MORE THAN PLENTIFUL
10/14/07 Summit UU Fellowship
Rev. Kathleen A. Green
(“Help Somebody” is played over the speakers on cd)
Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
Before the 16th century, harvest was the term usually used to refer to the season of autumn. Harvest marks the end of the growing season, or the growing cycle for a particular crop. Before the 19th century, on larger farms, the strongest image of the completed harvest was the cart that carried the last load home. It was “decorated with green boughs, flowers, and ribbons, drawn by beribboned horses, and had children, or womenfolk, or a chosen man or ….the harvest lord, sitting on top.” Our harvest images today are usually the display of pumpkins and gourds at the local grocery store – the apple cider and other seasonal produce we’ve come to associate with harvest time.
The Church stepped into the breach in 1843 and by the end of the century, it was an almost universal custom for villagers to process to the church, which was decorated with harvest symbols, for a morning communion service and to enjoy dancing and games at a community feast afterward.
The array of harvest festivals around the globe is stunning in its diversity. Ancient Hebrews – like modern Jews – celebrated Sukkoth, originally a festival of thanksgiving for the harvest. Yet despite the differences in crops and the seasons of harvesting them, despite the differences in climate, culture, and religion, there are common theme and elements running through the festivals. Always there is a harvest feast. It is a time to give thanks for the gifts of the season and of the year; time for feasting is a time for expressing gratitude by sharing the abundance.
The harvest season is a time to give thanks – not just for our food but for all the other things and people we need in order to live a meaningful abundant life.
Why I share this information about harvest is that it frames the idea of abundance in a way that precludes money. Regardless of whether we have a six-figure bank account or no bank account at all, we have abundance. I realize that at first blush this may not sound reasonable, but let’s just put the association between money and abundance aside for a few moments. I want to share with you two stories I read recently that have deeply impacted my idea of abundance.
The 1st story:
A RECIPE OF THANKSGIVING
Sara Yoheved Rigler
Although it was my second extended period helping out at this Calcutta orphanage, I still marveled at the standard of living of the 75 girls. Growing up, I had had my own room; these girls didn’t even have their own beds. They slept on thin mattresses spread on the floor, two girls to a mattress, sharing a blanket and a mosquito net.
Their only private space amounted to a box the size of a large shoe box. In this box each girl kept all her worldly possession; the one of her two cotton frocks she was not currently wearing, two pencils, and a copy book. About 25 of the girls owned a pair of sandals. About a dozen girls owned a pretty dress, a gift from an impoverished grandmother. That was it. No other garments. No toothbrush. No crayons. Not one girl owned enough to fill her box.
The girls prevailed on me to teach them English. One day we were on the lesson in our book about opposites: tall-short, thin-fat, rich-poor. After explaining the words in simple English, I would have one girl stand in front of the class and ask “Is Bhavani thin, fat, or medium?” The girls would raise their hands, and the one I picked would answer: “Bhavani is thin.”
The lesson was proceeding well until I summoned Lakshmi to stand in front of the class. Pointing to the scrawny, barefoot girl in her plain white frock, I asked, “Is Lakshmi rich, poor, or medium?” Two dozen hands flew up. I called on one girl. In loud and perfect English she answered: “Lakshmi is medium.”
Obviously she didn’t understand the words. Lakshmi, like all the girls, was abjectly destitute, a reality they all accepted with cheerful fortitude. Then I asked the whole class: “Is Lakshmi rich, poor, or medium?” In joyful unison they all cried out: “Lakshmi is medium.”
I was confounded. By what mental gyrations did these girls consider Lakshmi – and by extension themselves – as anything other than poor?
Ethics of Our Fathers, the English referral to a section of the mishna, one of the most fundamental works of the Jewish Oral Law, teaches: “Who is rich? The one who is happy with his portion.” The Calcutta orphans understood this. They experienced the little that they had as an abundant gift.
In today’s society, in this country particularly, we start to learn the theory of scarcity very early in life. There are only 5 slots open for the jr. high cheerleading squad – for the starting lineup on the basketball team – or for the a cappella ensemble of the school choir. The chosen ones become the school heroes. And the rest of us? Well, we are relegated to pressing our noses against the glass of wishful thinking. The theory of scarcity is reinforced again when we apply for college. The really good schools have only a limited number of openings for entering freshmen. Those who are chosen to be students at those schools join the ranks of the elite and the rest of us? Well, we ‘take what we can get’.
Not enough for everyone, only enough for some – those fortunate enough to be chosen. We become so conditioned to the existence of the theory of scarcity that we accept it as a core reality of life. But it is not a universal truth. It is a human-made myth.
