What a blessed surprise! What a joy! What a treasure! The Holy Spirit continually offers us gifts--all day, all night, and then all over again, starting the next morning.
In her essay, Anna Garziera reveals how "zero-sum" thinking can work to undermine our efforts to build community. Through a zero-sum lens, she says, "it becomes clear why some believe that loyalty to one religious or ethnic group excludes one from agreeing with or belonging to other groups. They view the formation of social groups as a zero-sum game when this isn’t the case. In fact, it would be greatly beneficial to society and to themselves if they didn’t view the world that way.. ..
Garziera continues: "Feelings of jealousy of one’s physical possessions is a direct result of zero-sum thinking: When we believe that we alone should benefit from our possessions and resources, we develop a scarcity mindset, and we become unwilling to share. Just as children are taught to share crayons before they can even speak, we too as college students should practice this good habit....
"When I arrived back to campus after five days of hiking in P-WILD, I needed to do some laundry. You can then imagine my disappointment in finding out that my DukeCard was not working in the Southgate laundry room. Laundry basket in hand, I was about to turn back empty-handed when I was offered to have my laundry paid by one student and given two Tide Pods by another. These small favors made my day and were the start of two friendships."
Garziera concludes: "As the word itself suggests, living in abundance is being willing to give and share — knowing our own worth, rejoicing in others’ happiness as much as we rejoice in our own.... Living in abundance, then, is living with peace of mind. Only by defying the scarcity mindset — by sharing our knowledge with others, by helping one-another and by letting go of feelings of jealousy and remorse — can [we] live in harmony."
Thank you, Anna Garziera!!
Jesus shared food, healing, wisdom, and love as he trusted in the Spirit's abundant gifts, and he inspires us to live this way also. Can we do this? Yes we can. Can we start practicing today? Yes again. And we don't have to do it alone. As the Apostle Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"
Anna Garziera's essay, published in September 2023, can be found at www.dukechronicle.com/article/2023/09/092723