Sufficiency: The Surprising Truth
Sunday,
November 15, 2009
Rev. Janice Palm
Deuteronomy 8:11-18
Israel 's leader, Moses, instructs the Israelites who have traveled through the wilderness and are now in Canaan, “Remember the Lord your God, for it is God who gives power to get wealth….” The people of Israel are now in a place of relative comfort after having traveled through their exodus seeking the land of milk and honey. Moses reminds them in what and who their wealth lies, and therefore in what and who their trust needs to lie. Remember the Lord your God.
I want to share with you stories of two additional contemporary peoples. The first is the story of the Achuar people – the indigenous folk of Ecuador. They live in the rain forest quite cut off from modernity and the many competing, interconnected cultures of modernity. The Achuar people are naturally prosperous in the way in which they live their lives and connect with their interior lives. They don't have a lot of anything. Unlike our society, there is no competition after gain. They live with the laws of the natural world. There is no money, no ownership, and no accumulation. And yet, there is no scarcity either. The Achuar peoples share food and items needed for shelter, and they trade goods. They live with enough. In other words, they live experiencing sufficiency. They are satisfied; they are happy.
I must also tell you that the Achuar people are also known as fierce fighters; there are legends of their ferocity. The Achuar people also believe in dreams; they are visionaries you might say. Stirred into action because of a dream, as a part of making ready for themselves, they asked for contact with other civilizations. They had seen other aboriginal peoples destroyed through this contact. The Achuar people wanted to remain true to themselves; they wanted to be true to the land/the natural world in which they lived. And so, they met a small entourage of the civilized world and they have through their interactions kept intact their values and priorities. They have learned about money but are not destroyed by it. They have preserved the bit of rain forest in which they live.
The second people I want to introduce to you are folks who live in Senegal – the western-most tip of Africa. They share with the Achuar people an equanimity in life and savor the richness of each moment as it comes and passes. In Senegal the Sahel desert is massive; it's encroaching upon more and more land. A town of people living in the desert were experiencing a water shortage and because of that, hunger. A group of folks from the Hunger Project drove out to the desert village following an unpaved rode for miles and then continued their guided trek through the open desert using a compass to lead them. They would stop periodically listening for drums indicating where the villagers were. In the distance dot-like appearances became recognizable as children running to greet the approaching vehicles. In this God forsaken barren, dry, dusty, hot land, children jumped with exuberance; they cheered; they sang. The traveling party was brought to the baobab trees where there was a more formal greeting and the men met with the expedition party to tell of their plight: the water source was drying up and they needed help in solving the challenge. There was no question about moving elsewhere; these people were desert people and would remain such. One in the party from the Hunger Project noticed the women encircled round the gathering of men. This was a Muslim community where the men spoke and acted in public, not the women.
Lynne Twist asked to meet separately with the women. “We know the answer. We have had a vision of an underground lake. If we dig deep enough, we will find water. We need your help to make the suggestion to the men.' They did dig and did find water. Other surrounding communities were helped in a similar way. The people had the answer within themselves. They looked within themselves for answers.
Rather than finding a hopeless, sick, starving people who needed water and food, this people was not poor. They held the fire of possibility, ingenuity, and strength.
Two different communities of people who are rich in their lives lived but not wealthy according to material wealth or money. They both live having enough, having a sense of sufficiency.
You see, Moses even warned the Israelites from straying from this kind of sufficiency. He reminded the Israelites, ‘You walked through the wilderness for ever having nothing. And were you ever without what you really needed? Remember O people, God will provide. Trust in God not the material stuff you surround yourselves with.'
You see sufficiency is not about a quantity of anything. But rather, sufficiency is reclaiming the power of what is there. Sufficiency is what resides within us .Sufficiency is choosing where we place our trust, in whom we place trust. Sufficiency is the intentional choosing of the way we think about our circumstances. You know the saying, the cup is half full, or is it half empty. It makes all the difference in the world how one sees the situation. These two civilizations see their cups half full. How do we experience ours: Personally? As a church?
