The Joyful Clutter of Abundance

I live these days in chaos. Six cats tromp up and down the stairs of my house, chasing each other and their tails. Two young goats graze in my backyard, and one of the seventeen hens that lives in our chicken coop just gave birth to twins. Five roosters herald the sunrise in a harmonic chorus, and it's not unusual to see wild turkeys tromping across the yard.

With the cavalcade of animals also has come abundance in other forms: our garden is overflowing with fresh produce. Our kitchen is full of vegetables that need to be picked or preserved soon, and tiny jars of seeds I'm saving from this year's harvest to start next year's crops are scattered hither thither. Beyond the garden, our house is also filled with gifts of books, furniture, pots and pans, and kitchen appliances from our parents, and my office now boasts a stunning collection of feminist literature -- thanks to the generous donation of a retiring professor.

I feel blessed with all these gifts, and I know I want them in my life. I'm just not sure how and when and where I'm going to make space for all of them.

Themes of scarcity and abundance run through my life -- and often surface in my writing. I first encountered the pairing of these concepts in 2001 during a seminar at the Esalen retreat center in Big Sur, California, while attending a weeklong Anti-Career Workshop: Creating the Life You Love. In 2001, life felt perhaps as Thomas Hobbes described it: solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. I felt as if there were so much to do, and as if I had no choice but to do it all alone. During the workshop, I began to gain an appreciation for the fact that I had lived -- and was currently living -- in beautiful places, always had been able to do work that I enjoyed, and even when lonely never was entirely alone. Looking back, I see that during that time I was living with the glass half-empty and that the years -- post Esalen -- were about making a shift toward seeing life and its opportunities as, always, the glass half-full.

One story about abundance from Esalen comes back to my mind. The workshop facilitator was describing abundance as always being able to create more, of not running short, of always rejuvenating one's self, of always finding ways to accumulate. I don't think he meant accumulate in a material sense but more in a sense of gaining more joy, more creativity, more fulfillment. Still, I asked the question, "What do you do with all of this abundance? What do you do when you have too much?"

The facilitator's answer was simple: You start giving it away.

That credo also makes enormous sense, and over the years I have given away quite a bit: full wardrobes, box loads of books, enough furniture cumulatively over the decades to furnish a mansion, cars, appliances, and artwork, among other things. Not to mention monetary donations.

These days, I give other things away: food, time, knowledge. I earn a salary as a member of a college faculty, but I have no trouble doing a lot of additional work for free. One 'ism built into the credo of giving is that what one gives comes back ten times greater.

And so I wonder is the wealth of knowledge (from the books), functionality (from the household items), food (from the garden), life (in the form of all the animals and, of course, the garden, too) and future growth (in the form of seeds) the "return" ten times over. It feels like more than ten times. But the new question surfaces: What does one do with it all?

I thought about this point in my office as I looked at the three tall piles of women's studies books collected from the boxes left behind by the retiring professor. I was so grateful to see these books because they included many classic titles that I have yet to read as well as provocative collections of works on activism, social movement theory, black feminists, multiculturalism and gender, and numerous other topics. I began to look forward to the time when I could go through them one-by-one, soaking in their wisdom.

And I realized, well, fact of the matter is this: I probably will not get through even a quarter of them. I read fast but not as much as I would like. The academic life is one of solitude, reading and contemplative writing in theory. In reality, it is a long, busy day of sound bite style activities: prepping classes that one teaches, responding to e-mails, attending meetings, applying for conferences, grants, papers, and other projects; household tasks, financial responsibilities, and, oh yes, your scholarship sandwiched in there somewhere. The great boon and bane of this frantic life is that it is largely one that one creates one's self. It is full, it is rich, it abounds with clutter.