Two men are shipwrecked on a desert island. One of them is going crazy; panicking, screaming at the top of his lungs, “We’re going to die! There is no food here, there is no water, we’re going to die!”

The other man is sitting back, his hands behind his head, resting up against a palm tree, enjoying the lapping of waves on the shore, and his friend says, “How can you just sit there like that? We’re going to die!”

And the second man says, “Don’t worry, I make $100,000 a week.  We are not going to die.”

The first man says, “What does that have to do with it? Money can’t help us!  We are going to die!”

The second man responds, “Don’t worry.  I make $100,000 a week, and I tithe $10,000 a week to my church.  We are not going to die.”

The first man cries, “It doesn’t matter! There is no food or water here!  No one is coming to rescue us! We are going to die!”

And the second man says, “Listen- I give $10,000 to my church every week.  Believe me, my pastor will find us!”

This story points to the myth of scarcity that exists both inside and outside the church, and manifests as fear and competition rather than abundance and gratitude. 

There are four myths of scarcity, and each one of them has a spiritual antidote.

1) There is not enough
2) More is better
3) This is just the way things are, there is nothing we can do about it
4) It’s either you or me

There Is Not Enough

The spiritual antidote to “not enough” is that, no matter what your economic net worth, you are enough. Just as you are right now, you are enough. Sufficiency is the quality of life where everything as it is right now is perfect. Until you accept your inner sufficiency, no economic gain will bring any satisfaction.

More Is Better

The spiritual antidote to “more is better” is that more is just more, it’s no better, and it's no worse. More is just more, and if what you're getting more of brings anxiety with it, then that will bring more anxiety. If what you are seeking brings peace, then more will bring more peace. More is not necessarily better. More is just more.

This Is Just the Way Things Are, There Is Nothing We Can Do About It

This too is a myth. Life is in constant flux and your intention charts so much of your future. There's so much that you can do about the scarcity mentality, beginning with yourselves, beginning in your own lives, beginning in your own mind.  With mindfulness and a resolution to change, and learning to live according to abundance, there is no limit to the positive change you can effect in your life and in the world.

It’s Either You or Me

From a spiritual perspective, it is always you and me. Any perceived separation is an illusion. It's not possible for me to get ahead if you’re going backwards. I'm not really ahead in that case. My progress is just an illusion.

My great hope this morning is that I might excite, empower and challenge you to live into your abundance, to leave behind the scarcity mentality that has been predominant in our culture and in Christianity for thousands of years, and live instead in the mentality of abundance.

Soulful Abundance

I want to encourage you to align your attitude towards money with your soul; that is, your core values; your intentions for yourself and the world around you. If you align your attitude towards money with your core values, there's no limit to what you can achieve in life. There's no limit to what you can be in life.

I heard a beautiful example of giving in abundance this week. It was a news story that came out about the Amish families, whose children were victims of an awful shooting several months back. The childrens’ parents got together and did something that absolutely astounds me. They came up with a win-win solution that takes them out of their suffering to some extent, and brings some healing to the whole situation.

The parents collected some of their compensation money and gave it to the widow of the shooter. What a powerful symbol of living in abundance! With this act, they raised themselves above the role of being victims, they took some steps towards abundant forgiveness and the widow of the shooter found some healing and liberation in their generosity of spirit.

I couldn't think of a better example of living in abundance, and I couldn't be more grateful for the connection with this morning's Bible story. It is the well-known story about the widow and the wealthy religious people. It's so well known that it's very hard for us to see it with an open mind, and to see it for the possibilities that it might have.

The Widow and the Religious Wealthy

So I am asking you now to try to leave behind the past assumptions you have about the story. There are many different ways to interpret it, and the first way to interpret the story is that the widow is presented as a wonderful model or example for abundant giving. She's an example of how we should all live with abundance. According to this view, she gave more abundantly because she sacrificed more to give.

The second interpretation is that the widow is a model for exactly what not to do. She gives everything away, and all she's doing is following a blind loyalty and piety to a corrupt system. She gives all she has to the temple treasury that in turn feeds the coffers of the Roman Empire. According to this view, what she does is foolish, and when Jesus says that she has nothing left, she is operating out of a scarcity mentality. She loses, and everyone loses by encouraging this corrupt system.

The third possibility is that this story has nothing to do with the widow. Rather it is a challenge to the religious/ social system of the day. According to Hebrew law, the religious people are required to protect the widow. For the widow to give everything would leave her destitute, which would bring great shame on the religious system. According to this view, neither the widow nor the religious people are models of generosity. Rather it is a critique of the temple system.

I want to give you a fourth interpretation. I want to suggest that the story about the widow and the religious wealthy captures the two extremes of what we're left with when we repress an aspect of the God archetype. When we repress that aspect for long enough we end up with a shadow of God, and that shadow is  scarcity. Scarcity becomes normalized, just as the impoverished view of God becomes normalized.

If I'm right about this, the widow and the religious wealthy represent the two extremes of greed and competition, self-interest and self-righteousness (the shadow of the repressed God archetype) on one hand, and the fear of scarcity and self abuse (the shadow of the Goddess archetype) on the other.

To understand this we need to go back a little way because the notion of God that we’ve inherited comes out of ancient Egyptian culture. In Egyptian culture God and Goddess, or the great mother, are two sides of the one archetypal coin. They exist in harmony. Together they form the archetype of all things in harmony, yin and yang. God represents judgment and discipline, not in a negative sense, but rather as discernment and boundaries.  Goddess represents harvest, abundance, and nurture.

