I have always had a deep love of the word “abundance.” But I am only now beginning to grasp how to actually understand and love it. In my mind, abundance always had to do with “fullness.” From an external perspective, this does not seem wrong: trees full of fruit, flower heads full of busy bees, heavily scented elderflower umbels after a summer rain, the heart full of summer memories.
Abundance is a summer word. But what is full today will one day be empty. Summer will always give way to autumn.
I sit in front of the Goetheanum and feel like crying at the sheer beauty of it all. My heart is laden, overladen. The rose hips glow in the morning sun, the cows huff with vitality, the path is lined with quince and apple trees so overloaded that they need to be supported lest they surrender to their abundance and lay their heavy crowns on the dewy grass. Eager wasps visit the fallen fruits—which are so full of juice and sweetness that they can no longer hold on to their branches—and I sympathize with them in their obvious appreciation of these treasures.
Yes, abundance is a summer word. But it’s not only that.
Because slowly, something is healing within me. I understand that abundance does not inevitably bring sadness—sadness at the first signs of death and decay when autumn arrives and gently but persistently takes all this fullness with it. Abundance lives in Rilke’s ever-widening circles.1
Abundance is cyclical. Life is cyclical. Is life abundance? Perhaps there is no such thing as “life,” and the mystery lies simply—yet so secretly—in the verb, in doing, in being? In blossoming and ripening, becoming sweet and also sour, rich and full, putting down roots and growing toward the sky—only to then waste away as naturally as the rose hip and the pear tree itself, finally surrendering, to be blown away by harsh winds.
Then, to know with serenity: abundance is inherent in me, in seeds and grains and roots. Already, even in the coldest winter and the darkest nights, it strives for the new sun and carries the warmth of the old one still smoldering within itself. It is inherent in rose hips and pears, this abundance, and also in me—always.
And when the time comes, it will become visible on the outside.
Translation Laura Liska
Illustration Design team of the Weekly
