Generosity and Gratitude
READING
(excerpts from John Rawls – A Theory of Justice)
Introduction: John Rawls lived from 1921 to 2001; he was a professor of philosophy at Harvard. His most famous challenge to political assumptions was in his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice.
“…the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are …what free and rational persons…would accept for equality…social cooperation…and the form of government. These principles would be fair because they would be determined by equals in the “original position” – or the state of nature – which is of course a hypothetical situation…
The idea of the “original position” is that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance. They do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations.
In regard to social and economic inequalities: these are to be arranged so that they are both
(a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and
(b) attached to positions and offices open to all.
…While the distribution of income and wealth need not be equal, it must be to everyone’s advantage and at the same time, positions of authority and offices of command must be accessible to all. One applies this principle by holding positions open, and then, subject to this constraint, arranges social and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits.
As in The Philosophical Journey, ed. By Lawhead, pp. 582-86
READING
Introduction: Bill McKibben is a scientific writer who has been called our country’s most important environmentalist. Since he wrote Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, published in 2007, from which this reading is taken,…McKibben has focused on grass-roots activism, especially around reducing carbon emissions. In case this impresses you, he’s a friend of the Land Institute…
“…all discussion of local economies is about Fair Trade – about raising wheat and lettuce in a way that honors both farmer and soil; about growing timber in a way that allows loggers to work at a reasonable pace and in a living forest; about saving and producing energy in quantities that don’t require military adventure or climatic upheaval. About giving up some measure of efficiency for other values…
In a world where more people paid attention to the lives of farmers here and abroad – met them at the market or on the Net – it would be hard to maintain the current system of corporate subsidies and ruinous “free trade” agreements. If fairness demands a slightly higher price, and if that means we need to get along with somewhat smaller quantities, I am confident we will eventually find the tradeoff worth making… (175)
“Its extremely hard to imagine a world substantially different from the one we know. But our current economies are changing the physical world in horrifying ways. It’s our greatest challenge – the only real question of our time – to see whether we can transform those economies enough to prevent some damage and to help us cope with what we can’t prevent. To see if we can manage to mobilize the wealth of our communities to make the transition tolerable, even sweet, instead of tragic. ( 232)
This Thanksgiving, let’s not be thankful for how much we have. Let’s be thankful for enough and for opportunities to share.
If you’re like me, it will be a change to take just enough, as the dressing and cranberries are passed around…It will be a change to be grateful for the opportunity to share..
.and that little shift could change the world.
My proposition this year is that being thankful for smaller portions is the change we need!
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I want to take the generosity approach to gratitude this year because we can’t help but notice where greed has gotten us. Unending growth and technological efficiency has cost too much… Greed promotes growth at all costs; asks for more and bigger – no matter what. By its nature, greed is insatiable…And too often, greed is inadvertently praised at Thanksgiving, as we’re grateful for abundance.
This year, I invite us to honor personal efforts to change our own gratitude motivations – changing from those we’ve breathed in with the culture… to religious or spiritual motivations that are compatible with limits and generosity/ those that will enable a future.
What we hear from Thanksgiving patriots are comparisons of material wealth. I have to smile at delusions of that first potluck, when American Indians brought most of the food…
it was likely not extravagant….
so, the linking of gratitude and generosity is part of the tradition of this holiday. Peeling off greed, something added by a culture turned materialistic as the economy grew, is possible – if we are intentional.
Maybe you, like me, have years of practicing greed. I’ve been greedy with possessions and money, food, with attention and affection… with time. As I’ve worked with expanding generosity as a spiritual practice, as you probably have also, I’ve found that I still have enough.
I remember looking for a book I needed one day several years ago and wondering whether I had loaned it out. I often didn’t get books back…and I tried to look for a record of who I had loaned it to…and no luck, so I started getting angry – in general…
It occurred to me then, that I was causing myself suffering. I knew enough Buddhism to know that attachment causes suffering and its a choice whether to be attached.
