**  This is a continuation of our 3 previous posts from the book “Let Your Life Speak.”

It’s easy to wax poetically about Spring.  Spring cannot deny the green stems of possibility.  Makes the world seem hospitable again.  Late spring is so flamboyant that it almost caricatures itself.   Which is why it’s long been the province of poets with more passion than skill.   Though perhaps we are meant to be drenched in a riot of growth at times.    If for no other reason than the joy of it.

Winter hoards materials, then spring gives it all away.   So maybe it’s the beginning of our season of giving.    If we want to save our lives we must not cling to them.  We must spend them with abandon.   When we are obsessed with bottom lines and productivity, efficiency of time and motion, and rational relation of means and ends – it seems unlikely that our work will bear full fruit.  Unlikely that we will ever know the fullness of Spring in our lives.

Though spring is not without its detractors.  Before becoming beautiful, it’s plug ugly.   It can also be wet and muddy as growth is happening.  I have seen fields to drenched with water that it could suck your boots off your feet.  But it’s in that mess that growth is happening.

I love that the word Humus – the decayed vegetable matter that feeds the roots – comes from the same root that gives rise to the word Humility.  It’s a blessed entomology.  It helps me understand that the humiliating events of life – the stuff that puts mud on my face or makes my name mud – may create the fertile soil that the future can grow.   Even the smallest shoots fight their way to the sun.

Summer’s keynote is Abundance.   The fields and trees full of the fruits of nature.  A steady state of plenty.   Is a reminder of nature’s reliable cycle of scarcity and abundance.  In contrast to our human natural feeling that scarcity is always amongst us.

If we hoard possessions, it’s because we believe that there is not enough to go around.   If I struggle with others over power, it’s because I believe that power is limited.   If I become jealous in relationships, it’s because I believe that – if you get too much love – there won’t be enough left for me.    Scarcity can make the writer accept a written prose as good enough, because I don’t know if a better will come

Is another self-fulfilling prophecy.   Because, if you do actually hoard the items, you are creating or contributing to the shortage.

Abundance is not created automatically.  It’s created when we come together as Community.  To come together to celebrate and share our common story.   We generate more of whatever is seen scarce by trusting it’s abundance and passing it around.  We give them to others when we they are in need, and they give to us when we are in need.

If I have money, I can pay it to others who need it.  They can then share with me their time, effort, and skills.   This can help me build a better life, produce materials and services others can use.   This can then create more abundance for the world to share.

“Of course we must learn to live in community with each other.”   It’s only good biology.

Death has not ceased, of course.  It is now understood as being the legacy of abundance.  Abundance is a communal act.   Where each part acts independent of the whole, though is sustaining of the whole.   Community does not create abundance – it IS abundance.