That was the Egyptian notion, but Hebrew and Christian cultures generally repressed the goddess, and de-emphasized that aspect of God.
Having repressed that aspect long enough, it became normal to conceive of God  as punishment, something akin to the “Terminator God.” The Arnold Schwarzenegger of Gods- who watches from a distance, ready to pounce, punish, and the only way to appease this God is for someone to lose. The whole atonement myth that many of us have grown up with is that someone must suffer; someone must lose, in order for everyone else to gain.

We have repressed Goddess, the great mother of abundance, for so long that we see the punishing God as being normal, as being all there is, and that is not the case.

Diana Rivers wrote a beautiful verse that says
“Our goddess is not like the gods of men,
she does not compel you to worship her,
she just invites you to the dance.
Should you choose not to come
Your only punishment is your absence.”

We have a wonderful opportunity in Progressive Religion to restore the Great Mother archetype. Goddess is not cause and effect or punishment. The great mother, is the quality of all inclusive abundance. When one thrives, all thrive. 

When Goddess thrives in theology, the people thrive. The earth thrives.

There is an interesting time in history when the great mother was emphasized. It was Medieval Europe in the 10th to13th century, the time when some aspects of Egyptian culture were revived. Money was not as significant in this era as it had been in earlier societies. People began to live off what they could produce from the land. At the same time the statue of the Black Madonna arose, with the Egyptian Goddess Isis and Horace sitting on her knee, sitting on the “cathedra”, the origin of the word “cathedral”. The Black Madonna symbolized birth and fertility, the wealth of the land.

Through these centuries where money was not the primary currency, many of the famous cathedrals that tourists still flock to in Europe, were built. It was a time of prosperity, when the goddess, the alma mater, the generous mother, was brought back into the theology. When Goddess thrives in theology, the people thrive. The earth thrives.

I could not be more excited about the progressive movement that we're part of, as we can bring back into balance God and Goddess; discernment, boundaries abundance, and nurture. This community's emphasis on the earth, and things like local food, is not just because they are necessary to sustainable lifestyles, but also because these are ways that we can practice bringing the Great Mother back into our lives. These are areas where we can bring theology back into balance, God and Goddess in harmony.

Which, of course, brings me back to the story of the widow’s mite. It’s a story that speaks of the divorce of God and Goddess; the separation of abundance from the God archetype. It is as if she has died in Christian theology, hundreds of years of impoverished theology, leaving the church a widow trapped in an understanding of God as scarcity and punishment.

Living in a Scarcity Mindset

It's another way to understand the story.  It's a depressing situation, but it's not unlike the world we live in. Ours is a world where rampant competition and the fear of scarcity, rule. There's enough food to feed everyone in the world. There are enough jobs for everyone to have a job, there's just not enough money. The reason is because the whole system is built on a scarcity mentality.

Just think about the most obvious of examples- the bank loans you $100,000.  They put that money into currency. It now exists, but over the next 20 years you have to pay the bank $200,000. Where does the second hundred thousand dollars come from? Competition. Someone is going to have to lose in order for you to pay the bank the extra $100,000.  The whole system depends on competition and materialism. It’s a scarcity system and we take it for granted. It’s a system that doesn’t leave much room for soulful abundance.

Living in Soulful Abundance

Lynne Twist has written a wonderful book called The Soul of Money. Lynne and her husband are very successful business people who could have done anything they wanted in the corporate world but decided at a certain point that they wanted their money to begin working for the good of all. That would be the expression of their souls’ purpose. The Soul of Money is an inspirational book, full of great stories about people who are living according to abundance.

There is a wonderful story in her book about abundance. Lynne is out collecting donors for her organization that is called “The Hunger Project”, an organization looking to feed the world.  Lynne is at a meeting with the CEO of a large company in Chicago. She sits in the boardroom across a table from the CEO. She knows the company has some image problems and they're looking to improve their reputation. So, barely making eye contact, he hands her a check for $50,000, and ushers her to the door. She leaves feeling very uncomfortable. These people are clearly not partners. She doesn’t know what do, but decides to take the money.

Lynne’s next meeting is in a church in Harlem. It's a church of mainly African-American women, poor women, and she gives the same talk that she often gives to groups. At the end of the talk a woman stands up and says, “My name is Gertrude, and what you said has really touched me. I don't have much, but I want to give something. I want my money to work for the good of many people.”

Gertrude throws down a series of bills on the table where Lynne has a brief case, mostly $5, and $10, totaling $50. She then gives Lynne the hugest hug that she has ever experienced. In that moment Lynne knows that she has found a partner, someone who is committed to feeding the hungry.

Then a series of other people come forward and put their crumpled notes down on the briefcase. Later Lynne collects the money, which amounts to about $500 from the church in Harlem, and as she puts it in her briefcase she sees the check for $50,000. At that moment she knows what she has to do. She has to return the check. She has to send it back because what she wants is partnership, not a guilt offering.

Two years later she receives some mail. It's the CEO, and he's written her to say that when he got the returned check his whole world fell apart. He realized at that moment exactly what he was doing, and decided that he had to make changes in his life, so he set out from that moment forward to live according to an abundant spirit, to make his wealth work for the good of the world. He thanked Lynne, and included a personal check for much more than the original $50,000.

It's a beautiful story that speaks of two people, from different worlds, giving out of a spirit of abundance.

My message is for everyone, whether you're just starting out and have a whole life ahead of you, saving for retirement, or at the end of that journey where you made all the money you are going to make, or anywhere in between. My message is to the wealthy and those who have little. When your attitude is aligned to your soul purpose, you have abundant sufficiency.

Both scarcity and abundance are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you live according to the scarcity mentality, you hoard, you compete, and that leads to more scarcity. If on the other hand, you live according to the joy of abundance and gratitude for life, then that is what expands all around you.

My question to you this morning-  what is your self-fulfilling wish for the world?