Winning Life Lotto

From Richard Rohr, via Kris Girrell ~ ~ "The flow of grace through us is largely blocked when we are living inside a worldview of scarcity, a feeling that there’s just not enough: enough of God, enough of me, enough food, enough health care to go around, enough mercy to include and forgive all faults."

For me, among the countless wonderful things about being 65+ is the ability to look over the arc of years & see the magnificent flow of blessings that came from being born with a deep sense of the possible, rooted in an unwavering abundance pov.  Which is weird, since scarcity was commonplace in my family.  Not of money or resources, although we were most certainly one of the poorest families in an exceedingly wealthy community.  Scarcity of connection & emotional support, scarcity of any core sense of belonging. 

It was the flow of grace within & through me that stayed my course forward under invisibly spectacular deprivation, unseen but powerfully felt.  It makes no sense to me, being graced with that firm grounding while standing atop an utterly crumbled emotional terrain.

It seems to me that relationships of every sort call on us to hold an unwavering faith in there being enough of the Divine, of myself, of emotional intellectual affectional resources.  It feels to me that every relationship in our lives is a microcosm of our relationship with All That Is.  How well we bring to each the abundant resources all around us, even in the midst of harshness & hard times, builds our emotional/spiritual muscle & makes it easier, more natural to enjoy a tender, mutually satisfying relationship with the Divine that surrounds & is infused within us. 

The #1 thing that helped me see the abundance in my pre-John years was the knowledge that everyone did what they could with what they had - if they failed at times, so did I.  And what a blessing to have been taught from my earliest days that while we can judge a person's actions as mean or lacking, we cannot see their intentions!

Some people seem to feel that whether we are blessed or bogged down or even blasted by life is a matter of chance.  There may be some truth in that - it feels like I was born pre-disposed to look for the lesson in tough times & the beauty in each moment.  If we are born with a lottery ticket, then I make no bones about having come up a winner!


So, from my perch of 65+, let me rephrase the opening statement to one that reflects my wildest joy & deepest hope for EVERYONE - - The flow of grace through us is unfettered when we live infilled with a personal sense & worldview of boundless abundance, the knowledge that no matter what circumstances of deprivation might attend us, in the ways that matter most there will always be enough for all - enough: enough of God, enough of us, enough of community, enough of what nurtures, enough health & wholeness for all, enough mercy to celebrate inclusion & enough humility to forgive all faults - beginning with ours.