Reading: a poem by the former poet laureate Billy Collins entitled "The Lanyard"
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift-not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Reading: by Lauren Tyler Wright from Giving – the Sacred Art (p. 6)
A few months ago, I encountered a man in the bread aisle of the grocery store who was in need of change to buy a loaf of bread. He was deaf and could only point and mouth the words of his request. At first I shook my head to the right and left because I had no change. But then I thought, “For goodness sake, Lauren, you have no coins but you do have bills.” I caught his attention, gave him a dollar bill and was taken aback when this stranger embraced me with a hug and a barely audible “thank you.”
Around the same time, I happened to be dealing with the sudden death of someone close. I was having a hard time comprehending the loss – it was a sad and confusing time. What I discovered in the store that day was that somehow, giving that man a buck for bread helped change things for me. Giving money to him got me out of my own skin – only for a minute, perhaps, but long enough to help me glimpse a larger perspective beyond the boundaries of my own sorrow. When that man took my dollar with a grateful smile and then hugged me, I realized I had been a catalyst for joyful gratitude in his life. This, in turn, helped me remember the things in my life that I believe are gifts from God, for which I am grateful. In this way, the simple act of giving a dollar bill to a stranger was a small, but powerful, act of worship in my life.
Reading: from the Christian, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist tradition
There's a priest, a rabbi and a UU minister. They're out playing golf and they're trying to decide how much to give to charity.
So the priest says, we'll draw a circle on the ground, we'll throw the money way up in the air and whatever lands inside the circle, we give to charity.
The [rabbi] says "no", we'll draw a circle on the ground, throw the money way up in the air and whatever lands outside the circle, that's what we give to charity.
The [UU minister] says "no, no, no", we'll throw the money way up in the air and whatever God wants, God keeps.
Wise Investments
A Sermon Delivered on February 12, 2012
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
In the year 1920 a young man living in Boston was remarkably successful in the field of investment banking. Thanks to his superior understanding of financial investment, he was able, in short order, to build up a business that granted investors the ability to earn 50% interest within 45 days, and to double the value of their investments within 90 days. The business was called the “Securities Exchange Company.”
Word quickly spread, and more and more investors from all over New England rushed to invest in this promising financial enterprise. Within months the founder of the company had made millions. His name was Charles Ponzi.
Ponzi’s fortune did not last. By August of 1920, his plan was uncovered, and he was arrested on charges of fraud. It turned out Ponzi wasn’t actually investing the money he received, and paying his clients profits on their investment. Instead he was simply giving them part of their investment capital back, or dispersing some of the funds new investors were depositing.
When Ponzi’s practices were exposed, and his company collapsed, his investors lost about 20 million dollars, which was a lot of money in 1920, more than 200 million in today’s dollars. Ponzi was not the first swindler to take this approach. But, at the time, he was the most successful, and the most well-known. So that, to this day, his name is immortalized in the so-called Ponzi Scheme.
And the Ponzi Scheme still works. In 2008 Bernie Madoff was caught doing the same thing. Madoff’s scheme cost his investors not millions of dollars, but billions.
* * *
Some say that religious institutions are even worse than the shadiest financial brokerage, when it comes to separating us from our money, and promising a questionable future reward. Imagine a bank that happily takes your money, but rather than promising a profit in forty-five or ninety days, promises a heavenly reward you will only receive after you have died.
As Unitarian Universalists there is something deep within our religious DNA, that is wary of giving money to religious institutions. Our deeply held habit to question religious authority goes all the way back to the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Europe.
The Reformation was started when a Catholic priest named Martin Luther posted a letter of public protest on the door of his church, challenging his religious superiors in Rome. Luther was especially critical of the common practice at the time of selling indulgences. For a nominal fee, priests would sell pieces of paper that guaranteed that after our death we would be spared a lengthy stay in fiery pit of purgatory, and – as reward for our worldly generosity – proceed to heaven posthaste.
The Roman church said it was using the funds collected to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Luther asked, why does the pope collect money from the poor, instead of using his own immense wealth? In Luther’s mind, the pope was exploiting the generosity of the faithful. Like Luther, our Unitarian Universalist forbears were among the reformers who questioned Rome.
* * *
To this day, the faithful are remarkably generous. Sociologists say religious people are the most generous people in the world. A study of charitable giving trends in the U.S. shows that religious people give more than three times as much to worthy causes than the non-religious, and they volunteer twice as often. Also, most of the philanthropic giving is directed to religious institutions. Religious people do most of the giving, and most of the gifts go to religious organizations.
(Though I have to tell you, sociologists also have shown that Unitarian Universalists are among the most highly educated and wealthiest religious people in this country. We’re right at the top of the list. But when it comes to our habits of giving, we are way at the bottom. There is room for improvement.)
Now, the cynical among us may say religious people give because they are gullible. The faithful are forever concerned with realities that are invisible to the eye. They are prone to believing the unbelievable – whether the existence of gods, or saviors, or heavenly places we go after we die.
