2016 was hard. So was 2015. As a pastor I spend time with the survivors and hear the stories. Some have lost jobs and others have lost marriages. And regardless of economic conditions, our neighbourhoods are home to the ever present struggles that we all face – loss of family members, illness, and emotional pains.
When times are challenging, we may begin to see our world through a lens of anxious scarcity. Anxious scarcity refers to this sense that we have profoundly limited resources, so limited that it causes us to panic, to fear, and to hide. The American Psychological Association says that by adopting a ‘scarcity’ vision of our world, we begin to make poor choices and engage in damaging behaviours. When we live out of scarcity we are less patient, we focus on the short-term, and we view our lives, and others, with negativity. We feel like there is less room for error, so we live judgementally and angrily, or slide into deep sadness and ‘stuck-ness.’
When anxious scarcity pervade our homes, our neighbourhoods, and our city, it can create a deficient culture. Anxious scarcity leaves little room for fun, friendship, hope, beauty, and innovation. Fear can leave a community in stand-still.
Where anxious scarcity might make us to hold onto what we have and refuse to share it, the solution may be to do the opposite. The way to overcome anxious scarcity is to be grateful for what we have and share it with others. Instead of focusing on what we don’t have, we see the abundance that we do have. We see that we have a living room where we can host a gathering of friends. We begin to see that we have some food we can share. We find that we have free time that we can offer to others. We have encouraging words and the ability to share them. We have a listening ear. Our whole lives are full of abundance – gifts we can share.
I have visited third world countries in Africa and South America. I have been amazed to meet people with absolutely nothing offer what they do have with joy and freedom. One hut on stilts in the Amazon river had a pot with two fish, a hammock, and a three year old calendar nailed to a wall. That was all. Yet the people we met lived with a sense of abundance. They shared their fish, told their stories, and laughed long and hard as they taught me to catch piranhas off their front step. Although we were supplying them with life-saving water filtration units, they were giving me a new perspective on what abundance really means.
When we become people who see that anxious scarcity is not helping, but damaging our community, we begin the journey towards creating the kind of neighbourhoods and city we want and need. Walter Brueggemann says, “Those who sign on and depart the system of anxious scarcity become the historymakers in the neighborhood.” In other words, when you resist the urge to live under the story that we don’t have enough, but rather point out the great things we do have, you begin to shift the story. You bring hope.
2017 is a big unknown. We do not know how the economy will go, or how our lives will unfold. But we can step into this next year with a deep and abiding belief that we have much. Not only do we have much, but we have enough to share. Our role is no longer to repeat the anxious and fearful stories that we’re told. Rather we are those who see that Chestermere is indeed an abundant community of hope, life, and goodness for everyone who lives here among us.
