity of Life. Students are not given a diet. They are given four instructions.
- Bless it. Before eating, say a blessing, aloud if you can. The fellowship uses the Lection of bread or any words of thanks. The Essenes would not taste food until a priest had blessed it. We have no priests, so each of us is one.
- Know it. Know where the food came from, as far as you can. The bread from this grain, grown in this country, by these hands. The fellowship has found that knowing changes eating more surely than any rule.
- Take enough and no more. One dish, the historian says. The fellowship does not count dishes, but we eat until we are not hungry rather than until we are full, and we leave the table able to pray.
- Let it be a sanctuary. Eat with attention. Eat, when possible, with others, and let the table be a place where the fellowship's greeting of peace is actual. Do not eat standing, or in a car, or in front of a screen, except when life requires it, and then know that it is a lesser meal.
Students who keep these four for a season find, as we have said elsewhere, that their table changes on its own: less flesh, less waste, more cooking, more company. The fellowship has never argued anyone into reverence. The blessing does the arguing.
The Weekly Fast
The scrolls do not prescribe a fast beyond the Day of Atonement, and the fellowship does not pretend the Essenes fasted weekly. But the wider tradition of the Way, from the earliest Christian manuals onward, kept two fast days a week, and the fellowship has adopted one. From the Evening Watch of one day to the Evening Watch of the next, the student takes water and, if health requires, bread, and nothing else.
The purpose is not penance. It is clarity. A body that is not digesting is a body that can attend, and the mind on a fast day is sharper, quieter, and more honest than on any other. The fellowship has found that the fast day is the day the Still Lamp burns clearest. It is also the day the student learns, in the body, that most of what she thinks she needs she merely wants, and that the wanting passes.
Those who are ill, pregnant, nursing, very young, very old, or under a physician's care for anything touching food do not fast. The Law permits what is necessary, and the fellowship holds that the care of the body is part of the Law. A fast that harms the temple is not an offering.
The Shedding
The third practice of simplicity is slower and has no fixed form. It is the gradual shedding of what is not needed. Once a season, the fellowship suggests, go through one room and ask of each thing in it the Essene question: does this profit soul or body? Keep what does. Give away what does not. Do not do the whole house; the Essenes examined candidates for three years, and a house deserves at least a few seasons.
The fellowship has found that the shedding of things is followed, in time, by the shedding of commitments, grudges, and fears, which were taking up more room than the things. The garment worn until it falls to pieces is not a sign of poverty. It is a sign of a person who has stopped needing to be seen in a new one.
A Caution
Simplicity can become its own vanity. The fellowship has known students proud of their bare rooms and their fast days in a way the Essenes would have penalized as haughtiness. The test is lightness. The one who is truly simple does not think about it much, as the one who is truly clean does not think much about soap. If your simplicity is heavy, you are carrying it instead of wearing it. Set some of it down.