ATTENTION AS GENEROSITY

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Simone Weil

WE WILL REINHALE WHAT WE EXHALE

Jesus assures us that the measure we measure out is the measure that we ourselves will receive in return. In essence, that says that the air we breather out will be the air we will reinhale. That is not just true ecologically. It is a broad truth for life in general. If we breathe out miserliness, we will reinhale miserliness; if we breathe out pettiness, we will breath in pettiness; if we breather out bitterness, then bitterness will be the air that surrounds us; and if we breather out a sense of scarcity that makes us calculate and be fearful, then calculation and fearfulness will be the air we reinhale. But if, aware of God’s abundance, we breathe out generosity and forgiveness, we will breath in the air of generosity and forgiveness. We will reinhale what we exhale.

Ronald Rolheiser
Sacred Fire

ABUNDANCE VS. SCARCITY

The central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity - a belief that makes us greedy, mean, and unneighborly. 

Walter Bruggemann