As Autumn approaches the northern hemisphere, many towns and cities are ablaze with the colors of the changing leaves, as the trees prepare for their winter sleep. In many countries, holidays and festivals focus on the harvest and the abundance of nature.
For many of us, as Unitarian Universalists, this is also a time when we renew our vows to live our values, as we bow our heads in reflection and unite our hands in action – for even in our moments of deep gratitude for our many blessings, we know too well the pain and lack of abundance under which far too many of the world’s people are suffering. In fact, we sometimes feel a lack of abundance in our lives too, for abundance and scarcity take many forms in our psyches.
The October service of the UU Rhein-Main fellowship focused on this theme of abundance and helped me to ask myself deeper questions about what abundance really means. Led by Jacob Houkes, the service asked us to ponder the very concept of abundance, to not only “recognize it in our lives, but to re-calibrate it.” Because, “sometimes abundance is a blessing; other times, too much of it is suffocating. Same with scarcity. Much of the time, scarcity feels like a desert, but other times it is the key to freedom.”
With that in mind, we were invited to rate 26 sources of possible abundance (or areas of possible scarcity) in our own lives on a scale of 1 (scarce) to 10 (abundant). The list started with a very basic item, access to food – and as soon as I read that, I thought to myself, wow. Re-calibration indeed. Much of the world is starving, yet here I am, struggling with weight control because I have easy access to too much.
Another item on the list that reverberated for me was friends – at times in my life, I feel like a have too many to do justice to our friendships, an embarrassment of friendship riches. Yet if this is the case, how can it be that at other times, I feel so terribly alone, as if there’s absolutely no one I can talk with? And then it strikes me – as with the blaze of autumn colors, so is friendship. “To everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…” Sometimes, our good friends need us to be there for them – even if, in that moment, being there for them means keeping our needs to ourselves, because they need to focus on their own needs and may or may not want our support. No one can be there for anyone all the time. This is where learning to love ourselves comes in, (another item on the list) and finding ways to nurture and care for ourselves in those moments of deepest despair that we all have sometimes, simply because we are human. To remember that our support systems are not limited to our nearest and dearest – our support systems include ourselves. And, often they include a neighborly hand, one that we don’t see in front of our own noses because we have boxed ourselves in to a limited reality. Our capacity to love deeply is mirrored by our capacity to feel pain just as deeply.
The list of possible abundances or scarcities goes on and includes such items as moments of beauty, regret, a sense of purpose, worry, play, passion, and fond memories, among other concepts worth pondering. To be honest, the service offered more material for reflection than I can begin to summarize here, including a list of questions to ask yourself, such as, “Do you love that which is plentiful or that which is scarce?” There’s no right answer – but your answer could possibly tell you something helpful about your own perspective and help you feel more often that you are, and have, enough.
The blaze of autumn colors this year finds me in a moment of abundance to cherish – the result of the German health care system, combined with the marriage of my best friend. Let me explain.
Most of you know that for the past two years, I have been living with metastatic breast cancer, a return of the beast that first visited my body over 20 years ago. Deep gratitude fills me because there is relatively new medication that is keeping that cancer under control so far. And, on top of that, in September, the German health care system, combined with the German retirement system, funded a three-week rehabilitation for me at a clinic on a glorious little island in the North Sea. My days were spent taking part in exercise courses specifically designed for people like me, everything from modified water aerobics to archery, just for fun. We were fed healthy food, treated to useful lectures about how to live better with our illness, and given plenty of time to sit in the sun and enjoy the tidal pool beach that I could see from my clinic room third-story window.
Such a rehab is common in Germany, designed to determine if, usually after a long illness, a person is able to go back to work or needs to go into early (also government funded) retirement. In my case, the doctors said it was obvious from the get-go that the diagnosis was early retirement. Given my age (64) and the reality that my cancer will not go away under current medical technology, it was pretty clear that the rehab could help me learn to live better with cancer, but was not going to be a miracle cure that would give me back the energy and capacities needed to wrangle students in grades 5 through 10, thereby allowing me to go back to practicing my profession as a teacher. To be honest, it was a relief for me to hear the doctors say so – I had been tormenting myself with guilt, because teachers are in short supply in Germany, and I felt needed. Even though, deep down, I knew I could no longer sustain that work, my deeply-ingrained American cultural values were telling me, “Get it together! Not working is not an option, you slacker – it is only honorable to work yourself to death!” I actually said that to one of the doctors, and he sort of smiled at me with what seemed like pity and said, “Not here. We don’t work ourselves to death in Germany.”
And so, here I am, basking in the abundance of a health care system that is not keeping me alive just to keep me working, but keeping me alive simply because I am a part of the community of this social democracy. Because I am a human being, and health care is a basic right. Here, in Germany, I am entitled to be given the support and space to live well, whatever my physical challenges, for whatever time my body gives me.
From those three weeks of rehab and rejuvenation, I catapulted directly into the stark contrasts of the current US, flying in to North Carolina to be at the celebration of my best friend’s marriage. I feel huge gratitude and abundance to have the resources to make this trip, both financial and energetic. Here in a state that is on the cusp of the American South, the autumn leaves are just beginning to show a bit of color other than green. We had bright sunshine and 80 degrees Fahrenheit for the ceremony (28 degrees Celsius), and there was a lot of laughter and abundance as we shared in the joy of the newlyweds with 200 relatives and friends from near and far. For me, it has been a chance to support my bestie of 55 years, by being here for her – by being able, with my husband, to help with the normal last-minute chaos of a wedding orchestrated amid the bride and groom also suddenly finding their dream house and moving in together a week before the ceremony, as they coordinated putting each of their houses on the market and hosting a multitude of out-of-town guests like us, who needed housing, feeding, and transportation coordination. All I can say is, R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Yea, the music and dancing was great too. And I was one of four dear friends (two for the bride, two for the groom) who stood up as witnesses and gave toasts to the happy couple. Talk about an embarrassment of riches. Many tears of joy were shed as we all had this opportunity to celebrate abundance together.
As I write this, on the day after the Big Day, I am sitting in the beautiful space of another friend of my bestie, a local guy who we have been blessed to get to know better because he is graciously hosting us for the nights before and after the event, since he lives a lot closer to the venue than the new house of the newlyweds. My soul is filled with a sort of serendipitous sense of contentment, a feeling that I can only describe in UU words – here, I feel held in the heart of love. My best friend validates the abundance of who I am, and for 55 years, has helped me present my whole self to the world. Yesterday, I got the chance to thank her publicly in front of her and her new hubby’s nearest and dearest. Wow.
If you are, as I am, currently in gratitude for the abundance in your life, my hope for you is that you cherish the blaze of that feeling while it lasts. And that when it passes, as the seasons always do, that the memory of that blaze sustain you through whatever winter chill life brings your way.
If you are currently struggling to feel abundance in your life, perhaps this question from the list of questions to ponder will help you refocus and re-calibrate: “So life’s led you into a puddle. Are you still staring at your mud-covered feet? Or are you ready to look up and notice that the wide-open sky never went away?”
What temporary blaze of abundance do you need to pay attention to before time runs out?
To close, I would like to share the blessing that Jacob shared with us to close the UURM service:
“Spirit of life and love, thank you for the gifts of life and love. Help us to embrace fully the sweet and the bitter moments of our days. Help us to treasure the times of abundance and to find meaning in the times of emptiness. Help us in our abundance to reach out to those who hunger – and help us in our times of hunger to admit our neediness and to accept the caring hand of our neighbor.
Amen.” Namaste. May it be so.
Bonnie Friedmann