Trusting Abundance

One of the most steadfast people I know is my Army mechanic brother Allen.  If he gives you his word, he will stubbornly keep it, even if it means he'd have to travel the world to do it.  He may not do it right away, but he will do his utmost to do it as soon as it is humanly possible. He is also eccentric and has a very quirky sense of humor, but that's rather typical of my side of the family. 




Allen likes to use his rototiller, and a very fine rototiller it is.  Because he's a superb mechanic--a genius even--he likes to get the best machines for the job, and he knows what's the best.  He says rototilling is soothing to him, and he likes the way the rows of turned-up earth look, all nice and neat and ready for planting.  But then his quirky sense of humor comes in, and he does funny things with that rototiller, such as secretly, when nobody is looking, rototill a local church's community vegetable garden, to help them get it ready for planting.  From what I understand he has done this more than a few years, in secret, and I am sure he took enormous delight and amusement in thinking how mystified those church people and community workers were when they discovered that their plots were already well-tilled the next day.

Sometimes he'd sneak into that community garden and also throw on some fish fertilizer or other natural compost.  I think he told me he did this in the dead of night, and would laugh himself into stitches when the garden workers would be amazed at how that garden produced a miraculous amount of veggies somehow, when it didn't the last year.

No, he doesn't belong to that church.  He doesn't go to a church at all, so far as I know, although he does believe in God.  He just likes to use his rototiller and has a very quirky sense of humor.  And he likes supporting a good cause.

But one year, he went over to once again secretly rototill the garden, and found to his disappointment that it had already been done.  He felt disappointed about it, because he enjoyed it so much.  I know that being the kind of guy he is, he would have kept doing it year after year.  I don't know why that church decided to have someone else do it this time, even though every year it had been done.  Done mysteriously, done anonymously, but done nevertheless, every year, and done well.  Maybe they felt nervous that an unseen somebody was doing this, and preferred evidence of a real person instead of mystery, despite the fact that this mystery was consistent, was of high quality, and produced abundance freely and without asking for anything in return.

Well, someone from the church was watchful and figured out who was doing this, came over to my brother and said, "Allen, could you re-do that rototilling?  Because the rows we have now aren't as easy to work, and it just isn't as good.  And thanks for doing it."  And Allen happily re-did the rototilling, making the rows smooth and well-tilled and easy to work for the coming abundant community garden harvest.  Except this time, not as anonymously.  :-D

What Allen told me amused me, but it made me reflect also:  isn't it funny that when we encounter abundance in our lives, we tend not to trust it?  Even if it's constant as the sun, even if it produces good things, even if the quality of it is consistent.  The source of that abundance might be mysterious, but when the abundance is repeated over and over again, consistently and faithfully, doesn't it point to some organizing influence that means well?

Those community garden workers didn't know who that mysterious rototiller was, but that garden nevertheless was rototillered every year, and tilled well, ready for the seeds they wanted to plant.  And sometimes, that mysterious rototiller threw on some good compost, too. I, of course, because I knew my brother, also knew he'd be out there faithfully rototilling every year without fail while chuckling with amusement, predictable and constant as the promise of rain falling in the Pacific Northwest.

But the lack of knowledge of who was doing this work somehow shook the faith of those garden workers, and they decided to control the process themselves with someone/thing they knew and could see for themselves.  That seemed to be the deciding factor in their decision to do it themselves: not the quality of the work or the yearly consistency, but the fact that they didn't know who was doing it.  In a way, they didn't even trust the evidence of their own eyes.  The rototilling was done.  It was done well.  It was done every year.  But they couldn't trust it.  They didn't trust the abundance that was amongst them.

I wonder how many of us, when we have abundance amongst us, convince ourselves that it isn't really there, and that we should take full control over it, despite real, concrete evidence that it's really truly here.  And when we do try to tightly control it, doing it our way instead of the way it naturally unfolds, we find it starts to slip away.  We can't get ourselves to trust that the Source of all abundance will always be there, one way or another, if we only watch and look for it.

I know I like to be in control of what happens in my life, big-time control-freak control. I like to think that I fully control the good that comes to me.  But I think there are times when it'd be a good thing for me to let loose of my choke-hold on life and give enough room for abundance just to BE...and be grateful and give thanks when it arrives.