After Ten Years Away, My Home Church Taught Me About Simple Things

I have been back in Singapore for four weeks now – four Sundays in the church I grew up in, after just over ten years away in Melbourne. I am still finding my feet in the place, still relearning which faces I know. And this week, before I had properly settled back in, that same church hosted a theological summit: three days of scholars presenting papers on everything from grace to prophecy to the inner life.

Some of it sailed clean over my head. There is a particular kind of academic language that stacks clause upon clause until the point disappears somewhere near the ceiling – and the convention centre has a pretty high ceiling mind you – and a few of the presentations lived up there, far from anything I could tie to an ordinary Tuesday. But a handful were genuinely gripping, carried as much by the presenter's warmth as by the argument, and those were the ones that stayed with me afterwards.

What I had not expected was the other half of it. Ten years is a long time to be gone. I left Singapore, built a life in Melbourne, and somewhere in there the church I grew up in became a place I remembered rather than a place I went. Four weeks back, I am still reintroducing myself to it. But the summit drew a crowd, and in that crowd were people I used to know well and had simply drifted from – not through any falling out, just through the slow work of distance and time. We caught up in the gaps between sessions, and it was the easy kind of catching up, the kind where a decade folds down to nothing in about ninety seconds.

So there I was, mind being stretched by the theologically academic and the academically theological, while the rest of me was quietly coming home.

One paper has kept working on me since. It was about Holy Communion – the bread and the cup, the thing I have done in church more times than I could count. The presenter made a wry observation: Pentecostals like me tend to just get on with it. We take the elements, we remember, we move along. And we can be a little quick to smile at the Anglicans and the Methodists who seem, to our eyes, to major on it, to turn something simple over and over as though there were more to find.

Here is the uncomfortable part. I have taken Communion for most of my life, and if you had asked me what it meant, I would have told you it is to remember the Lord's death, as the Bible says, and left it there. That is true, as far as it goes. But it had never once occurred to me to find out what those other traditions actually teach, or why they linger where I hurry. I had mistaken my own lack of curiosity for the simplicity of the thing itself. The presenter had given years of careful thought to what I had given almost none, and by the end I was not smiling at the Anglicans anymore. I was a little embarrassed to have assumed there was nothing there to think about.

That sent me somewhere unexpected, because I have been telling myself a story about simplicity for a while now.

When we downsized in Melbourne, we sold and gave away a great deal of what we owned. It was, in its way, a relief. You spend the first half of your life accumulating, and a strange amount of energy maintaining the pile, and then one day you realise most of it was never doing much for you. The simpler life we landed on out there felt like wisdom hard-won. And I have carried that conviction into other corners – that the best answers in investing, in health, in fitness, are usually the uncomplicated ones. Spend less than you earn. Move your body. Eat real food. Nothing clever.

But the Communion paper caught me holding two different kinds of simple and pretending they were the same.

There is the simple you arrive at, the way we arrived at a lighter home after actually reckoning with everything we had been carrying. And there is the simple you default to because you never looked – which is what my Communion had quietly become. They can look identical from the outside. A pared-down thing and an unexamined thing sit side by side, and you cannot always tell which is which. The difference is whether anyone did the work. Whether the plainness is on the near side of thought or the far side of it.

A third thing from the summit fits here, and it is the smallest of all. One of the papers mentioned the prayer that Saint Francis of Assisi is remembered for. "May the Lord give you peace." That is it. At a glance it is almost nothing, the sort of line you could print on a coaster. But this was a man who gave away everything he had, who stripped his life down to the studs and then, on the far side of all that, arrived at a handful of words. That is not the simple of someone who never thought about it. That is the simple that is left when you have thought about everything.

I did not come home with a new theology of the bread and the cup. I came home with a smaller and more useful suspicion: that when something in my life looks simple, I owe it one honest question before I move along. Is this plain because I chose it, or plain because I never looked? The downsizing survives that question. My Communion, it turns out, did not – not because it was wrong, but because I had never bothered to see how much was in it.

Ten years away, and the thing I had been doing all along was the thing I understood least. There is probably something in that about the friends I had drifted from too, sitting right there in the same room, familiar and unexamined and worth far more than the ninety seconds it took to fall back in with them.

What is one thing in your life you call simple – a habit, a belief, a routine – that might be plain because you chose it, and what might be plain only because you never stopped to look? When did you last mistake your own lack of curiosity about something for the thing itself being simple, and what did it cost you to find out otherwise?

👉 Hit reply and share your thoughts – I’d love to hear what’s resonating with you.

☕ Your support keeps L-Plate Retiree returning to the ordinary practices we tend to hurry past until something makes us stop and look again. If this reflection on coming home after a decade, and finding the plainest things heavier than I left them, resonates with you, you can consider buying L-Plate Retiree a coffee on Ko-fi.

Staying Steady Through Market Storms

Hello, L-Plate Retirees! We've journeyed through avoiding market timing, taming our emotions, and understanding the sneaky impact of fees and the power of true diversification. Today, we're going to talk about something that can test even the most seasoned investor's resolve: market volatility.

Market volatility simply means the ups and downs, the swings and wobbles, that are a completely normal and expected part of investing. Just like the weather, financial markets have sunny days and stormy days. It's natural to feel a bit anxious when the market takes a tumble, but for us long-term investors, these periods shouldn't be seen as a threat, but rather as a characteristic of healthy, dynamic markets. The key is to maintain a steadfast long-term perspective, keeping your eyes firmly on your retirement goals rather than getting caught up in the daily headlines.

History is our best teacher here. Time and again, markets have recovered from downturns and gone on to reach new highs. Think back to the 2008 financial crisis or the brief but sharp dip during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Those who panicked and sold locked in their losses and missed out on the subsequent, often rapid, recovery. This is where disciplined investing truly shines. It means sticking to your well-thought-out investment plan, even when it feels uncomfortable.

Remember our discussions on Dollar-Cost Averaging? Continuing your regular contributions during a downturn means you're actually buying more shares at lower prices – a fantastic way to boost your long-term returns! And don't forget rebalancing, which we covered previously. Market downturns can be opportune times to rebalance your portfolio, selling some assets that have performed well and buying more of those that are temporarily undervalued. This isn't market timing; it's smart portfolio management based on your pre-defined asset allocation.

The biggest mistake you can make during volatile times is to panic and sell. Resisting this urge requires a strong understanding of market history, a clear investment plan (like the Investment Policy Statement), and a good dose of emotional fortitude. By staying disciplined and focusing on the long game, you'll navigate market storms successfully and emerge stronger on the other side.

With this, you're now better equipped to handle the psychological and practical challenges of investing.

L-Plate Takeaways:

• Volatility is Normal: Market ups and downs are a natural part of investing. Don't let them rattle your long-term plan.

• Long-Term Vision: Focus on your ultimate financial goals, not short-term market fluctuations. History shows markets recover and grow over time.

• Stay Disciplined: Stick to your investment plan, even when it feels uncomfortable. This is where true investing strength lies.

• Opportunities in Downturns: Market dips can be chances to buy more shares at lower prices through Dollar-Cost Averaging or rebalancing.

• Avoid Panic Selling: Selling during a downturn locks in losses and means you'll miss out on the inevitable recovery. Stay calm and carry on investing!