Flawed Abundance

 

       The universe is messy.  Galaxies, stars, planets and life on earth came about through chaotic processes with an underlying order we are still trying to comprehend.  That messiness permeates our love lives, our friendships and our relationship to self.  Life unfolds in mysterious ways, often departing from the pretty picture we envision.

 

       Mark Nepo speaks of flawed abundance.  His words resonate with my experience – and maybe yours.

 

 

 

       “ … everything we need or want is waiting inside each day … right before us in flawed abundance …

 

       “ … nothing is clean or perfect, and nothing unfolds as planned.  For the Universe is vital, not perfect.  Full of endless seeds attempting to be one thing, colliding with another, and becoming a third.  Loves, dreams, difficulties, peace of mind – all of who we are unfolds this way beyond our willful wanting. 

 

       “ … the King James phrase ‘be you perfect’ really means ‘be you all-embracing …

 

       “Much of our unhappiness comes from insisting on what we want as the only path to contentment.  Often, beyond what we want is what we need, waiting in the abundance of a reality that has more than enough to keep us vital and alive. …

 

       “One of the more difficult paradoxes to accept is that this abundance of gifts is always quietly present and it is we who drift in and out of seeing it.  The one recurring doorway to this vitality is our simple participation in life.  When we slip into heartless watching, the abundance seems to vanish.  When we dare to show up and be fully present, grace and wonder and mystery start to appear, even in the midst of pain.  Not as planned dreams, or as images of lovers, or as scripts of success designed by our fantasies of ourselves.  But as oddly shaped pods of vitality bursting to multiply and bring us further into the mystery of living.”

 

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk, pp. 237-8.