Work and Sabbath - week 7 Household Covenant

The question is: "What impact does your 'work' (whether paid or unpaid) have on your time for family, commnunity and service? Do you have adequate space for spiritual reflection and renewal?"

The suggestions include setting aside time regularly for reflection, restricting distractions and urgent messages at certain times, and even taking a year off to consider life goals, etc.

Funnily enough, I'm on a career sabbatical at the moment. I'm working a couple of part-time jobs that are in areas of interest to me, mainly to research on which area I will focus on in my next, full-time role. Even though I'm quite deliberate about this, a few things make me worried. I worry a bit abouot whether I am contributing enough, about whether I (and, more importantly, my family) are going backwards in terms of prosperity (which may affect our long-term health and my daughter's education oportunities), whether I'm losing ground in terms of social status and whether that will make my voice marginal in times to come.

Overall, though, it is a good thing. Most of the reading I've done on leadership and personal effectiveness do recomend setting aside time to reflect on your own life and how you can plan to make it happen.

It's hardest to do when you have some responsibility, whether with parenting or at work. It's easy to feel that you are letting others down by not being busy all the time. But, other people have to solve their own problems; a few hours spent on sabbath each week may well mean you increase your effectiveness for the rest of the week; and working is not the only thing we are on the planet to do.

We've got a reasonable handle on this topic in our household. I reckon we'll address some of the anxieties we feel about taking down-time and also be a bit more deliberate about when we do down-time so that it happens before we crash in an emotional and physical heap.

Social Justice and Spirituality

For me, getting involved in social justice has two main elements: it's right, and it helps me be complete.

I have no doubt that following Jesus means (in part) trying to be a moral person. One out-working of my personal morality is to help others. I see that social justice is a means of doing that. I like Jesus parable of the Good Samaritan and I take it to mean that all people are my neighbours (whom I should love), even if I'd like to screen them out on the basis of race or distance.

But I am not completely altruistic about social justice, I say that there is a benefit to me.

Being involved in justice demands that I consider the plight of others. This helps me feel empathy for others. I reckon that being able to feel empathy is a great sign of health and maturity. If I ever managed to focus on my own needs to such an extent that I simply did not feel anything when I heard of another's suffering - I reckon something would have died within me.

So, I can see that I will me more alive if I feel empathy, I can keep working my sense of empathy by considering the plight of others (especially those I may be tempted to ignore), and I can make sure that I consider the plight of others by being involved in social justice.

Others receive justice, and I get to be more alive. That's a fair and healthy way of living!

Poverty & Marginalisation - Week 6, Household Covenant

Wekk 6 of the Household Covenant concerns Poverty & Marginalisation. The key question is: "Do you ever interact in a meaningful way with people from a very different social stratum than your own, particularly those who are marginalised?"

Some suggestions are: volunteering at soup kitchens, shelters or clinics; researching the needs of local refugee or migrant communities; committ to a 'exposure' program, where you are introduced to marginalised people.

For our own household, this has definitely dropped since we became parents (and needed to focus more on career, saving for a home, etc.). Partly because of new focus, partly because of lack of time and energy.

We do get to say hello to some marginal people in and around Sunday Stuff (our church service), both locals who drop in for a cuppa and also a couple of attendees. It's not really a very meaningful interaction though.

In the past, I've been involved in a community lunch in Carlton, which gave good exposure to a broad cross-section of the local community. The lunch held in Credo Cafe at Collins St Baptist church is another great way to get involved.

To boost our involvement in this, we'll have to work hard to create some time and energy for it - a tough call with a pre-schooler and several part-time jobs to consider!

Consumption - Week 5, Household Covenant

The household covenant asks this key questions concerning consumption: "What ways can you go further in reducing your consumption and changing your patterns to conform to sustainable patterns?"



Some ideas are: checking you're not addicted to anything (coffee, books, shoes?); an audit of goods produced under fair-trade, anti-sweatshop or locally produced conditions; setting a target for foods sourced locally or produced organically or; learning about local food sources.



A suggested resource is the Sustainable Living Consumer Guide.



For us, this will require a bit of work. We don't have a fancy lifestyle, so we don't tend to think of ourselves as big consumers. We'll have to think very carefully about what we do consume and the related issues.

