Category: Asset Based Community Development

Abundance Versus Scarcity – Walter Brueggemann


Have had the privilege of hearing Walter speak twice now… Powerful insight into the history of systems built to oppress.

Some of my own notes from his last talk (the audio of which can be found here...)

“Scarcity to abundance…a new pair of glasses.”

Scarcity leads to…
Accumulation leads to…
Monopoly leads to…
Violence leads to…

This is pharaoh’s narrative.

In pharaoh’s world everyone is dispensable and stays busy so they can’t think about alternatives.

The Gospel and poetry and the New Testament Interrupt the narrative.

Know the names of the interrupters. Not of pharaoh.

Deut 23:16

“The difference between heaven and hell is a new pair of glasses”

Christopher Page's avatarIn A Spacious Place

In 1999 the renowned Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann published a powerful and challenging essay in the Christian Century in which he characterized the biblical narrative as a story of tension between a mentality of abundance and the myth of scarcity. The entire article is well worth reading and can be viewed at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=533

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4 Poems by Mari Evans


I can’t claim any of the original work or commentary but anything from Mari is worth sharing.

I found my voice at sea…


That’s a bold statement. But on a recent cruise, where I let myself have the time to sift through my life experience to date, I realized that my phrasing of “finding my voice” or “finding community” fails to acknowledge the voice I have today, which is both complete and evolving at the same time.

Today, I have the voice I need to connect emotionally, spiritually and psychologically with the world around me – a world made up of individual beings, each with our own story and each with our own future. I have what I need to live life fully and completely. Full stop.

To use language that I’m looking for community, building community, or finding my voice can leave me to believe that I lack what I need to experience each moment fully as it presents itself.

I realized on this cruise, with its abundance of smiles, stories and connections that my heart is engaging, my mind is expressing and there is truly more than enough present now to be fulfilled each day.

I know that will also continue to grow – to add to my story. But that does not mean that what I have today is inadequate or insufficient.

There are days where I tell myself, “if I were to die today, my life would be complete.” In fact, that is true every day whether I’m able to see it or not. So rather than continue to look, search or wonder, I now know I have what is necessary. I have what is necessary in abundance.

In the first day of my 47th year on this planet we call earth, I see the world differently. I see myself differently. I am complete. I am now able to see the truth that has been there for some time…I have my own voice.

For that I am grateful.