Wayne Muller has written a book with the intriguing
title “a life of being, having and doing enough.” I’m suspicious of the grammar, and he doesn’t even capitalize the
first letters in the title. (But readers of this blog will already know that he
who is without sin casts the first stone, and I sin boldly when it comes to
grammar.) Rather,
it is the word “enough” in the title that has caught my attention.
I think Muller has found one of those words that has layers
and layers of meaning around it. It is a
word that raises questions about my life, both practical and spiritual.
·
Am I working hard enough in my job?
·
Do I have enough money?
·
Am I doing enough for the needs of the
world?
·
Am I praying enough?
·
Am I spending enough time playing with my kids?
Muller writes:
First, how do we know
we have secured enough food, shelter, sanctuary, health and security for
ourselves and our loved ones? And
second, as members of our global human family saturated with unnecessary
suffering and death, what is enough for us to do, to give to contribute? As we listen together to these challenges, I
expect we will discover that these two basic human needs—to have enough and to
do enough—live within us as two chambers of a single beating heart.
When Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves, he
seems to be pointing to this same question:
How do we balance care of ourselves with the needs of the world? How much is enough in either of these areas?
Without offering any easy answers, Muller raises up the
importance of our choices. Specifically,
he speaks of “the next right thing.” He
says,
“Every single choice
we make, no matter how small, is the ground where who we are meets what is in
the world. And the fruits of that
essential relationship—the intimate, fertile conversation between our own
heart’s wisdom and the way the world has emerged before us—becomes a lifelong
practice of deep and sacred listening for the next right thing we are required
to do.”
Sometimes the needs of the world and within me feel
overwhelming. Shortening the scope by
focusing on the next right thing might well be enough.
We are staying for a month at Onomea Farms on the Big Island of Hawaii with our son and his wife. On the counter there are piles of fresh fruit; several varieties of avocados, large fragrant lemons and limes, grapefruit, oranges, bananas, and papayas, one of which is as large as the coconut we ate yesterday. There is more than enough to feed many people and our son and his wife give the fruit of their labor away freely. There is a word in Hebrew for enough: dayenu. And it means that, it would have been enough. It would have been enough if this was all the fruit we had, but the trees outside on the farm are loaded with very much more fruit. So, yes, getting the balance between what we need and what is enough is a delicate issue. I pray that we all realize we have more than enough.
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