I'd like to know if spending on second-hand books has any negative ramifications. We tend to get tinned tomatoes from Italy (they're pretty cheap): is this better or worse than Australian tinned tomatoes? Is there an alternative to tinned? Does the preservation in steel cans actually help to reduce waste? Does the extra weight of the steel (during transport) outweigh the benefits longer-life?

And it's tiny things too. Is it better to buy pre-chopped sundried tomatoes than chop them up ourselves? I'd assume that a factory can chop them up in huge amounts and that would save energy consumption somewhere - but is that better than using my muscle energy at home?

I think the way to go is to write down a long list of things that we buy, then try to find out the things that have significant negative (or positive) impacts.

Environment - Week 4 Household Covenant

The topic for week 4 of the Lent Household Covenant is 'Environment'.

The key questions are: 'What concrete steps can you take to make your household and lifestyle significantly "greener"? How can you become knowledgable about the issues in your community and advocate for change?'

We do the usual things of recycling, re-usable shopping bags, turning off lights and appliances (a bit) and walking or biking a little. We only run one car in our household.

We could make more of an effort to get info about current environmental issues. As an engineer and investor, I could learn a bit more complex stuff about power generation and consumption on a big scale. We could do some more to measure our gas and electricity consumption - perhaps by looking at our meters more often.

We eat a bit of meat and don't grow much food at home. We could investigate that kind of stuff pretty easily.

We certainly don't know lots about the natural environment around our home. We could learn a bit more about native vegetation and what is a sustainable ecosystem in our immediate area.

Lot's to think about!

Ethical Investing Resources

I've collected a little list of resources for people wanting to start out in ethical investing.

A key part of investing is being well-informed. If you are wanting to consider ethical issues you will need to seek information from alternative sources. Not all information will lead to sound investments and I do not endorse the investment advice from any of these sources of information. alternative sources of information should be read alongside mainstream sources to get a more complete picture.

Kiva is a micro-credit organisation that matches up investors from the developed world to entrepreneurs in the developing world. www.kiva.org

Ethical Investor magazine is another good newsletter, I've only seen a few hard-copy issues so far. www.sri.com.au

The Uniting Church have an ethical investment fund which has a retail offering. It is both a vehicle for churches to invest, as well as a provider of captial for some social programs run locally. It also invests globally in ethical opportunities. www.ucafunds.com.au

TEAR are starting to produce some resources to help guide investment, check out tear.org.au, they are also a source of general information on big infrastructure projects and developing world infrastrcuture need. TEAR have links to developing world microcredit organisations, but I don't think they offer a retail investment opportunity. www.tear.org.au/resources/harambee/

Reading the 'New Internationalist' alongside The Economist etc. is a good way of following news of infrastructure investments and also micro credit industry movements. www.newint.org

The 'Intelligent Investor', is an Australian value-investing newsletter. This is a good check for the soundness of investments. www.intelligentinvestor.com.au

Giving - Week 3 Household Covenant

It's week 3 of Lent and topic 3 of the Household Covenant is 'Giving'.

The Household Covenant states 'Giving helps build social relations rather than private capital'. That's an interesting perspective that is contrast to giving as a simple, non-rational, transfer of wealth.

We give to church, to Red Cross (for humanitarian work both in Australia and overseas) and to the Australian Conservation Foundation to help the environment. We also give a lot of our time to friends, family, church and some causes. We have a strong network of friends as a result.

We've probably given to the extent that money and time that could have been invested in career and wealth creation has been forgone. I suppose only time will tell whether that was a sensible decision. It was a compassionate decisions, so perhaps that's enough.

One idea that came out of my review, is that we could give a little less time and try to earn a little more money. That money could be well spent on eradicating extreme poverty within our lifetime. I've started reading books by Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) and Peter Singer (The Life You Can Save) that strongly suggest that we can eradicate extreme poverty soon at at reasonable cost.

Above all, I'm keen that giving be something that builds relations, not just a voluntary tax.

Debt in the Household Covenant Week 2

Over Lent this year I am assessing our household finances against the topics in the 'Household Covenant'. For week 2 of Lent, the topic is debt.