Sufficiency is an act of generating, of making known to ourselves the power and presence of our existing resources, our inner resources, our Holy inner resources. We are called to look around, to look within ourselves. We can find what we need if we look deep enough. There is enough.
I suggest even further that when we let go of trying to get more of what we don't really need, it frees up our energies so we can make a difference with what we do have. The Achuar and Senegalese people know this. And when you make a difference with what you have, it will generate even more.
I have a close friend who after selling his software business in preparing to become a public business lost his job. This was at a time in his life span when he would not be easily hirable because of his age. He continues to work periodically as a consultant and doing the physical construction like jobs he loves to do. This change in circumstance has caused him to step back from things he and his family don't need. It's given him cause to rethink his priorities and consider what enough is. This change has also made time where he does what makes his heart sing – creating a board for a nonprofit organization that helps needy children in the school system. He's planning his second international Habitat for Humanity building trip.
When we align our money and our soul, we can find a tremendous release. We can find tremendous joy and abundance.
I want to share a third story about a people who is closer to us, closer to home – and perhaps with whom we can more easily relate to than the Achuar or Senegalese populations.
This is about the top women managers of Microsoft. These are high-powered women at the corporate headquarters in Seattle . This is about 10 dynamic women working in elegant offices, making lots of top money. Seven of the women are married and have children. Six of them are married to husbands who also work for Microsoft. Their daily life starts somewhere around 5:30-6 when they have breakfast with their children who are then cared for by nannies. They work hard during the day often not stopping for lunch. They have late night dinners sometime around 10 p.m.; they say goodnight to their children and then are on-line until about 1 a.m.
Each day they promise themselves they'll get home earlier, get more sleep, more exercise, do the things they were missing, and each day they failed. On the weekends, they found themselves going to work for part of Saturday and then they're on-line on Sunday.
Each one of the women has a wealth of material possessions. Other than the material possessions, they took little satisfaction in the money. Few of them gave any of their money away. The only thing that wealth/money allowed them was to make more money. They did not live with any sense of sufficiency.
Well, my point of bringing this up wasn't to depress you but tell you this: These ten women were gathered to hear a report about other women in developing countries around the world who were just gaining some economic independence. These worldwide women who were experiencing self-worth through their work found true wealth as they centered in on an appreciation for the work they had, and gratitude for the little that they now had. These other women from around the world found true wealth as they cared for one another. These women from around the world worked in collaboration ensuring that everyone had a chance. Work and wealth were not a game of musical chairs. Appreciation, gratitude, caring for others, collaboration – these were the priorities and attitudes women from around the world carried.
The report on the women around the world caused the ten to smile at the joys other women were finding; it caused a time of silence and a moment for reflection. The ten Microsoft women began to reflect on what gave them genuine satisfaction; some shared what they loved. There was a feeling of lightness, joy that came into the room, came on their faces. And for that gathering time, they realized that the game of working all out, at the expense of what they held dear, gathering money was not a satisfying life; it had robbed them of what they loved. And for a few moments, they remembered what was sufficient.
What is enough? Where is the point when we are fulfilled? Do we actually take the time to think about ourselves being satisfied? To say this is good? We have a home! And food. Our children are safe. That was a good job? That was a great deed? I wrote a great proposal? Do we take the time to sit with a sense of fulfillment? I think of how quickly we eat our meals – an indication of our hurried lives. We eat on the run, over our desks, at the computers, and when we sit at a table there's the unconscious race to fill ourselves and finish before our stomachs can even trigger our brain to say, I'm full, I have enough. Instead we become uncomfortable and wonder why.
We have forgotten to consider that we are to live in abundance where abundance means we have what we need. Instead, we tend to live in an abundance that means living in excess.
May we remember once again the words and experience of Moses: Remember the Lord your God, it is through God that we are provided what we need. This is sufficient. All else is excess.
