A WORLD OF ABUNDANCE

 

    I think one of the hardest things facing our country today is that so many see the world, and their lives, as one of scarcity and not abundance.

 I get it. Our political and economic systems have failed so many, many people, and I guess this may well apply to those who voted for Trump hoping their lives would improve. Sadly, they are about to find out what a real world of scarcity looks like!

    I was blessed to be born at the end of 1945, induced with castor oil in my poor Mom, and grew up in a time of peace and abundance. As long as you were white and cisgender that is. 

However, my dear friend from Devon born in 1950 well remembers the austerity in Britain of that time, where rationing of many items did not stop until 1955. But here, in America, we thought the world our oyster (But what if you don't like oysters like me?), and anyone who worked hard, was frugal, and had ambition could succeed. That was true for so many. I think of the houses one could order from Sears and Roebuck's catalogue, delivered on a flatbed truck, with everything all set to go inside except for the furniture. Can you imagine having a house delivered? Although now Amazon is jumping on the bandwagon too.

    My parents were not wealthy, but they certainly were comfortable as my dad ran his own business, a printing press shop in Northampton called Metcalf's, employing some men and doing printing for Smith College as well as other businesses. My mom was an artist, taught art in our local school for a year, and at another school later on.

    It is safe to say that my personal history and how I viewed my country in the 1950s-1960s, colored my sense of living in a rich world, centered on a sense of safety, family, and home. But then --to my great surprise and that of my parents--in a mystical experience in Oxford, England in 1966, I became a woman of faith, a Christian. That experience and subsequent times totally changed my perception of what it meant to live in a world of plenty.

 

    Now I saw the world as God's world, created by Her, sustained by Her, 

and with Her life-giving force bursting through everything--pine needles glowing green; early sunshine on tree roots carrying messages and food to other trees; light on my fingertips which I swear glowed for one whole week after my conversion; gray tree trunks which seemed like houses I might carve out and live within; faces of friends and my parents bathed in light which told me--they are not forever now, but they will be forever in time.

    I now saw that abundance came from God and not from a job--much though I loved writing for 54 years--not from family, husband, kids, food (although I might have to arm-wrestle you about that), or anything produced by this world. Anyone who has given birth to a child after a long and painful labor and then sees the wet, glistening face of your first child held by the labor nurse will know about abundance. And love. That first child carved out a home in my heart which has lasted all my lifetime. And, if you follow Neil deGrasse Tyson's posts on FB, you will know that some cells from the children you have borne continue to circulate in you--the mother's--body. I have the DNA from Ben and Char still in my body, and that comforts and enlivens me. Talk about plenty!

    So now I know, even though I am a woman with far too many clothes, cookbooks, 

 and pots and pans, that riches do not reside in what I HAVE, but in what I AM, and in the inner truth of those around me. There can be no scarcity inside when we love God and love others. But it is also true that being emotionally broke or skint resides in those who do not know how to love, who cannot love, who criticize and belittle others, who fail to welcome the stranger, who exclude others, and who persist in dividing the world up into "Us vs Them," as our current president and regime are doing, from the hellscape of their inner worlds. 

    I would wish for them that their hearts could be softened, that some love would touch them and those around them, and that they could realize we all are in "God's pocket", as my favorite Nella Last once wrote in her diary.

 But I am not holding my breath.