Posts Tagged ‘abundance|quest-magazine-2011-08’

The wellspring of decency is loving this life in which people die, people suffer, there are limits, and we make mistakes. The wellspring of moral action is not utopia, not a counterfactual vision, not a declaration that the world could and should be otherwise.

Often I have felt that I must praise my world
For what my eyes have seen these many years,
And what my heart has loved.

It is a dream of a creek, bubbling, dancing, pouring; sun-dappled and butterfly-haunted, laced with blossoms and grasses for which I have no name. In February, which is when I know it, it is in spate, swift with the melted mountain snows.

My daughter’s confidence in this eternal abundance made me think about all the things that I fear we might, or will, run out of. Fossil fuels, rain forests, drinkable water…the list is pretty much endless, so I’ll just zero in on one that is pretty strong for me.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!

My relationship to money was shaped in part by the habits, attitudes, complaints and worries I heard from parents and close relatives. We were secure financially as a family, but it didn’t feel that way.

Here is a summertime truth: abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and, in return, is sustained by the whole. Community doesn’t just create abundance—community is abundance.

Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, priest, therapist, or wise friend. My wise friend is my dog. He has deep insights to impart.

I was the kind of tired you get when you have ten different people feeling in their heart that you should have done it differently. Their way. I was the kind of tired you get when your house is messy, your grass is too long, your car is cluttered and your gas tank is empty, along with your bank account.