Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

A Sense of Abundance

Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern
January 21, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

Abundance has become a media watchword in recent years, and yet what people mean by it varies widely. In fact, sometimes two people who use the same term mean opposite things by it.

Financial advisers bubble over with the word. New Age gurus promise that it is just around the corner. With an “abundance mindset,” they promise, more wealth will flow to you. You can have that luxury car, that multi-million-dollar mansion, those long vacations … it’s all in your power.

Then there is Sarah Ban Breathnach, whose words¹ we heard earlier, who also wants us to find abundance through a change in ourselves. She understands that it is to a large extent a matter of perspective, of attitude. But oh what a difference between these words and the words of the “grow your bank account through abundance” folks.

The ones who want to teach us to get more, more, more have a desperate, on-the-treadmill feel to them. They promise that having more, more, more, is our birthright. They are speaking to us at those moments when we feel deprivation deep in our souls. They are speaking to some of the richest people on earth about becoming richer still. One wonders how much abundance it will take to rescue us from the treadmill if we can afford $5000 workshops and are still running.

Breathnach’s words are a breath of fresh air: “You have the power to change your lifestyle and move from a feeling of lack and deprivation to a feeling of abundance and fulfillment. Money ebbs and flows in our lives. What should remain constant is our realization that abundance is our spiritual birthright.”

(Do you hear the difference between this and the material birthright of having every luxury we dream of?)

She quotes gospel singer Mahalia Jackson: “It is easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing — that’s the Lord’s test.” And she goes on to assure us, should we think that the secret to freedom and abundance is to have more stuff, “The simpler we make our lives, the more abundant they become. There is no scarcity except in our souls.”

Now, let me deal with one obvious counterargument. I do believe scarcity exists. Heaven knows there are people sharing this planet with us who do not have their basic needs for shelter, food, and water met, who are cruelly separated from the abundance even of the earth on which they walk. That’s one reason we support the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee — to help lessen the number of people who really do suffer genuine scarcity day after day.

We are seldom among them. And yet, are we happier? Living with a hundred times the income of a woman in Malaysia, in a home a thousand times the square footage of a child in the shantytown of Delhi, do we feel even ten times happier than they do? I know we sometimes assume so, but my experience meeting people rich and poor suggests little correlation between happiness and the amount of material goods in one’s life. Can it be that we are standing, like Tantalus, in the midst of plenty, reaching and grasping and ending up with empty hands?

Abundance is less about what we have than what we expect and perceive. Even those who suffer terrible misfortunes such as cancer often say, “I’m lucky …, “ and go on to explain why it’s better to get cancer than to die suddenly, or why they’re luckier than the person in their support group who lives alone, or why this cancer is better than one they could have gotten. These are the abundance-minded, and they are blessed by their own minds and hearts.

And then there are those who never seem to notice that they don’t have cancer, who don’t seem to notice the abundance in their lives at all, because they are so preoccupied with whatever they lack: it’s hard for them to make the payments on that vacation home, for example, or on their child’s college education, or they have entered a higher tax bracket now that they have that new job.

We’re encouraged in this way of thinking by an economic structure that would prefer us to buy more each year than to be satisfied with what we have; by a culture that tells us we are entitled to everything we can buy and won’t be truly happy until we have it.

But there is another way, and it is so much happier. It finds its voice in our hymnal, as we just sang:

For the beauty of the earth, the splendor of the skies, the joy of ear and eye … hill and vale and tree and flower, sun and moon and stars of light … the kinship we all share.²

Can that be enough? Can we feel that these simple gifts fill our lives to overflowing?

I believe we can, but it takes practice. A sense of abundance is something we develop, like a muscle that grows stronger the more we use it. I find I have so many opportunities to complain that if I just notice them, they can magically transform, like so many frogs into princes, into opportunities to develop this sense.

For example: earlier this week, I sat down at my computer to do a quick bit of work on this sermon — I had only about 45 minutes and wanted to grab that window. My computer had been on standby overnight, and I’d forgotten that it doesn’t like that. Maybe it’s picked up a virus. In any case, something is ailing it so that if it’s been on standby for too long, when I log onto the internet it freezes up. I couldn’t do anything on the sermon because it was so preoccupied with its internet problem that it wouldn’t let me open my word processing program. When this happens, it doesn’t respond to the “shut down” command. The off button doesn’t work. All I can do is turn off the power and turn it all on again. So I began to do that, grumbling as I leaned down to the power strip, and then just as I reached the on/off switch, something else clicked. Something inside me, not inside the computer:

I have a computer.

