Antidotes to Scarcity

The lie of scarcity is perhaps one of the most toxic poisons I encounter on a daily basis.  I convince myself that I don't have what I need- I don't have support, I don't have the resources, I don't have the confidence, I don't have the know how.  This is not true.  For one, I am not an island.  I am not doing life by myself.  I have a community and a neighborhood to share this life with.  The neighborhood does have all we need.

I need a good reminder every once in a while so that I won't get stuck in the despair of scarcity. I have learned to carry with me some scarcity antidotes.  For today, these are my antitoxins:

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here. 

Wendell Berry

--

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

--

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Mary Oliver, Dream Work, Grove Atlantic Inc., 1986 & New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992.