Arriving on the Prairiewoods grounds on a morning in late summer is like driving into an advertisement for abundance: everywhere we look, there is growth and beauty. Stop for a moment and hear bird song and frogs, the leaves and prairie grasses rustling in a soft breeze. Take a deep breath and smell the earthiness of green and growing things. Pick a currant or a gooseberry and feel it burst on the tongue, juicy and sweet. In the Green Prairie Garden and our orchard, tomatoes, tomatillos, peaches, plums, summer squash, potatoes and beans can be picked and eaten still warm off the branch or vine. Sit, quiet and still, on a bench or a swing and the animals show themselves, too—deer, squirrels, turkeys, sometimes even a fox—frolicking in the shade provided by a variety of trees. Monarchs and Painted Ladies alight on milkweed and cone flowers, adding to the profuse palette of color. All manner of abundance is right before our eyes: an abundance of nature, of food, of beauty, of being.
Contrast this story of abundance with the following story by author and activist Lynn Twist:
“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ The next one is ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of … Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.”
—Lynn Twist, The Soul of Money
Both of these morning stories are familiar. Both are “true” in the sense that they recount experiences with which many of us can easily relate. However, the difference between these stories is profound, particularly when we consider extending the story across the many mornings that comprise a lifetime. And what happens if one of these stories is ascendant across time and cultures, so that our world (its trajectory, its politics, its mythologies, its economics, its interrelationships) is informed by it?
The story of scarcity we humans have been telling on the world stage has deep consequences for all. We know this story. It tells us that there is not enough to go around. Some will have, while others will not. Living in the story of “not enough,” we fight to protect what we already have while striving to get more. And so we engender jealousy and greed and create systems with very real consequences—poverty, mass population displacement, environmental degradation, interpersonal violence. “In a universe of scarcity, only people who know the arts of competing, even of making war, will be able to survive,” says Parker Palmer (The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, 1999).
But is this the story we are meant to live? Or is it possible to choose and live into a different story?
Many voices are saying there is another story. “But in a universe of abundance, acts of generosity and community become not only possible but fruitful as well,” Palmer goes on to say. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, recently wrote (National Catholic Reporter, 2016) about the differences between a vision of scarcity versus a vision of abundance. And in a recent meditation, Father Richard Rohr cites the gospel stories of multiplication as evidence that we are meant to be open to abundance. “When Jesus feeds a crowd with very little food, he’s revealing the nature of spiritual reality more than just performing a miracle (see Matthew 14:15–21). Notice that the apostles advise Jesus against it: ‘But how will two fish and five loaves be enough for so many?’ They, like most of us, live in a worldview of scarcity. In every multiplication story, the Gospel writer emphasizes that there is always much left over, which should communicate the point: the universe always has more than enough of itself to give, if the portals of mind and heart are left open” (Scarcity or Abundance? Daily Meditations, July 5, 2018).
How, then, do we set aside our habits of scarcity, keep those portals open and begin to live in abundance? Author Charles Eisenstein (facilitator of our Spirituality in the 21st Century event next April), suggests that our scarcity worldview is born of separation. We feel separate, cut off from one another, from the earth, from our non-human relatives. For Eisenstein, the way toward abundance, toward what he calls “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible,” is through connection, interdependence, interbeing. Eisenstein calls us to “bow in service to something greater than ourselves.” When we act from this place of service and from a profound understanding that all life is interconnected, our understanding of the nature of life expands and we become capable of more than we know. For example, he says, “When one is aligned with the purpose of service, acts that seem exceptionally courageous to others are a matter of course. When one experiences the world as abundant, then acts of generosity are natural, since there is no doubt about continued supply.”
In our hearts, we know that a more beautiful world is possible, in part because we have dreamed it, in part because we glimpse it in the moments of abundance we encounter. Perhaps one place to begin bringing it into being is with our first thoughts as we wake each morning. Instead of thinking of all we lack, what if we begin the day with gratitude for all that we have? It seems a small change, but as Active Hope: The Work that Reconnects by eco-philospher Joanna Macy puts it, “We must follow the inner compass of our deep gladness.” How might our world change if our vision, purpose and action spring from a garden of abundance and inter-connection? How might our relationships be strengthened if we allow gratitude to flow into generosity and hospitality to become the hallmark of the communal feast? Wouldn’t the richness of our days—all of our days on this beautiful, bursting-with-life planet—be enhanced if we woke each morning with our hearts attuned to abundance?
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director (adapted from the Sept./Oct. Newsletter)
Posted Sept. 11, 2018