Skip to main content

Generosity: The Close Relative of Gratitude

I am writing this entry to the Three Village Clergy Association Blog in the days before Thanksgiving, a time when many people express their “thanks” for the blessings and gifts they have received in their lives. May each of our lives be full of blessings and gifts. An awareness and a practice of gratitude is good for our spirits. Further, it’s good to remember that we are not just recipients of blessings and gifts; we are givers of blessings and gifts as well. A close relative of gratitude is generosity. 
For me generosity is a practice: a material, intellectual, emotional and spiritual practice. I understand generosity as a real sharing of something important to me. Of giving as an intentional choice I have made. I don’t think generosity is giving something I happen to have left over and didn’t really need anyway. I mean that’s good, especially if what I give away can be useful to others, but it’s not what I mean. Nor do I think generosity is a reward.  When I leave the wait staff a large tip because they have given me good service I don’t think I’m being generous.  I’m rewarding people and businesses for something that has pleased me. Generosity is a willingness, an intentional choice to give something that matters. It is not easy to be generous with our attentive presence, our time, our talent, our possessions or our money. It takes effort. Thus we need to cultivate the willingness to give and constantly practice it. I say this because it’s easy to practice greediness. How much is enough? Just a little more.
Why practice generosity? Because it is connective tissue. Greed sets me apart, generosity joins me to you. “From you I receive, to you I give; together we share and from this we live.” No one of us is so independent that we have no need of one another. No one of us has nothing to share. Life calls us to give. Life calls us to receive. Our choice has to do with the quality and the spirit of our giving and the balance we maintain between our giving and our receiving. In some ways, to give is to receive. So often I have heard people say that when they give they seem to receive even more than they ever gave. That's the paradoxical profundity of it.
Why practice generosity? Because it frees us and it opens us to fearlessness and a deeper, stronger life. Greed encourages scarcity mind. Generosity encourages abundant mind. A scarcity mind is one that tells us there is not enough and we can't afford the time, the money, the possession, the whatever. We believe our scarcity mind without examining the truth of its claim, and thus a scarcity mind fuels fear, anxiety and powerlessness. "If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive." (Dorothy Soelle)
Why practice generosity? Because it is just; it is the ethical thing to do. Jewish and Christian teachings call us to generosity. Buddhists say that generosity is compassion in action. Compassion in action goes by the name of justice. One of the Five Pillars of Islam is to give away a certain percentage of one’s income yearly to charity. “The meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade we do not expect to sit.” (Nelson Henderson) Why practice generosity? Because our giving has more far reaching implications and consequences than we may ever dream of.

So this Thanksgiving, as we are mindful of our blessings, let us remember the close relative of gratitude: generosity. May we carry the spirit of abundance, symbolized by the Thanksgiving table, into our lives as the practice of generosity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Make even these days count

One of the most popular features on a local newscast of a small TV station is something rather surprising. It is a feature called- “The Day of the Week”.  Today is…….. Monday!  The station put forth this as a kind of joke at first, but it was so popular that it became a regular daily addition to the morning newscast.  Apparently, so many of us have lost track of what day it is that we need a reminder. During this stay-at-home time, every day seems to blend into the next.  It is truly difficult to remember how many days we have all been quarantined at home, what the date is and what day of the week it is.  Many of us have a few markers that help- jobs that pause for the weekend, celebrations of Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays- special days of worship.  But even with these, the days seem to bleed into each other like a striped shirt washed in hot water. The period that we are in right now in the Jewish calendar is ironically, a time of counting. A time w...
Post a Comment
Read more
Compassion On the radio a few days ago there was a piece about refugees arriving by boat to the shores of a country that in the past had been welcoming, but this time people were yelling angrily and running into the water to block the boats from landing.   The boats were full and there were children on board. The turmoil and anger in the crowd was audible. I don’t speak their language, but the reporter said that people blocking the boats were shouting “Go back home. We don’t care about the babies.” I was repulsed. I could not stop thinking about it. “We don’t care about the babies.” What would it take for me to say that? For my friends to say that? My neighbors? Horrible thought, that people I know might be moved to yell at desperate people “We don’t care about the babies.” I started to ask myself how that could happen, what it would feel like to push away needy people and shout “I don’t care about the babies.” Please don’t stop reading when I tell you that suddenly my...
Post a Comment
Read more
I did not want to write about this virus-time. I did not think I could.  Another piece was in my mind this week, not quite yet taking shape. But when I sat to write, the virus took my attention and I could not wrest it back.   There are useful and funny memes online, and stories of good will and good works, and words of inspiration and comfort. And terrible stories, too.  Mostly at a distance, we have been sharing dance and art and music, facts and opinions, cautionary tales and fairy tales. We miss hugs and doing projects and working and learning together in person. Sometimes we are in a bubble for a while that lets us just be, free of anxiety or fear.  Sometimes we cannot get out of bed.  Sometimes we cannot sleep.  Sometimes we eat all the chocolate and sometimes we eat nothing.  We who are privileged live like this.  We are grateful to the people who work at the jobs we need to have done even in t...
Post a Comment
Read more