Learning to Give, Curriculum Division of The LEAGUE

It takes me immediately to a question of how you live your life, to the foundational stance you take in relation to being alive. For me, it’s grounded in the notion of gift. From a Christian standpoint, this is a belief that everything we are and everything we have is a gift. We’re not owners, but caretakers for the period we’re blessed to be alive. Our life is richest and fullest when we acknowledge our giftedness, and fulfill our responsibility to make the best use of the gifts we’ve been given and to share them so that others might be gifted by the gifts we’ve received and the gift we, hopefully, become as we grow in this life.

This is the foundation of any notion of generosity of spirit.

I have received many extraordinary gifts in my life—some of them very hard to unwrap, some of them I’ve struggled mightily to claim. There’s a part of growing and becoming responsible that has to do with claiming certain challenging gifts. I can remember different times in my life when I’ve been able to look at myself and see this sort of petulant little kid saying, “I don’t want that gift.”

There are a lot of challenges in living from an authentic sense of giftedness, from as authentic a stance of generosity of spirit as you can, in a way that isn’t aimed primarily at making myself more or better in a prideful way. One part of the gift I’ve received is who I am, and one of the ways to honor that gift is to be as fully who I am as possible and to use the gifts I’ve been given as fully as possible. I ought to structure my life in a way that allows me to be as fully who I am as I am able, in a way that shares my gifts with the people I know and love the best and also, in a larger sense, with the world.

Yes, sadly, a lot of it came back as I was grieving and reflecting after he died very suddenly. I think what made it so dramatically clear was his funeral. The church was absolutely packed; you couldn’t have fit another person into the church. As people filed out after the service, they stopped, and person after person said, “You know, knowing your brother changed my life.” The stories they would tell would be about, they would tell this delicately, but there was a clear message underneath that their first response at seeing this kid—he was Mongoloid, he had oriental eyes on a Caucasian kid, he spoke very differently, he acted differently—was to see him as an object, but he would not settle for that. He would insist that they engage him as a person and, as they engaged him as a person, they not only had to confront whatever it was in them that had passed this quick judgment on him and made him an object, but they also found themselves enriched by someone who, in a very gentle way just by being who he was, challenged them to see themselves and the world in a different way, to ask new questions about what it means to be alive, what it means to be human, what it means to accomplish things.

Seeing that reflected back from other people, and as I looked more and more at myself and asked where some of the beliefs and values I had [acquired] came from, I realized that so much of what I took to be true about life came from having had Eric as a brother. I was challenged by who he was, by who I was, by the way other people responded to him and by the way he responded to other people.

There’s one experience that stands out for me as the symbolic representation of all that. At that time in our church, you had to be confirmed to receive communion—and confirmation was considered to be something where you had to intellectually appropriate the faith. At 13 or 14 years old, you had to go through fairly rigorous study, memorize creeds and all this different stuff. And you had to do that to be fed with the rest of the community at the Eucharist on Sunday morning.

Well, my brother clearly did not have the intellectual capacity to do what normal people did to be confirmed. Our priest, who’s a dear friend to this day, talks about the dirty looks my brother would give him on Sunday at the altar when he would not give Eric communion. “Finally” our priest said, “I just couldn’t take it anymore.” So he changed his own understanding of what was required, came up with a confirmation preparation for my brother, and my brother was confirmed.

My family helped found a new church, and I was one of the first acolytes, so my brother wanted to be an acolyte. Well, here it was again. Now, how could he be an acolyte? But having banged down the door to get confirmed, banging down the door to be an acolyte was pretty easy for him. So, as it turned out, he became the longest standing acolyte the church had.

One thing he would do at the midnight service on Christmas Eve—a beautiful, beautiful ritual—this big procession would come in. My brother would be the one carrying the baby Jesus on a pillow to place him in the manger. And I realized that’s what Eric’s life was all about—he was carrying that spirit, that self-giving spirit that is always at service, into the world. He exemplified that as much as anyone I have ever known and more than most people. When I think about that and see him also singing one of the Christmas hymns that has the refrain, Glo-o-o-ria, his mouth would be open wide and his face just beaming with light, singing. When I think of him and think of those qualities about him, I’m immediately drawn into those experiences.