The Covenant poses the questions - How is debt affecting you? How does debt affect other people? (my paraphrase).

Debt does not affect us overly much. I've been running a small business for a number of years (Mintleaf Studio - professional website design and development in Melbourne) and had made sure I was relatively debt free as part of the overall financial risk. Not everyone in small business does that, I'm sure that many households are greatly in debt to finance a small business that isn't actually very viable.

So, we did it differently. We have no mortgage, a small credit card limit that we pay off most months and a HELP debt (that's a debt to the Commonwealth as they paid for my engineering undergraduate and post-graduate study).

This means we can tighten our belts very effectively and live on less than many of our peers. We can be a little more generous with time and money as we don't have to service debt.

Of course, we may have forgone some wealth-generating investing in order to stay so low in debt; which may not be the best place to be long-term.

We don't know enough about the effects of debt in the world, except that Highly Indebted Poor Countries often face debt that can never be repaid. We've been involved in the Jubilee, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History campaigns for a while and that helped us understand that kind of debt.

We should find out a bit more about how debt affects relatively affluent westerners, as well as how debt can be sustainable in poorer regions of the world. At the moment I couldn't tell you much about the difference between bad and good debts - and I think I ought to know.

Household Covenant Week 1

I'm aiming to go through each of the seven topics in the Household Covenenat over the seven weeks of Lent. The first topic is 'Savings and Investment'. I decided to list out the ways that we save and invest and decide if they are making a positive contribution to a fairer and more sustainable world.

We keep most of our savings in an online bank account. I did a quick check and the bank does do some donations to environmental and children's health causes. Children's health is a pretty safe issue. The causes are located in Australia. Given how many kids die of preventable diseases overseas, that doesn't seem like a priority. Still, if my daughter got sick; I'd certainly feel different about the anmount of care available locally. It's nice to support causes my closest neighbours would identify with as well.

We do have a small amount of money in the 'Kiva' microcredit scheme. The scheme operates out of the US and matches lenders in the developed world to borrowers in the developing world. Borrowers may only borrow a few hundred dollars. Typically there are a good number of lenders, so the loan is spread out across a few lenders. Our money is currently with a woman in India, who has used it to buy a sewing machine. She has successfully paid off most of the loan already. We get a small return on investment, so it's worth doing another loan through the scheme and maybe extending our committment.

We have an online trading account for share market investing and I'm learning about the sharemarket through the ASX public help. I'm aware that there are managed funds for pretty much every investment flavour. I'd be interested to find out if we could go further than a local ethical investment fund (of which there are a number of good ones) and find a fund that helps address a critical need overseas; such as health and education. It's hard to know what needs will be suitable for private investment; especially as we'll need a relatively low risk investment.

After a recent adventure running my own business, we're setting our sights on home ownership. That's a big investment! I'd like to find out more about buying a smaller, more energy efficient, dwelling - maybe renovating a small house over a few years will be better than a large place in the outer suburbs.

So, that's our review in a nutshell. We have a couple of little things we could committ to, otherwise we'll need to do more research before we can turn these wishes into a definite savings and investment plan.

The Household Covenant

The Household Covenant is a new thing to help people engage with big issues of social justice and sustainability in an accessible way.

The idea is to make a committment within your household to make changes to patterns of money and other resource use. Each household is completely free to make their own committments. The Housegold Covenant is promoted in Australia by Jon and Kim Cornford from Manna Gum, they've based it on one from the US (Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries www.bcm-net.org).

Jon and Kim came to Solace Sunday Stuff on Feb 22, 2009 and introduced the Household Covenant. Jon explained some of his ideas behind Christians getting involved in economic issues and Kim very generously shared some points from their own Household Covenant. We thought that Solace households could certainly have a go at the covenant and provide each other with a bit of support. I'll be looking at the covenant further over Lent.

The covenant has seven topics, making it easy to review your household economics and make some definite goals. The seven topics are:

1. Savings and Investment
2. Debt
3. Giving
4. Environment and Green Living
5. Consumption
6. Poverty and Marginalisation
7. Work and Sabbath

Each topic has specific questions about whether your activity is sustainable, fair and life-giving.

It's challenging, but very approachable. I'm excited to give it a go!