Last week on the CBS Sunday Morning show, there was a story that has traveled with me all week. It was a story about a man in his eighties who is the gravedigger for a small town cemetery. It might sound like a downer yet it was anything but. Though he could have handed this job on to someone else, he continues to do this work because he wants it done right, even digging the grave for his own wife. He also does other handyman tasks for people well into the years when most people are settled into retirement. Those interviewed talked of his kindness, his helpfulness, the way the work he does for people often does not come with a bill… though he says he will send one when asked. One of those who had received such generosity said about him that “He is someone who knows that he has enough.”

I have thought about that ‘enough’ many times over the last week. Enough. It seems an elusive thing at times. Living in a country, a world, that has difficulty recognizing what is ‘enough’ it is easy to be lured by the next shiny thing, the new, must-have product, the advertisements that convince us of a need we did not know we had. These messages permeate our screens, our written pages, and eventually our minds. It is an insidious landscape to traverse and it is one that is planted in us from a very early age.

Thinking about this man whose work is to prepare the earth for the eternal reception of loved ones, I wondered at this message of ‘enough’. What is enough for me? What is enough for you? Did I raise children who know how to recognize the enough in their lives? Do I live a life that reminds me that I do, indeed, have enough?

Of course, enough is a relative experience. I write this from the place of privilege. I have enough food, a safe place to live, friends and family who support and care, resources that provide for all my basic needs. There are certainly countless people around the world and in my scope of living who cannot say the same. Their enough is different than mine and can provide a mirror for assessing my own life and how I choose to live it.  

Of course, there are some things I can never have enough of…beauty in all its forms…the sound of birdsong…the sight, sound and presence of my children…the color green…music, music, music…the sparkle of sunlight on water…books and the stories that live in them. For these things, I am a hoarder and proud of it. Yet all these things add nothing to the financial economy. Only my soul economy.

These days I am trying to be awake and aware of all that creates my own ‘enough.’ Before I am seduced into the product that calls out to me from the store aisles or that pops up on my newsfeed, I ask myself about my true need. And that true need is usually pretty simple. It may be best expressed in this poem by David Whyte that I have come back to again and again:

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now.

What is your ‘enough’? What guides your thinking and acting in discovering this? It seems to me it is a lifelong quest and one that takes courage and wisdom. But I believe, like the grave digging octogenarian, it is, in the end, one that leads to a life of gratitude and joy. A life spent opening itself again and again. Every day. Every moment. 

There are people I know who are described as ‘hummingbirds’. These are folks who have the ability to flit from one thing to another, always on the move, sometimes accomplishing many things in the course of a day. Their constant motion can make those of us who have a slower movement in the world feel as if we are laggards, sitting as we do trying to squeeze in the last paragraph of a book we are savoring, putting off till tomorrow what could be completed in the day, in the next moment, breathing at a different, slower pace. 

Hummingbirds. Over the last few days I have had the blessed privilege to be present to hummingbirds. Their rapid beating wings. Their flight passing by my head with a surprisingly loud sound for such a tiny creature. Their constant motion as they suck sweet nectar from the feeders of admirers. Have you ever tried to photograph a hummingbird? It takes a finer camera than my iPhone but still I try with limited success. 

Weighing in at 2.7-3 grams, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is about the weight of a penny. Its wings move 70-80 times per second…per second! When in love…or at least mating…they can flap their wings up to 200 times per second. Wow! What a seducing tactic! And some species of hummingbirds can live up to 12 years though most live only 4-6 years. Considering their size, their very fragile size in this big world, this seems miraculous.

Observing these beautiful birds as I did I became aware of how we are invited every day to be present to those beings that travel the planet with us. Most of the time I am focused on the two legged, those that walk upright on the ground. I have things to say to them and tasks to complete with them, things to give and receive from them. But allowing my eyes to simply hold the fluttering wings of these fellow Earth inhabitants made my days fuller, richer. We were existing here…at the same time…on this amazing planet. Their work was to move quickly, storing up as much energy as they needed to be able to fly so furiously. My work was to watch, to love their frantic beauty, and to allow gratitude to rise in my throat like tears.

Of course, the words of Mary Oliver rose up from some stored place in my memory:
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

A new week is beginning. The opportunity is before us to be astonished. This mind and heart and ‘body-clothes’ filled life is waiting to see the large and the small. Like the hummingbird calling to us to notice and rejoice.