But what the cynic doesn’t understand is that religious giving, at its best, really has nothing to do with any hope for reward. Religious giving, at its best, has nothing to do with the kind of reward Charles Ponzi was offering his investors.
* * *
All great religious traditions encourage their followers to practice generosity. Christians practice tithing, which they trace to a passage in the book of Deuteronomy, when the ancient Isrealites were told to give one tenth of their earnings to the temple. Muslims see charitable giving as one of the five pillars of their faith. And traditionally 2.5 percent of their earnings are given annually during Ramadan, and distributed to the poor. Jews practice tzedakah or righteous giving. For them giving to the synagogue or the needy is an expression of reverence for God.
The Hindu Bhagavad Gita says: “Giving simply because it is right to give, without thought of return, at a proper time, in proper circumstances, and to a worthy person, is enlightened giving. Giving with regrets or in the expectation of receiving some favor or of getting something in return, is selfish giving.” (17:20-21)
Generosity means giving freely with no thought of anything in return. In this way, religious giving is distinctly different from the usual give and take within the secular realm.
In the world of banking, grocery shopping and paying bills, financial transactions are just that: transactions. A give and take. An exchange of money for an object we want, or for services received. “Transactions form the fabric of our lives in our free-market capitalist system, and this influences the way we think about giving,” Lauren Tyler Wright says. But giving is really about much more than money.
There are all sorts of ways to give. You can give time when you volunteer at a nonprofit. You can give hospitality when you open your home to other people for a meal. You can give energy when you pray or meditate on the needs of others. You can give comfort or space when you offer your seat on the bus or train so someone else can sit down. You can give your body when you donate blood or make plans to donate your organs. You can give your possessions when you pass on your clothes to Goodwill or your furniture to Habitat for Humanity.
A generous act can simply be a matter of giving undivided attention to the person in front of you, giving a hand to someone carrying too many grocery bags, giving a smile to a stranger. Lauren Tyler Wright says, “in its healthiest form, the sacred art of giving is about relationship.”
* * *
Researchers at the University of Virginia recently studied the role of generosity in marriages. They understood generosity as “the virtue of giving good things to one’s [partner] freely and abundantly” – like simply making them a cup of coffee in the morning.
The researchers asked 2870 women and men how often they acted generously. How often did they express affection? How often were they willing to forgive?
The researchers found that those with the highest scores on their generosity scale were much happier in their marriage. This was especially true among couples with children. Parents whose generosity scores were above average, were more than three times as likely to report being very happy in their marriage, compared with those with lower generosity scores. (“The Generous Marriage” by Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times, Dec. 8, 2011)
* * *
Religious giving is all about relationships. Our relationships with the people to whom we are closest, and our relationships with people we may have never met. Religious giving has amazing power to break down the barriers that too often divide us, and create unexpected connections.
This is what Lauren Tyler Wright discovered in the bread aisle of a grocery store, when, on a whim, she decided to give a hungry man a dollar. That simple act of generosity, the act of giving with no expectation of return opened a door between two people, which otherwise would have remained firmly shut.
And the act of generosity also opened a door within the author’s soul (or psyche), as she struggled to come to terms with her own grief and sadness. Something changed within her, she says, she was able to get out of her own skin, maybe only for a minute, but long enough to get a glimpse of a larger perspective beyond the boundaries of her own sorrows and her own worries.
* * *
The sacred art of giving is not about a transaction between a giver and a receiver. No, transactions are purely secular – and they have their appropriate role in the market place, in the world of consumer goods, the world of banks and the bills we pay for services received.
The sacred art of giving is about transformation. It is about the change that takes place within us and between us, when we are able to embody a spirit of true generosity.
Generosity is a universal religious practice, because it has remarkable power to transform us. “When we are generous, life is tangibly and qualitatively different,” the Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg says.
“Generosity’s aim is twofold: we give to free others, and we give to free ourselves. Without both aspects, the experience is incomplete. If we give freely, without attachment to a certain result or expectation of what will come back to us, that exchange celebrates freedom both within ourselves as the giver and in the receiver. In that moment we are not relating to each other in terms of roles or differences; there is no hierarchy. In a moment of pure giving, we really become one.” (Lovingkindness, p. 159)
The Buddhist says, “Generosity begins with our recognition of our debt to others.” (Master Hsing Yun) Like the man who stumbles across the word “lanyard” and is reminded of the endless gifts he received throughout his life. We have all received countless gifts of love, from those who raised us. Those who fed us when we were hungry, who nursed us when we were sick, who talk us to walk and swim. Those who came before us, and gave us a breathing body and a beating heart, and clear eyes with which to see the world.
We may think of them as gifts from our elders, or gifts from our ancestors, or gifts from the universe, or gifts from God.
Once we recognize how profoundly we are indebted to others, we realize that the gifts we give are embarrassingly small. We realize there is so much more we could give. We realize that happiness is not found by holding on to our blessings, but by sharing them freely. The smile we give a stranger, the cup of coffee we make for our partner, the dollar we offer for a loaf of bread.
We have so much to give.
If we dare to open our hearts to others,
if we dare to give generously – and expect nothing in return –
we will be transformed.
Amen.