Sure. I think of a meeting I had some years ago just outside of Delhi, with a Sikh leader named Baba Virsa Singh. From one perspective you would say is an illiterate peasant, but from another perspective you would say is an avatar of God, and through another perspective, you would say he is a revered spiritual leader, and on and on. His followers talk about the miraculous healings that have occurred because of his presence. They talk about how his walking over environmentally ravaged land has healed the land, increasing their productivity many times over. They talk about him restoring life to people who have died. These are not things that, for Christians, happened when Jesus was alive and are written about in the Bible, but, for the most part, haven’t happened outside the Bible.

Baba Virsa Singh has an ashram outside of New Delhi called Gobin Sadan, which means House of God. Many of the people who stay there are among the most disenfranchised folks in India. They are welcomed and Gobin Sadan becomes their community. They are full stakeholders. The crops that grow there are unimaginably lush. There are three places in the ashram where, 24 hours a day, there is a sacred fire burning and the sacred scriptures are chanted. Everyone takes a turn.

It doesn’t matter if you are the most advanced religious practitioner or someone who has just come in from the poorest slum somewhere, you share in this ongoing tribute to the generosity of God’s spirit that undergirds the universe, in this ongoing flow of praise for the goodness of what is.

They also have a langar, a communal kitchen, which is a common Sikh practice where anyone who is hungry can come eat. Everyone is equal. Everyone sits on straw mats on the floor. The Prime Minister of India might be sitting next to the poorest person from a slum in Calcutta, and they are sitting next to each other as human beings, sharing a free meal. There is no stigma attached to any of it, and there is no exaltation of anyone. To me, that is another manifestation of a generosity of spirit. The food is provided free of charge and the work is always done by volunteers. Also, there is this generosity of spirit that says everyone is welcome, everyone is equal.

When I visited Gobin Sadan, I was hosted by a woman from Connecticut who had met Baba Virsa Singh when he toured the U.S. She had recognized immediately that he was the spiritual leader she was to follow. So she left everything and followed him—like the New Testament stories about the disciples leaving everything to follow Jesus.

To follow him. Delightful woman. She took me through the little cubicle she lived in. She had books . . . I noticed one was a book by a friend of mine called, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. I said, “Oh, that’s a great book. Have you read it?” “No, I haven’t, I’m looking forward to it.” I said, “Well, the person who wrote it is a friend of mine. It’s a wonderful book.” She said, “Come, I want to show you something.”

So she took me down a dirt path through lush green fields, around the corner, along a stone wall and through a gate, into a big garden. I looked across the garden. There was a statue of Jesus, standing with his arms open wide as if to embrace the world. I thought, well, that’s interesting. There’s Jesus in a Sikh ashram.

She said, “That’s where Jesus appeared to Babaji.” I thought, “That’s interesting.”

She said, “They had a wonderful time together. They had such a wonderful time together that Babaji asked us to have this statue made and, to this day, Christmas is one of our best celebrations on the ashram. And you know what? They still get together from time to time.”

Driving back, I thought, “Boy, this is interesting. This means that Christians don’t own Jesus.” After an initial shock, there is a generosity of spirit in that.

But before I left the ashram, I was able to spend some time with Babaji. He spoke to me through an interpreter. He mostly spoke and I mostly listened. Near the end of out time together, he said, “I want you to know that God is absolute, pure love and all God wants from all of God’s creatures is that they come to God for love. That’s it. And you know what, if all God’s creatures did that, if they all came to God for love, all at the same moment and they all took all the love they could ever want or need in that one moment, it would be as if a tiny bird took a sip of the ocean.” To me that is the foundational reality that calls us to a generosity of spirit and Babaji is someone who not only teaches that but clearly lives it in his life.

So that’s certainly one example. Another very different example was a man in Africa, in Nairobi, Kenya. He was the outgoing head of the All-Africa Council of Churches. And he listened very kindly and patiently to this white guy from America bringing yet another good idea to Africa to make the world a better place. You know that he had experienced many of those in his 20-plus years in this office and had seen far more damage than help come from them. He listened very carefully and when I finished, he said, “Well, before I would know whether I could support this initiative or not, I would need to know how it would affect three kinds of people I’ve come to know in my work here.

