Note to leader: This information is in a format that allows you to extract what you want - use one, a few, or all of the paragraphs below. Quotation of short excerpts for class use is considered to be "fair use" under the copyright law. Use all or part to spark conversation in large or small groups.

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Macrina Wiederkehr: "You are enough"

A scripture passage found me . and has been a help in my struggle. It is the text of Philippians 4:11: ". I have learned to be content with whatever I have." Though this Word of God has not yet become a reality in my life, I often allow those words to move through me, singing up the country of my heart. Repetition is good for the soul. I am reminded again of that text as I hear the words of Jesus, "Take nothing on your journey." As feelings of fear and resistance stir in my heart, the seed of this Word of God cracks open. I hear the song of One who believes in the good soil of my soul saying to me, You are enough! Poor, little, broken, sinful, wounded! Joyful and sorrowful! You are enough! Compassionate, idealistic, fearful! Restless, seeking, anxious! You are enough. Go simply, then, dancing the gift of yourself into my world. Take nothing on your journey. You are enough! You are loved! You are the beloved.

(From The Song of the Seed , pp. 58-59)

Søren Kierkegaard: "A bunch of scheming swindlers"

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

(Source: Daily Dig)

Henri Nouwen on abundance:

God is a god of abundance, not a god of scarcity. Jesus reveals to us God's abundance when he offers so much bread to the people that there are twelve large baskets with leftover scraps (see John 6:5-15), and when he makes his disciples catch so many fish that their boat nearly sinks (Luke 5:1-7). God doesn't give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for.

God is a generous giver, but we can only see and enjoy God's generosity when we love God with all of our hearts, minds, and strength. As long as we say, "I will love you, God, but first show me your generosity," we will remain distant from God and unable to experience what God truly wants to give us, which is life and life in abundance.

The Dalai Lama's answer to world hunger:

After the Dalai Lama delivered a lecture, a member of the audience asked him what the answer to world hunger is.  He responded, "Sharing."

(Christian Century, 7/12/05)

Wendell Berry on Satisfaction:

[W]e have many commodities but little satisfaction, little sense of the sufficiency of anything.  The scarcity of satisfaction makes of our many commodities an infinite series of commodities, the new commodities invariably promising greater satisfaction than the older ones.  In fact, the industrial economy's most marketed commodity is satisfaction, and this commodity, which is repeatedly promised, bought, and paid for, is never delivered.

(Quoted by Shannon Jung in Food For Life, Augsburg Fortress, 2004, p. 3.)

Walter Brueggemann on scarcity and abundance

We who are now the richest nation are today's main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God's abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity — a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.

(From "The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity", Christian Century, March 24, 1999)

More from Walter Brueggemann:

We live in a world where the gap between scarcity and abundance grows wider every day. Whether at the level of nations or neighborhoods, this widening gap is polarizing people, making each camp more and more suspicious and antagonistic toward the other. But the peculiar thing, at least from a biblical perspective, is that the rich — the ones with the abundance--rely on an ideology of scarcity, while the poor — the ones suffering from scarcity — rely on an ideology of abundance. How can that be? The issue involves whether there is enough to go around — enough food, water, shelter, space. An ideology of scarcity says no, there's not enough, so hold onto what you have. In fact, don't just hold onto it, hoard it. Put aside more than you need, so that if you do need it, it will be there, even if others must do without. An affirmation of abundance says just the opposite: Appearances notwithstanding, there is enough to go around, so long as each of us takes only what we need. In fact, if we are willing to have but not hoard, there will even be more than enough left over. The Bible is about abundance.

(From "Enough Is Enough" - The Other Side , November-December 2001)

Marj Carpenter: "One of the best mission talks I have ever heard."

Once I visited a presbytery in Mississippi. Presbyterians there had just completed a mission trip to Mexico. Several of them rose and gave detailed reports of helping with construction, Bible school, and other projects. A young teenager was the last one to speak. He rose and quickly and simply said, "I found out while on this trip that Americans have too much stuff," and he sat down.

It was one of the best mission talks I have ever heard.