In fact, I have access to three reliable computers: my work computer, my home computer, and my spouse’s home computer.

The one that’s my very own, sitting on my very own desk in my home, works 99.9% of the time.

When it doesn’t work, the worst thing that happens is not even that I lose data, but that I have to take an extra two minutes to turn it off, turn it on, and wait for it to warm up.

What am I dealing with, here: a hardship? Or a blessing? Scarcity or abundance? I know the answer as well as you do. It’s just a matter of exercising that abundance muscle, sharpening that sense that has grown dull from, ironically, having too much of what I need, available too easily.

I invite you to consider the moments in your daily life when you can develop your abundance muscles, and let me know how it goes.

Julie Tilsner wrote in the Chronicle magazine about one that fits the car-dependent lives so many of us lead. She discovered the parking goddess who rules the fate of San Francisco drivers. Her name is Asphalta. “Show [Asphalta] the proper deference,” Tilsner writes — “believe in her totally, and you shall be rewarded. Displease her at your peril.” She tells of the moment of her conversion:

The dark, rainy afternoon I came home from work to find my car clamped into an orange boot, I knew it was true. There were higher powers at work here.

At a bodega deep in the Mission I bought the tallest votive to the Virgin Guadalupe I could find. All the new gods are based on older gods, anyway, right? I brought it home, cleared a space on my dresser. I lit it. Finally, I wrapped an extra key to my car in an old parking ticket and set it before the candle. Overkill is never lost on the gods.

“What’s the candle for,” asked my husband.

“Aromatherapy,” I lied.

The week progressed. And lo! The Department of Parking and Traffic ticketed me not! ³

Her life has been transformed.

The Parking Gods, it seems, are not without vanity. For every time I have to drive into the city these days, I am granted parking boons that border on the divine …. In the Marina one weekend, I only had to circle the block once before a lady in a Range Rover pulled out, offering me a gleaming parking spot, as wide and open as Minnesota. Verily I tell you: Asphalta is great!

While I haven’t begun lighting candles to Asphalta, myself, Tilsner’s article has had an effect on me. I have realized, as with the computer, how often I complain about parking scarcity and how little I pay heed to its abundance. If I am going to grumble when I have to drive around and around the block looking for a spot, then on those occasions when I find an unexpected spot right in front of the shop I’m going to on the very first pass, it’s only right that I should give praise. When I suddenly I’m on a meter and hurry back too late to my car, expecting a ticket on the windshield, and lo, the windshield is clear and without blemish, I whisper a thank you to a friendly cosmos. After all, I gripe aloud when I get a ticket, even though it’s completely my fault and not at all a sign that a petulant god is out to get me. If I’m going to notice scarcity, the least I can do is balance it out by noticing abundance. And maybe if I keep it up, the balance of my heart will tip and I will understand, not just occasionally but all the time, how abundantly my life overflows with blessings.

You don’t have to take up a new religion, even though I assure you as your minister that the worship of Asphalta is perfectly consistent with Unitarian Universalism. Another practice that I learned from a UU leader is a gratitude journal. The practice is simple: each evening, write down five things you were grateful for that day. She suggested making them unique: no repetitions, no matter how many months or years you keep the journal. This helps stretch that muscle, as you notice more and more specific things for which to be thankful. But even if you write the same ones each day, it will transform your thinking. You can take note of your steady job, your healthy child, the friends you broke bread with, the bread you broke together, and be thankful for the abundance in your life. You can notice, if nothing else, that the sun once again rose and once again set and you are here, breathing, writing, taking in the world.

I offer you a challenge and a promise. The challenge is to spend the next month training your sense of abundance. When you are feeling a lack of something, ask yourself what you have received that day. When you want to buy something you can’t afford, ask yourself whether it would really bring you the peace of mind and happiness you seek. When someone asks you to give and you feel you have nothing to give, look at how much flows into your life every day. For a month, look at your life and notice those moments when you feel abundance most keenly.

That’s the challenge. And the promise is that without earning a single dollar more, without gathering one ounce more stuff, you will feel richer at the end of the month than you do right now. Try it and let me know how it goes. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Worship Associate Reflection: Giving from Abundance

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