Nan Lurie
Promised land
(1941 - 1942)
Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York

"Who knows where such mustard seeds come from, anyway?"

Some significant portion of Prosperity never exists in any present. The future might prove to be the most significant element of it. Certainly, some Prosperity usually exists in a prosperous present, and much of it might remain as fond memories of some past Prosperity, but neither warm recollections nor present relations with it thrive without warm anticipation of upcoming Prosperity. Prosperity seems to require some sense of continuity. The disparity between a strong, felt present sense of Prosperity and its actual existence probably lies largely in that sensed future, for a sensation that the future will not contain adequate Prosperity seems plenty and enough to smother any present sense of possessing it. Prosperity was never actually an asset, but usually more an anticipation, anyway.

No contract seems capable of providing this sense of impending, either. Something less and also something more seems absolutely necessary. Might I be speaking of another faith-based initiative? If so, from whence doth such faith emergeth? (Excuse me, I accidentally slipped into an Old Testament prose style there.) What convinces me? What convinces anybody that their future holds such reassuring imaginary substance? There could and can be no possible verification of such a sense, no possible validation, aside from the actual experience of living within its presence. It possesses no substance, yet it sure seems to support stuff no physical structure could ever bear. Yet it’s there, that sense of positive potential; heck, that certainty that you already possess it! Prosperity might usually be much more than half just this sort of anticipation, this logically unwarranted confidence.

Might Prosperity be at root “just” a belief? A sense of a presence not evident to any observer, however objective, yet still a significant influence over the experience of its holder? This sense might be what the Prosperity Gospel people espouse, though they seem to take their beliefs a lot too literally for me to agree with. It doesn’t appear to be simply a matter of manifesting via believing, of conjuring up a future out of little more than the thinnest type of air. Yet still, some element of this mysticism does seem to underpin every sense of Prosperity, present or merely impending, that I’ve ever personally experienced. I felt not merely successful, but blessed, over and above whatever I’d honestly deserved because I’d literally earned it. Prosperity seems like a bonus on top of success, the cherry on top, the gold-plating, the blessing independent of its underlying decent deed.

Further, that sense of an impending Prosperity seems to be self-reinforcing, though it also seems remarkably fragile. For myself, when I start working on a project, I almost always begin with a convincing belief that I will very likely succeed. This form of Prosperity, as if I hold a reserve of success banked and awaiting my withdrawal, fuels my earliest engagement. Certainly, I have no reason other than a few convincing beliefs and perhaps some similar experiences to believe that I might succeed. I just seem to convince myself, then queue up to collect. Complications batter this belief, and sometimes set me back on my heels before I manage to collect my success. Just last week, I set about to assemble a manuscript I’d taken a fresh sparkle to. I imagined myself just copying and pasting, then formatting the result to achieve that objective, but the final compile wouldn’t cooperate. It was as if a devil had jumped into my future dream expressly to gum up the works. A process that, if it had worked, would have taken perhaps forty-five seconds to complete, wouldn’t work. My sense of plenty slowly leaked out of my aspirational balloon. Three days later, difficulty still unresolved, I’ve set aside that effort, baffled at where that initiating sense of Prosperity and plenty so quickly disappeared to.

I could have sworn that I had succeeded at similar efforts before, but I just couldn’t for the life of me remember from whence that particular Prosperity emerged. Whether luck or knowledge, I was unable to resurrect it for that intended purpose, and I became an instant pauper as a result. I have been slinking through my life since. Other aspirations have also taken it in the shorts as my disappointment at losing access to that one Prosperity, that single possibility, infected all my other parallel ones. I feel fragile. Those of us who somehow lose access to that clear sense of impending Prosperity might always be the worse for the experience. The naive sense that I possess what I clearly could have never owned, that perhaps I’d mistaken some past accident as a deliberate blessing, that I owned something nobody ever owns, left me feeling bereft. I wanted to feel that Prosperity of possibility again, but it suddenly seemed far out of reach, a practical impossibility. Perhaps I need a mustard seed of faith to find that particular Prosperity again. Who knows where such mustard seeds come from, anyway?

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz