Enough

Please visit our YouTube channel to watch Ali Peters’s video recording of this reflection.

When I was a kid, I was not lucky enough to live near my grandparents. I grew up in New Jersey, and my grandparents lived all the way out in Omaha, Nebraska. We only got to see them about once a year, and it always was a big deal. I always looked forward to our visits to Omaha—I looked forward to seeing my grandparents waiting for us outside the airport terminal, I looked forward to them taking us to their local zoo, I looked forward to what they called “sneak breakfasts” (when my grandparents would wake up my brother and me early in the morning before my parents were awake and take us out for pancakes), and I also looked forward to watching their cable television at their house—that was always such a treat for kids like us who didn’t have cable. They were nice visits to Omaha and it was so good to be together.

One thing that also stands out to me in those memories were the times when I could see my Grandma’s face get sad. She would be hugging us as we arrived at the airport and I’d hear her say, “Oh I can’t believe you’re only going to be here for a week.” We would be in the reptile house at the zoo, laughing at how gross we thought the snakes were, and then I’d see her face fall and she’d say, “Oh, I’m going to be so sad when it’s time for you to leave.” We would be pouring syrup onto our pancakes and I’d see her shoulders droop. “I’ve been looking forward to this visit with you all for so long, I can’t believe it’s going to be over so quickly.” During these times, I remember feeling like I was being jolted out of the joy of being together and enjoying each other with the icy cold splash of sadness or guilt. We never seemed to have enough time together.

Enough. What even is enough? Enough of anything? Enough can feel so elusive, even unachievable.

These days especially, I think it’s hard. We dance with others in the street when the first Black, South Asian woman, and child of immigrants, is elected into the White House… but we feel the icy cold splash, remembering that there is still so much work to be done and so many problems to address. We get a few days of beautiful weather in November, giving us the chance to spend time with friends and loved ones safely—outside enjoying the sunshine. But we feel the icy cold splash, remembering that we will still be facing a whole winter in this pandemic.

It doesn’t feel like enough.

I was talking about this struggle with one of the members at my congregation in Wisconsin, and I asked her where she has most clearly felt the feeling of “enough.” She didn’t even hesitate to answer. “On my farm,” she said. She talked to me all about her farm chores and how she felt in relationship with her land and the critters that were around. She talked to me about being mindful of spending enough time doing farm work, and also enough time simply for fun and play. She talked to me about taking enough from the land to live, and also giving enough back to the land. To me, her stories were a poignant reminder of the wisdom that inherently exists in the earth and in nature. They actually drew me back to a Wendell Berry poem that I love, a poem called “The Peace of Wild Things.”

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

In this poem, Berry never once uses the word enough, and yet to me, this poem feels like enough. It feels like he is describing an experience of enough, and also, each time I read this poem, the words themselves feel like enough. It makes me exhale. 

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Perhaps the reason this feeling of “enough” can be so elusive is because “enough” only exists in this moment. We can’t grab “enough” outside of this moment, right now, or this moment, or this one. The wild things do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. Right now, the water is still. The day-blind stars are there above us, waiting with their light.

The sermon I am preaching right now is wildly different from what I thought this sermon would be when I chose the title of “Enough.” The story I shared with you earlier was wildly different from what I thought that story would be when I planned to write a story about squirrels gathering acorns under the theme of “enough.” Because in a world of capitalism, comparison, and competition, we have been taught to think that “enough” is simply a word used to demonstrate an amount. I don’t have enough money to buy that, I don’t have enough time to do that, I’m not old enough, young enough, smart enough, good looking enough, strong enough, happy enough.  

But in her book The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist, the founder of the Pachamama Alliance, tells us that we are missing the point. She says “Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough and that we are enough.” She goes on to say, “When we live in the context of sufficiency, we find a natural freedom and integrity. We engage in life from a sense of our own wholeness rather than a desperate longing to be complete. We feel naturally called to share the resources that flow through our lives—our time, our money, our wisdom, our energy, at whatever level those resources flow—to serve our highest commitments.”

It can be so hard to live this declaration of sufficiency when we do live in a world that was built around capitalism, comparison, and competition. When struggling to have the amount of money needed to put food on the table is a lived reality for so many. Living into an experience of enough in this moment does not negate that or gloss over it or ignore it. It’s not an experience that tells us that we shouldn’t want anything or need anything or that we should just appreciate what we have. We can feel welcome to grieve and wail at the doorstep of tragedy and injustice. We can feel moved and called to fight for a better world, and we can also feel invited to lean in to experiences of sufficiency in any given moment. The wild things that do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. The presence of still water. The day-blind stars waiting with their light. The enoughness that is the birthright of existence.

And one thing I think we can learn from Wendell Berry and Pasha the Squirrel and Lynne Twist this morning is that honoring this birthright, drawing ourselves deeper into experiences of sufficiency and enoughness, also draws us closer to the world around us and the world we as people of faith aspire to create.

You are enough. This moment is enough.

May it be so, and amen.

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