At about the time America was becoming a nation, a small religious movement, the Shakers, was coming to these shores. If you know about the Shakers, you may feel some of their ideas were odd. But they got one thing very right; they believed in being simple. They produced furniture that is still imitated today because of its elegant simplicity. So, too, with their poetry and their music; they had a genius for finding the beauty that dwells in simplicity.
The hymn for which they are best known is titled, "’Tis a Blessing to Be Simple." Several years ago a prestige automaker used the tune as background music for a commercial touting a special model. Ironically, it was the kind of luxury car that’s the very antithesis of the simplicity the Shakers sought and lived!
But that figures. Because we human beings are a pretty self-contradictory lot. We want the blessings of the simple life, but we’d like to have those blessings in the midst of our complex lifestyle.
Nor did we invent this attitude in the 20th or 21st century. We humans have always been this way. Mind you, we’re currently developing these attitudes to a fine art, but the inclination has always been there.
Never satisfied
I think that’s what Jesus was driving at in our scripture lesson of the day. He said that his generation was like children who called to one another, "We played the flute and you didn’t dance; we wailed, and you didn’t mourn." That is, no matter what’s done, you’re not satisfied.
That’s typical of people who haven’t learned to find hap