“The first kind of people are those who are born to die. They come into this life and the material facts of their existence are so fragile that they take a few breaths . . . then they pass from this existence. What would this initiative of yours do for those people who are born to die?

“The second group is those who are born to survive and it’s an enormous group in terms of the human population. They will spend their lives struggling each day just to keep the physical spark of life alive. What would this initiative do for those people who are born to survive?

 “And then the third group of people is those people who are born to live. They don’t have to worry about their material existence. They don’t have to worry about food each day to survive. They have abundance beyond abundance. What would this initiative do for that group of people?”

In a very different way for me, those tough questions really cut to the core of generosity of spirit because they are asking that we live our lives not only for ourselves and whatever good idea we have at the moment but live our lives in an intentional way that is mindful of the fullness of human experience on this planet and recognize that we have a shared responsibility for all our sisters and brothers. That’s not to say that we can solve every problem that exists or that we have to abandon this project or that because it doesn’t do that. It is to say we’re here to have a mutual responsibility, a mutual accountability, and that what we have been given needs to flow in a way that is mindful of the fullness of human experience.

Because abundance can immediately translate into material abundance. It is possible for the poorest person to feel blessedness, but there’s not much you can identify as abundance on a material plane in that person’s life. So to help people feel their own blessedness and to feel that they are a blessing. As I say that, I realize that in that there are the same two dimensions, confidence and humility. To feel that I am a blessing is to feel some confidence in myself. To feel my own blessedness, to realize that this is coming to me as a gift, is to feel humility. But to help people find that experience of blessedness in themselves and in finding it in themselves to find it in others also, those two things I think go together importantly.

I go back again and again and again, as a Christian, to Jesus’ summary of the law, when he was asked, “What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?” Drawing on his Jewishness, Jesus said, “You must love God with the fullness of your being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

I think that “love our neighbor as you love yourself” is really important and I know that in my upbringing the idea of loving yourself was always chopped off as being prideful. So to feel myself as a blessing helps me to love myself not in a prideful, exclusive way but in a way that reflects the giftedness of life and makes it more possible for me to be able to see the blessing in someone else, because it’s not unique to me although I’m a unique expression of it. So my belief would be, if you can help people experience self-love and also love another—not just say it, but really experience it about themselves and other people—you’ve gone a long way toward opening the flow of generosity of spirit.

Sure. The Selfish Giant is a story of a giant who had this big palace that he lives in all alone and these wonderful gardens. The children like to sneak through a hole in the fence and play in the giant’s garden. The giant is largely unaware of this until one day he notices all the children playing in his garden. He gets furious, races out and scares all the kids away, and then builds a huge wall around his garden with a “No Trespassing” sign. So the kids have to play in the dirty street and the giant’s basically imprisoned by the big wall he’s built.

Winter comes and winter goes, and spring comes everywhere but to the giant’s garden. It’s still winter in the giant’s garden, always winter. The north wind is pulling down the slates from the roof and everywhere is snow and icicles and the giant doesn’t know what’s going on.

Then one morning he is awakened by this very peculiar sound. He realizes it’s the birds singing. He looks out the window and sees that spring has come to his garden. Then he realizes the reason it’s come is that somehow the children have crept in and are playing in his garden. Then he realizes what a fool he’s been because by keeping the children out, he has kept the spring and new life out.
 
As he looks more closely, he sees children playing everywhere, and everywhere trees blossoming. But in one corner of the garden, it’s still winter. The giant sees a little boy who’s crying bitterly at the bottom of the tree, trying to get up and he can’t. So the giant suddenly realizes what he’s done. He sneaks out into the garden, but all the other children run away because they see the horrible giant coming. But the little boy is crying so much he doesn’t notice. The giant picks him up and puts him in the tree, and suddenly spring breaks out in that corner of the garden.

The giant tears down his wall and welcomes the children back. As he grows older, he looks out and says, “There are beautiful flowers in my garden, but the most beautiful flowers are the children.” But that little boy he helped up in the tree he never sees again. He keeps asking the kids, “What happened?” But they don’t know.

He gets older, and finally one day, he goes out into his garden and sees that little boy. The little boy has wounds on his hands and feet and in his side. The giant goes up to him and says, “Who has dared to wound you. Tell me that I might take my ax and slay him.” The little boy says, “No, these are the gifts, the wounds of love.”  The giant is filled with awe. The little boy says, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

When the children come home from school and go into the garden, they find the giant lying dead in the garden all covered with white blossoms.

