what is abundance
Open Discussions
Is abundance a quantity, or a quality? Financial, material, or spiritual? I hear the word quite often in transformational communities (EST, lifespring, gratitude, etc) and my intuition says when we speak of "abundance" in ABCD we are speaking of something subtly different...My experience with the word translates abundance as: personal wealth, oppourtunity (connections), resources...denotatively an "everybody" type of word, connotatively...a "me" word.Abundance is an idea. To me, it is most useful when used in conjunction with a referent...ie abundance "of"...xAbundance of...wealth, phone numbers, apples...love, inspiration,...anything. I see that this phrasing opens up the possibility that there may literally exist an abundance of...anything.This is still largely speaking of the individual. I see it gets more complicated when we ask...what is an " abundant" church? Community? Family?....Culture?Culturally we have tremendous excess...but would your average citizen (I use this term neutrally) refer to the USA as "abundant"? Clearly there is some explanatory gap. Which leads me to the belief that overall " abundance" is not a measurement...although it may be...but rather an attitude towards "what is."Easily exemplified by its inverse: an attitude of lack. There is food...but not "enough"...there is wealth, oppourtunity, resources (in our case excessive) but still...not enough...for everyone.So in this mindset all value becomes a rat race to secure for myself or my " own" a "share" of the resources. In a context of competition. Competition could not exist, in my mind...without a predicatory attitude of lack (there is not enough for all). Perhaps there is a grain of realism in this attitude...though extroplated and exaggerated it has become. Are there "enough" iPods in existence for every person on the planet to have one? No. Could there be? Yes.Which indicates to me the political subtext of ALL dialogues about scarcity. Again I must ask, "to what end?"These "ends" set the structure for what qualifies as "enough." Unfortunately, as pointed out in The Abundant Community...our culture manufactures the belief that "enough...is NEVER enough." To what end? The irony of capitalism: to NO end. The end of endless consumption under a constant guise of lack...or desire...is simply that-- not to end. And in this sense, if capitalism holds hostage ALL value, ALL resources, to the end of continual production, consumption, reproduction, destruction...then it is truly "unsustainable."Are there alternative "ends"? Perhaps a way of moving into an attitude of abundance on my own individual level is to begin by asking, "is this enough?" And furthermore the question," to what end?"The specificity entailed here...although clearly focused initially on the material...enables possibility...it is simply the act of questioning, of thinking twice, which may begin to upset the desire-scarcity mindset.I see many possibilities. Is this "enough" [for me? For my family? For today? For the week? For my life? For my comfort? For survival? For growth? For safety? For meaning? For satisfaction?] -- these all being possible answers to the "to what end?" question.My assumption is that, miraculously, when I ask these questions, the answer will ALWAYS be "yes."At that point, in a neighborhood of individuals, families, churches, businesses, saying "yes" to "enough?" there truly is a shift in consciousness. And at this point may we also recognize the immaterial abundance: the gifts, the possibilities (mystery) of ourselves and our neighbors. This is what abundance means to me...and I believe, in ABCD. And yet, the shift has not occured. As long as this immaterial form of abundance is idealized, imagined, conceptualized but not deeply felt (I speak for myself alone)...then it is already being excluded from the "here and now" reality...which I believe is always the question, "is this enough?" (That is...I believe it is the human condition to constantly be asking this question. Is it human nature to compete? Only when we have already answered the question to ourselves.)
updated by @caleb-kaufman: 10/24/16 04:45:18PM
