Renewed agenda to live simply

By Pamela Hussey

We are already in the first days of autumn - a 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' as Keats so beautifully proclaimed, though, at the time of writing the mists have yet to appear. It is a season when things begin again, schools open, workers return from their holidays with exotic things to eat for the delectation of their colleagues.

The renewed strength and freshness gained from days away from the usual routine will not, sadly, last for ever. We need new spurs to propel us forward, fresh ideas to keep our minds creatively engaged. Recent issues of Progressio's magazine Interact offer intriguing snatches of sentences and perceptive insights on which we can build.

The 'first person' features of the Spring and Summer 2006 issues offer two elements of a new agenda: Yvette Lopez's article, 'The commitment to grow', and Tsitsi Choruma's 'Identifying with the cause'. It would be difficult to find more profound and comprehensive rules of engagement than these. 'Commitment' is a key word in Progressio's vocabulary. Without it, no programme of work can endure, establish itself and blossom. 'Identifying with the cause' is an essential building block for the development worker - the setting-up of what Tsitsi Choruma calls a 'symbiotic relationship [with the cause] which must be maintained through and through'.

Interact's editor, Alastair Whitson, adds a third element to this list, the importance of  thinking outside the box, escaping from the straitjacket of certain forms of education into the freedom of independent thought and alternative ways of doing things.  

But the questions arise, 'What is commitment?', 'What is the cause?' and 'What is outside the box?'. The answers to these questions can be found in 'This is Progress - An abridged version of Populorum Progressio (Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI, 1967)' published by Progressio under the auspices of the livesimply project.

The commitment must be to the people who are still far behind on the path of progress. The cause must be theirs: freedom, security, to be treated like human beings. The box is the old traditions, the old ways of achieving progress.  

'I have come that they may have life,' says Jesus, 'and have it more abundantly.' If we need a slogan, that is it

Related links

More details of the livesimply project

Order a copy of Progressio's Comment 'A question of commitment' by Marigold Best and Pamela Hussey.