I will choose to live my life and live my faith with the theory of abundance, which tells me that abundance is about more than ‘what I can get’, about more than money. The theory of abundance holds that we don’t have to be chosen, we can choose the things and people that make our life meaningful and in that choosing our lives are abundant. The theory of abundance claims that life itself is an abundant gift.
I’ve recently learned that in some religious circles there is the idea of “Abundant Harvest”, which claims that “each and every one of us has the makings for an abundant harvest of whatever we desire right at our fingertips!” H-m-m-m. This ‘principle’ goes on to claim that if you sow the seeds to reap a harvest of what you do not want, that is exactly what you’ll get. In other words, what you don’t have in your life is, simply put, the result of you not sowing the right seeds. If what you have in your life is illness or loneliness or poverty, it’s because you’re sowing the wrong seeds!
I find that this idea smacks of elitism, classism, and condescension. I have a hard time distinguishing any difference between the righteous principle of “Abundant Harvest” and declaring that someone isn’t healed from disease because they or their family aren’t praying hard enough, or our sisters and brothers whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Katrina just weren’t sowing the right seeds. Baloney!
Now I’m an unabashed supporter of the power of positive thinking and have lived my life by the rule of ‘give positive - receive positive’. And as a child I was taught the proverb ‘as you sow, so shall you reap’. But the idea of injecting blame, or at least insinuating the possibility of blame, into the equation is ignorant at best and myopic at worst.
The 2nd story:
THE WORKING POOR
David K. Shipler
Ann Brash found a job that paid enough to keep her out of the poverty statistics ($23,600 a year), but as it does with many who are nearly impoverished, her tension came less from the present, in which she survived, than from the future, on which she could not depend. Yet her “cultural capital”, she said, had defeated the most debilitating characteristic of poverty: its hopelessness. She had strained to enlarge her children’s lives beyond the boundaries of their economic circumstances, and she had succeeded. “Both of my children say they’ve never felt poor”. When her daughter, Sally, was sixteen she commented, “I know what it’s like to struggle to pay for food for the next week, but I never felt poor. If I knew one wonderful person and I was homeless with nothing, and hungry, I still wouldn’t be poor”.
Though Ann loved her work, it didn’t open a way to financial security. Ann is one of the working poor – the invisible in America. But her abundant investment in her children paid off. Both her son, Sandy and her daughter Sally worked hard, spending one summer together as janitors in a church, demonstrating brilliance along the lines of their respective interests: programming computers and singing opera. Sandy scored 800 on his math SAT and over 700 on the verbal test. He was accepted with full financial aid everywhere he applied: by Dartmouth, Amherst, Williams. Both kids took their shortage of cash in stride. When Sally went shopping with friends, she didn’t buy but just tried things on in the changing room – pretending, acting, playing dress-up. Her small allowance from scholarship she spent on pizza for herself and others. Or she walked in the woods and picked bunches of wildflowers to give to her friends. “They give me what I can’t afford,” she said, “and I give them what they wouldn’t give to themselves”.
There is abundance in this family’s life. An abundance of perseverance, abundance of faith, And at the very core, an abundance of love. There is abundance in each of our lives. What abundance do you have to not only be grateful for, but to share? Certainly, Lakshmi & the Calcutta orphans, and Ann Brash’s family do not have an abundance of monetary wealth. The fact is that a part of their stories is about the very struggle for survival. And yet, what touched me and compelled me to contemplate my own ideas of abundance, is that there is abundance in their stories. Abundance to be shared. Let’s take a moment right now and consider what is abundant in our lives? What is abundant in your own life – abundance you can share?
(sharing out loud as a congregation)
Did you know that the word affluence means “to flow in abundance”? To flow is to circulate – to give and to receive. It has been said that our true nature is one of abundance. Wherever we go and whoever we encounter we can bring a gift. We can share from our harvest: a gift of deep listening, a compliment, a bite of food, a flower.
The Christian scriptures say:
2 Corinthians 8:7 But just as you excel in everything – in faith , in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love (for us) – see that you also excel in the grace of giving.
Luke 6:38 Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Many other sacred texts from Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Islam, and a host of others espouse similar precepts.
This religious community, Summit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, is more than plentiful. We’ve got plenty and then some. What do we do? We go out and help somebody get plenty and then some too. We have a harvest of abundance to share and to receive: compassion, hope, faith, support, reason, and a core of love to guide us. May we consider the reason for this season of harvest – recognizing, receiving, and sharing our abundance.
Blessed be.