It’s a beautiful story.

In The Happy Prince, there’s a prince, in a small village, who dies. Everyone admires him, so they create a beautiful gilded statue to the Happy Prince with jewels in the sword belt and jewels for eyes. The town council and the mayor and all those folks would walk around the statue and point up and say, “Oh, how distinguished our town is because we have this beautiful statue of the Happy Prince.”

Then there’s a swallow that has fallen in love with a reed down by the river, but the reed’s very fickle. She goes wherever the wind blows. But the swallow is so in love that he stays with the reed long after all the other swallows leave to go to Egypt for the winter. He stays and stays, trying to get a relationship going with the reed.

Finally he realizes she’s never going to be in love with him so he decides to go to Egypt. He takes off and decides to rest the first night under the legs of the statute of the Happy Prince. And as he’s sleeping there, he suddenly feels drops of water. “This is strange,” he thinks. “There’s not a cloud in the sky. Why is it raining?”

The swallow it looks up and realizes it’s not rain, but tears from the Happy Prince. So he flies up to the prince’s face and asks, “What’s wrong?”

The Happy Prince replies, “Swallow, swallow, little swallow, there’s so much human misery. Right now I’m looking out and seeing a little boy lying sick in his bed and his mother is weeping over him because she has no money to buy medicine for him. Swallow, swallow, little swallow, will you take one of the jewels out of eyes and give it to her so she might buy some medicine?”

So the swallow takes the jewel, gives it to the mother and cools the little boy with the flapping of his wings. When he finally flies back to report to the prince, it’s too late to set out for Egypt, so the swallow decides to spend another night with the prince.

The next day, the Happy Prince says, ”Swallow, swallow, little swallow, over there I see more misery. Would you take one of the jewels from my sword?” The swallow does.

Day after day this scene repeats itself. Jewel after jewel is taken away, until all that is left is one eye. Then all the gold is taken away. Then even the last eye is taken away to help relieve human misery.

Finally, the Happy Prince says, “Now, little swallow, you must leave and go join your friends in Egypt.” The swallow says, “No, Prince, though it is very cold, now that you can no longer see, I will stay here with you.”

That night the swallow dies. The town council, the mayor and all those folks are walking by the next day and they look up and say, “Our Happy Prince looks so shabby. Whatever happened to his splendor? We should take him down and build a new statue.”

So they take the Happy Prince down and melt him down and discover that everything has melted but his broken heart, which they throw into the dustbin with the dead bird they had found at the prince’s feet.

Up in heaven God says to an angel, “Go down to the Earth and bring me back the most precious possessions there.” The angel comes back with the broken heart and the dead bird.

They are both wonderful stories that speak to the generosity of spirit. There are probably lots of others but those certainly are two that came to me.

Also, there’s one of Jesus’ teachings that has to do with this in a wonderfully challenging way. You may be familiar with it. It’s a parable told about laborers in the vineyard. The steward came out early in the morning to the marketplace to get workers to go labor in the vineyard and he says “I will pay you a certain amount for a day’s work.” They agree and go to work.

A couple of hours later, the steward goes back to the marketplace and hires some more laborers, saying only that he will pay them what is fair at the end of the day. A couple of hours later he hires even more workers, and so on until two hours before the end of the day, he hires even more people and they all work.

When the day is over, the workers line up to be paid. The folks who arrived last are paid first. The steward gives them the full day’s wages, even though they were only there for two hours. To the workers who were there for four hours, he gives a full day’s wages and so on.

Finally, the workers who’ve labored all day long are ready to be paid. They think that if the steward gave the workers who were there only two hours a full day’s wages, he will give them quite a bit more. But he gives them a full day’s wages.

They’re incensed and say, “Wait a minute. We worked all day long. We were there through the heat of the day and you’re paying us the same amount you paid these people who were only here for two hours?”

He replies, “We agreed that you would get a certain amount for working all day and you were happy to receive that. You’ve been paid as we agreed. Do you begrudge me my generosity because I paid these who were only here for two hours the same as I paid you?”