Please accept my apologies for yesterday’s “Hubbell Pew.” My intention for this service is to offer a moment of quiet reflection, a space to meditate and step away from the relentless churn of daily life. Yesterday, I strayed too close to the noise, touching on topics that felt less like an escape and more like an extension of the political and media bombardment we already face. My aim is to provide respite, not amplify disturbance.
I’m a great admirer of Maria Popova and her “Marginalian” newsletter. If only I possessed a tenth of her talent! Recently, she introduced me to a book I hadn’t known: The Wanting Monster by Martine Murray. Popova described it as “an almost unbearably wonderful modern fable about who we would be and what this world would be like if we finally arrived, exhausted and relieved, at the still point of enough.”
That phrase—”the still point of enough”—immediately resonated with me and feels like a perfect subject for a morning meditation. I’m not referring to the societal few who possess immense wealth yet remain driven by insatiable accumulation; they grapple with their own unique challenges. Instead, I’m thinking of most of us who are frequently anxious about future scarcity, and in doing so, we often miss the opportunity to experience that “still point of enough” today. These concerns are very real, yet they can also be significant barriers to present enjoyment.
As Maria Popova eloquently puts it, arriving at this “still point” means embracing “the knowledge that you have enough.” She acknowledges that this knowledge is difficult to cultivate amidst “the commodified counterfeits of happiness that light up these sunset days of Western civilization, with its mesmerism of maximums and its cult of more, materially and spiritually.” She observes that “capitalism goads us to do more in order to own more while the secular church of self-improvement goads us to be more in order to do more.”
While I don’t have a definitive answer for how we reach this “still point of enough,” I strongly suspect the path may lie in nature. The poet Wendell Berry, in his work “This Day,” explored the concept of enoughness beautifully:
“I am drawn to the woods on the local hillsides or along the streams… In such places, on the best of these sabbath days, I experience a lovely freedom from expectations — other people’s and also my own. I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration. The poems come incidentally or they do not come at all. If the Muse leaves me alone, I leave her alone. To be quiet, even wordless, in a good place is a better gift than poetry.”
Berry frequently wrote about the freedom from expectations. I find myself nodding along with his “porch philosophy,” especially when he penned:
“Finally will it not be enough, after much living, after much love, after much dying of those you have loved, to sit on the porch near sundown with your eyes simply open, watching the wind shape the clouds into the shapes of clouds?”
Today’s meditation has run a bit long, which often happens when I delve into finding that “still point” and “freedom from expectations.” Perhaps that’s part of the journey itself.
I love wendell Berry, and he would appreciate this post!
Thank you. Wendell was a true gift. W
Still spot on yesterday.
Our parents and most who survived the Depression learned the ‘still point of enough’ lesson day in / day out and never forgot it!
Thanks Davis. Yes they did and I wish I had paid more attention. W.