Enough

77% Weekly Newsletter

enoughENOUGH!

In these wisdom_biscuits I write about various topics, including surrender, love, perseverance, and hope. I write about these topics so I can keep them in the forefront of my mind.
After all, what better way is there to learn about something than by teaching it?
For the past 10 years, I have sent an e-mail newsletter 40/52 weeks a year; the last Monday of the month is a “non-issue.” This 77%-weekly policy (40/52 = 0.76923) has been a perennial reminder to me and to you that we all must take time off from striving in favor of taking time to dwell in sufficiency.
But, yet again, I forgot to heed my own advice. (It happens.)
God, please help me live in the knowledge that I am enough, I have enough, I do enough.
Enough.
Here is a question, and I shuddered when I asked it of myself: Do your goals serve you or are you serving them?
One of the hallmarks of a spiritual program or of organized religion is the notion of surrender as it relates to sufficiency.
It is repeated throughout holy texts:
“Dayenu… it would have been enough for us.”
We always want more. That’s how we humans are built. We want more of the good stuff (and less of the not-good stuff). Ancient rabbinic commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes reads, “One who has one hundred wants two hundred; one who has two hundred wants four hundred” (Kohelet Rabbah 1:13).
We all know this.
We live this.
I don’t need you to live a life in which you see the world as overflowing with surplus. I don’t need you to believe (as I am trying to) that there is more than enough right before our very eyes. I don’t need you to believe – what my friend Dave Ellis calls “the radical, surprising truth” – that we live in a world of abundance.
You don’t need to believe this.
What I would like you to consider, if you aren’t able or willing to see the world as overflowing that you, at the very least, would consider staying away from the notions of scarcity and deprivation. Won’t you consider – at least for this very moment in time – that you have enough?
This week’s #Wisdom_Biscuit: enough!

“I love you” x 3

For reasons a team of psychoanalysts might have been able to crack, my dad couldn’t get the three-word phrase “I love you” to come out of his mouth. I knew he loved us. It’s just he couldn’t say it. I rationalized that I didn’t need to hear those three words, but it hurt anyway. This is the story about how

Read More »

Truth Matters

I am standing in Kenya, with my left foot in the Northern Hemisphere and my right foot in the Southern. A line on the ground indicates the equator. Young men—asking for nothing, but hoping for tips—entertain and educate tourists, like me, about the Coriolis effect. They pour water into bowls with small holes at the bottom and let the water

Read More »

Stuff Gets To Me

✧✧✧ As I pack up to leave after my workout, someone asks me, “Hey, Rabbi, how are things going?” I’m not one for small talk. Especially after being called by my title. “Well,” I reply. “I’m sad.” “Why?” “I’m thinking about the girls who went to school in the morning in Minab, Iran—over a hundred of them—killed by a bomb.”

Read More »
77% Weekly Newsletter
77% Weekly Newsletter