Here are a couple more reviews in the spirit of Non-Fiction November.
The Art of Abundance by Dennis Merritt
For millennia, humanity's collective unconscious has been saturated with ideas of scarcity, and belief in not enough to go around. We see it every day when we scroll down social media, so we can't help getting ourselves infiltrated with ideas of lack and limitation. In Merritt's opinion, it's a short-sighted mistake. In actual fact, says he, the universe is generous, over-expanding and replenishing itself. If we take care to look for it when we venture out into nature, we'll see such evidence as sand grains comprising soft, lustrous beaches, droplets becoming gushing waterfalls, and clover leaves forming verdant green pastureland. Abundance is our birthright and we need to become comfortable with the notion of its availability for us too.
He counsels us to stay focused and intentional, for a focused mind is like a laser and an unfocused mind is like a defuse, incandescent light. When our mind becomes our master rather than our servant, it can take us places we don't want to go. (My word, haven't I experienced that over the years!) We can't unthink thoughts, agrees Merritt, but we can mindfully identify and 'undo' them by choosing and superimposing new ones that neutralise them. It's a matter of challenging and changing them one at a time.
Being in a flow of abundance means trusting what he calls the Law of Circulation. We are both givers and receivers, and in order to let abundance flow into our lives, we must let it flow out of our lives. Holding onto physical things we no longer need or ever use blocks the flow. In the same way, we need to keep our emotional pipelines free of such sludge and clutter as regret, jealousy, envy, resentment, greed, selfishness, and pessimism, which are also different variants of fear, the master sludgemaker.
'Do what is truly yours to do,' we are told in yet another chapter. We arrive on this planet predisposed with certain unique gifts and innate talents. When we align our passions with these gifts and talents, then we've discovered the thing which is ours to do. This is connected to being of service, which needn't be as grandiose as we often imagine it should.
'Be Blessed!' he exhorts us toward the end. Since our collective unconscious leads us to focus on things that are wrong or lacking, our minds get bogged down with all that seems missing in our lives. It's difficult to feel blessed when we're always looking at what's wrong. Instead, by focusing on our blessings, we initiate a centrifugal force. It's helpful to picture it as a gravitational pull that draws increasingly more good toward us.
Perhaps these visual pictures just may help us remember to practice this counter-cultural way of looking at things.
A Piece of Chalk, by G.K. Chesterton
Legendary novelist and theologian, G.K. Chesterton, describes how he set off on an excursion armed with brown paper and coloured chalks, to do some nature-inspired drawings. He regrets forgetting his white stick of chalk but discovers to his vast amusement that he can improvise. A chunk of rock makes a fair substitute for white chalk.
He makes lots of beautiful landscape observations and discusses how nature may inspire artists to create original material without reproducing precisely what they're seeing. It includes Chesterton's conviction that white, like virtue, is a pure color, rather than being the absence of other colors. He concludes with a lovely epiphany that our world is generous to anyone open to discovering abundance in unexpected places.
I believe one great central theme is summed up near the end of the essay. It is his joyful realization that when we use our imaginations to probe deeply enough, we may discover that the world is more generous and abundant than we give it credit for. Having forgotten his white chalk, Chesterton snaps off a piece of the rock he was sitting on to substitute for it on his brown paper. His willingness to think on his feet helps reveal the world to him as a treasure trove of resources.
To people with more limited outlooks than Chesterton's, our world may appear meagre and deficient. When imagination and fresh perceptions lapse, then lack apparently abounds and good things seem in short supply. Yet as the divergent thinker Chesterton discovers, 'England itself could be regarded as one generous slab of white chalk.'
His attitude is expressed most triumphantly in the final paragraph when he lets loose a string of analogies that remind him of his own situation. 'Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he has no sand for his hourglass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought some salt water for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk.' It's his clear invitation for us to take time to consider unexpected places from which blessings might flow.
To me, the most enjoyable quality about this essay is Chesterton's upbeat mood, bubbling over with simple joy. His playful disposition nudges him to choose a pastime that might strike others as relatively childish; sketching chalk drawings on brown paper. But Chesterton's colourful, enthusiastic prose builds my confidence that he'll convince me to reconsider this kindergarten activity I'd dropped decades ago. Essentially, I was challenging him as I read, to see if he'd convert me to begin chalk drawings on brown paper.
I also love Chesterton's use of breathtaking analogies. He likens the 'soft and strong' features of the English countryside to other gentle but powerful phenomena, such as great carthorses and smooth beech trees. He introduces one other person, presumably as a foil for his own expansive point of view. This is his landlady (we assume), a generous but totally practical woman who cannot understand why he's asking for brown paper unless he wishes to wrap parcels.
Although I wasn't convinced to rush out and buy coloured chalks of my own, I did resolve to begin looking out for unexpected ways in which the earth provides for us.
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