(Presbyterian Outlook 8/29/05)

Ashleigh Brilliant's sure-fire way to get more of what you want:

Want less.

(From a postcard by Ashleigh Brilliant — yes, that's his real name.)

C. S. Lewis and his toys:

I am progressing along the path of my life in my ordinary, contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends the whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am over-whelmed, and all my happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps by God's grace, I succeed for a day or two to become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys.

(From one of Lewis' writings - not sure which one!)

Nancy Mairs: "I want, I want."

Our society would unravel altogether if we stopped believing in scarcity. Unless one perceives a lack, one won't spend one's money to fill it, and getting and spending have comer to seem the source rather than the waste of our powers. To the blandishments of consumerism I am as vulnerable as anyone else who picks up a magazine or flips on the television. I want, I want.

I have one friend, a devoted mother, who would never deny her children anything she thought she could provide: for her the threat of impoverishment arises not from selfishness or negativism but from a genuine terror that the wolf is at the door and only her thrift can debar his dripping fangs. Yet another friend, almost 80 and in constant arthritic pain, who lives in public housing and wears cast-off clothing, quietly and without apparent qualm gives away every penny she can spare.

(From "Faith Matters," Christian Century, June 18-25, 1977)

Lawton Posey: God owns my automatic icemaker.

Believing in God means that I acknowledge that nothing I possess is mine by right. Everything that I call my "net worth" is from the generosity of the Eternal One who gives me the responsibility to be a good steward of what I consider my own. I cannot look around at my house, my vehicles, my automatic icemaker, my central heating, and my indoor plumbing as something that I have earned and possess as a right. When I was a lad, sometimes the minister would take the offering plates . and we would sing, "All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee." I liked that, even when I was unfaithful to its central premise.

(Lawton W. Posey, in Presbyterian Outlook March 31, 2005, p. 14.)

CitiBank on living richly

"You were born to live richly."

(From an advertising billboard from CitiBank)

"It makes me want too much."

A young girl was explaining to a schoolmate why she was not allowed to watch Saturday morning television. "It makes me want too much," she said.

(Source unknown)

Sylvia Alloway's suggestion: a buying "fast."

I suggest this: Every so often go on a buying "fast." How hard is it? So hard you need to pray that the Lord will keep you from the religion of stuff.

(From "Loving Stuff," on TheLutheran.org)

John Ortberg: "More."

More. These four letters constitute one of the most powerful words in the English language. Very smart people stay up at night trying to figure out ways to convince us that we are (or ought to be) discontent, and that we would experience true satisfaction if we just had more . All day long we are bombarded by the prophets of more. "Use me, buy me, drive me, wear me, try me, put me in your hair." Serving the " more monster" can never satisfy our souls. Yet in the short run, saying no to more can be difficult, even frightening. What does it take to tame the monster of more? What does it take to transform a heart from greed to generosity? For most of us, it will not come simply by acquiring more knowledge, applying more willpower, or even by studying more Scripture, as important as those things are. The more monster is too strong. We need a way of training. We need a tangible and routine way to say, "Sorry, money, you are not on the throne. You will not be the god of my life today." What we need, God has provided. It's called tithing.

(In Giving magazine, 2005, pp. 45-46.)

Jay B. McDaniel: Consumerism as Religion

The dominant religion of our planet is consumerism. Its god is economic growth; its priests are the CEO's of large corporations who can contribute to growth; its evangelists are the advertisers who display the products of growth, convincing us that we cannot be happy without them; and its church is the shopping mall.

Its doctrine of creation is that the earth is real estate to be bought and sold in the market, and that plants and animals are mere commodities for human use. Its doctrine of human existence is that we are skin-encapsulated egos, put off from the world by the boundaries of our skin, whose highest good lies in "having our needs met."

And its doctrine of salvation is that we are saved or made whole — not by grace through faith as Christians claim, . but by appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement.

This religion is hazardous to our health. It wreaks havoc on local communities, the earth's ecosystems, and the human soul. It tempts us to approach all things — even God — as commodities for human use, as items for personal consumption.

The need today is for people . to criticize consumerism and enter into counter-consumer ways of living.

(From gracecathedral.org)