Sometimes these days, I feel filled to overflowing with gratitude like a vessel brimming with beauty.
Years ago when I first met my friend “A,” we both were working our way through Julia Cameron’s handbook of creativity, The Artist’s Way. The chapter that spoke to “A” the most powerfully was “Recovering a Sense of Abundance.” Cameron explained how artists, writers, and other creative people need to see the Universe as a full and generous place: if you dare follow your dreams, the Universe will provide you with what you need, albeit in simple and sometimes frugal ways.
I think I’m finally realizing what Cameron has been talking about all along. Last weekend while I wandered around New York City with three good friends and a pencam, I was dazzled by ordinary images of abundance: a bead shop full of bright baubles, a corner convenience store stocked with colorful produce and products.
The first time I went on a Zen retreat, I spent a silent and austere week hurting and struggling in a monastery in Rhode Island. For a week I spoke only during 5-minute, every-other-day interviews with the Zen Master; I ingested no sugar, alcohol, or caffeine; and I showered every other day in a monastery-mandated attempt to save well water. When I returned to Boston after my week-long stint of monasticism, I remember standing agape before a Copley Plaza shop window filled with colorful soaps, lotions, and sponges. I was dazzled at the abundance of shapes, colors, and textures. After a week of austerity, my mind couldn’t process the wide assortment of personal care products presumably needed to keep a human body working and presentable from day to day.
The first time Thomas Merton visited Louisville after entering the austere Abbey of Gethsemani, he railed against the rampant consumerism he found in the big city. What need did people have of all the crap that merchants hawked in shop windows? With the typical zeal of a newly converted young monk, Merton wrote a seething rant about the foolish people who spent their lives in active pursuit of material goods while he and his fellow monks held the world together through their contemplative and abstemious lifestyle.
In a future visit to Louisville, Merton’s view changed markedly. Softened by months of prayer and silence, Merton did that most miraculous of things: he changed his mind.
- In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . This sense of liberation could have taken form in the words: �Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.”
In this passage (published in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander), Merton points to the Universe’s most astonishing example of abundance: the wealth of human persons who fill it to overflowing, each of them carrying within them like hidden treasure an untold story.
The abundance found in shops, markets, and busy diners isn’t a sign of wickedness. It’s a reminder from the Universe that we are amply and abundantly loved, and to whom much love is given, much love is required.
Feb 26, 2005 at 1:03 pm
I had a similar experience once of suddenly appreciating business people. Yes, they tend to be anti-government, anti-poor, anti-environment and all that, and their businesses and the products they sell do often damage the environment and exploit workers, but I found myself appreciating them for the great risks they take and the hard work they do to bring us the products that we at least *think* we need. You could say I saw the beauty in the ugliness, and neither cancels out the other.
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Feb 26, 2005 at 4:37 pm
What a great idea, taking pictures of abundance. I think the pictures communicate the experience of abundance so much better than words do. Good post.
Amy
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Feb 26, 2005 at 5:03 pm
I have worked with Soviet bloc émigrés for the past twenty years and the common mind-altering “American” experience they shared was not our open society and freedom, they took that as a given, but the first trip to a supermarket.
In the mid-80’s before the dissolution of the CCCP, one young Russian mother remarked that when she saw dozens of brands of breakfast cereal, she knew the Soviet system was doomed to failure, which sounds so trivial, but it speaks to a greater truth.
I’ve often marveled at the quality of their education for their tender years, the depth and breadth of knowledge in their fields, the ability to think outside the box when problem solving that these young Russians and Ukrainans possess and can’t help but think that had it not been for their economic model and the resulting degradation of their society, the outcome might have been very different.
Lorianne, you touched a nerve that I have been gently pobing, like a sensitive tooth, for sometime with this post. Thank you.
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Feb 26, 2005 at 5:11 pm
I applaud you for this piece. The juxtaposition of these two differing ideas really makes for an effective contrast. It really made me think.
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Feb 26, 2005 at 5:41 pm
Abundance Denied…
…is not justice dispatched. Today we’re often chided for the vast bounty we enjoy, as if we don’t deserve material rewards for more than two centuries of perseverance, adapation, blood and sweat, that we are an uncaring and unjust society…
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Feb 26, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Thanks, everyone, for the comments. When I took these random pictures with my pencam, I wasn’t consciously thinking about abundance: I was simply attracted to color, light, and shape. When I got home & looked at them, there was something precious about each one: here are goods carefully shelved by shop-owners who give a damn about their business, and here is a bustling diner with people laughing and talking over their food in an establishment that’s clean & well run.
Regardless of the “evils” of capitalism, consumerism, materialism, etc, such sights are quintessentially New York…and quintessentially human. I’m not a monk: I like to buy groceries, use toiletries, and eat in diners. So how can I turn around and rail against others who do this when each of these “others” is just as precious & vulnerable as I am?
I’ve always loved Merton for his ability to do a well-articulated about-face. It’s one thing to be zealous for a monastic lifestyle; it’s another to recognize that others choose a lifestyle that’s markedly different. Everyone needs & deserves love whether they wear a monk’s robe or a business suit.
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Feb 27, 2005 at 4:11 am
Yes it made me think too. And it made me look forward even more to the retreat I am going to do next week.
The first photo made me all full and tingling, it reminded me of how as a child I loved seeing hundreds of little things together, in different warm colours. These days I only really see it and appreciate it when I feel open and (as far as me, an unpracticed human) one with the universe.
On other days I still look at it as ‘bad materialism and waste of money’. What a pity!
I hope my retreat will bring me further.
Super post Lorianne!
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Feb 27, 2005 at 10:01 am
Anne, I think (?) your retreat will move you closer to that child-like perspective, one that simply appreciates what is there without the need to judge or condemn. I think the world has plenty of judgment and condemnation; what the world needs more of is open child-like hearts who simply love the pretty things in the world, including other humans.
Right now, everything is already complete: there’s no need to judge or condemn. Children know this instinctively, but we bitter adults train them to think otherwise.
I’m so excited that you’re getting to do this retreat: I’m sure it will be wonderful! 🙂
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Feb 28, 2005 at 2:36 am
I was a Merton buff and wrote my M.A. thesis on Thomas Merton. The passage you post is one of my favorites. Your photos on all entries are magnificent. You have such a gift, Lorianne.
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Feb 28, 2005 at 8:26 pm
What a thoughful exploration of abundance. I’m chiming in with thanks for the appreciation of Merton and those two memorable passages, and also noting my own appreciation of the abundance of this city – especially the visual abundance – after so many years of life in a very small town. It feels like a gift every single day. But the so-called limited palette and limited offerings of the small town I return to are merely the other side of the coin, as Merton saw: both are necessary in order to “see”, and there’s no judgement to be made.
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Mar 1, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Fran, I *knew* there must be a reason why I like you & your blog so much: you’re a fellow Merton fan! 🙂 That passage about Louisville always struck me as cutting to the heart of the matter: if your spirituality sets you apart from others, it’s false. If it connects you to the world with the ties of compassion, it’s true. That moment on a street corner in Kentucky, Merton “got” that.
Beth, I think you hit it squarely on the head: there’s a balance between rural quiet and urban abundance. These days I love visiting the big city…but I’m equally eager to be back home in Keene, which is pretty “big” and “bustling” compared to outlying areas. I think we all find our own balance between abundance and austerity, crowds and quiet. Perhaps it’s our modern equivalent of Buddha’s Middle Way.
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Mar 3, 2005 at 7:06 am
Just catching up with close to a week’s worth of HO – you know how long it takes me to download the site here. I clicked on it before turning in last night so it would be here first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, the pictures crap out halfway down the page: right in the middle of this wonderful post on abundance, the full color is replaced by large, white boxes with little red exes in the upper left corner.
This post speaks to a larger intuition about the world that is very difficult to put into words, I think. The only real “proof” of the existence of the numinous – or Whatever – derives from this intuition, this sense that the universe is infinitely generous. And yes, it’s easier to perceive that in the heart of a thriving metropolis, but a little kneeling with a hand lens should convince the most anthropocentric of people that the world at large is rich beyond our wildest imaginings.
Re: Merton, I’m wondering if therre might be some way to inculcate in others, at an early age, the mental flexibility needed to change one’s mind “early and often”? It seems like such a difficult thing to do, but after one does it, there’s the feeling of something like a cool breeze blowing right through the heart – it’s that refreshing. And the mind *needs* to be changed regularly, like the sheets on a bed.
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Mar 3, 2005 at 6:24 pm
Dave, I *love* this notion of changing one’s mind early and often, like changing bedsheets. This is *exactly* what frustrates me whenever I get discouraged about teaching: so many of my students seem so rigidly attached to their view of the world, which in my mind means they’re already “dead,” and at such a young age. I don’t know how to change anyone’s mind other than my own…and that’s difficult enough.
Regarding your dial-up download woes…I *think* I know what the problem is, although I don’t know if its something I can easily fix. I think the problem is caused by my sidebar, not the main page itself. I say this because I use Firefox at home & Internet Explorer at school, and I notice a difference in how the two browsers download the page. IE waits for everything to be downloaded, so there’s an infinite gray screen in the interim. Firefox pops up the main page rather quickly, but then it takes forever for the sidebar to fill in.
I think (?) because of the way my template is made, IE will crap out while it’s waiting for sidebar items to load…and I don’t have the tech know-how to fix this. But I’m planning to tweak my sidebar so it contains fewer slow-to-load items: both BlogRolling and AllConsuming tend to take forever to load, so I’ll probably jettison them in an attempt to streamline the download.
Of course, I’ll do this whenever I have the time and inclination to tweak my sidebar, which could be as soon as tomorrow or as far off as next month. But know that I’m trying to figure out a way to make the site less time-consuming to load.
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Mar 8, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Thanks for this post. I wondered why I keep changing my mind these past few years, and now I know: I am in love with life itself. I think it happened after those 6 weeks at the Dead Sea in 1987, a medical trip to heal my skin, lying in the sun all day, turning every 20 minutes like a piece of toast. Ever since then, the abundance of joy and misery, beauty and ugliness, boredom and stimulation, building and breaking, is just amazing.
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Mar 8, 2005 at 6:44 pm
Thanks for the wonderful comment, Savtadotty. I think changing your mind is just like turning oneself while sunning: it’s a healthful thing that prevents stagnation and injury. The world never stops changing: why should our minds be the only thing in the world that’s static?
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