So, I decided to release my books – to loan or give them freely and without regard for whether they would be returned. I’ve been doing this for several years and I’m so grateful that sharing books is possible….so glad to give freely.
Similarly with time, feeling attached to my schedule or plan has given way to, generally,allowing for interruptions, welcoming a surprise encounter… Trying to reduce time greed or time management greed has made life more spacious, more enjoyable overall. And somehow, things still get done – mostly on time.
So, regarding books and time, where there was a greedy angst, now there is grateful ease…what I’ve been working on lately is food. This Thanksgiving will be a huge challenge in the portion discipline I’ve set for myself!
Isn’t there always something…?
When our focus shifts to ease and generosity in possessions, time, relationships…we are more likely to see these same qualities in others:
There’s the story about the wise real estate agent who was approached by potential buyers about what the neighbors are like:
The first potential buyer asked what the neighbors are like…and the real estate agent answered by asking what the neighbors are like in the place they were coming from –
oh, she shook her head… “they are suspicious, stingy, rude…
and the real estate agent responded – That’s just how the neighbors are around here.
The second potential buyer asked and the agent responded with the same question – How are the neighbors in the place you are moving from?
When the second buyer smiled broadly and said ‘Oh we have the best neighbors – friendly, kind, thoughtful, generous…I can hardly bear to leave them”
…the agent said – “and that’s just how the neighbors are around here…”
We see what we give attention to and what we practice ourselves. For me, I want to practice generosity, even if it means my portion is smaller.
If we want change, we can’t keep doing the same thing; we can’t keep being the same way:
At the root of our economic system’s assumptions is individual greed. It is assumed that rich and poor want to get the most out of the system that can can for their individual salves. It is assumed that our primary or only life-motivation is having more money for ourselves.
My life-experience is that people hold many things to be more valuable than extra cash in their pocket.
One of those things we value is democratic community/what is sometimes called engagement with the common good.
And so, we live within the contradiction of an economy that assumes individual greed and personal values that resist the assumption. The Rawls’ reading shows that we could think about economy in a whole different way:
What Rawls’ “original position” challenges us to do is to step outside skepticism or cynicism about current economic systems and institutions…to imagine how we might make a fair system…
an economy where there was equal opportunity… where if someone was paid at a higher rate than most, it would be because there was a legitimate benefit to the common good. We need to be able to imagine this and to live it out, even if on a small scale…to see what it is we want to move toward.
This intellectual possibility calls for a new theology – an image of generosity that captures the imagination:
At the Cluster Campout, Kanza historian Ron Parks (5th generation Kansan) described an approach to restoring wholeness in all matter that he learned from this tribe. He said that giving gifts was a means of atonement – a way that the spiritual force in all matter was re-joined/re-united:
There was a sacred rock, which was a portal to greater spiritual energy and when gifts were brought there, they helped the Great Spirit: it was a mutual aid program of human to Great spirit and Great Spirit to human re-alignment. Through gifts brought tothe rock and through the gift of life given by earth, there is restoration of power/ a gathering of mutual energy.
This image of mutual aid is the opposite of asking for more from God…it is a giving to God so that everyone/everything will be whole: Grateful, I give. Life is enough and I want to give what I can to restore and re-energize the whole.
his ritual and its underlying assumptions capture my imagination:. Greed hurts the earth; generous gratitude restores it; greed separates people from each other; grateful generosity unites us. These are the values I want behind the economy I’m engaged with.
As we imagine and act in ways that shift us toward local and sustainable economies, we have a wondrous opportunity to live, not from conventional and assumed greed, but rather from the grateful generosity that we want to cultivate in ourselves and each other. In the 2nd reading, Bill McKibben challenges us to imagine a different way of being in mutual-serving relationship with each other:
The Occupy movement started this past summer with a call from Adbusters Magazine to meet at the Charging Bull statute – a few blocks from Wall Street on Sept. 17. Later, they moved to Zucotti Park. It was the right moment in history and people signed on through social media.
While there was an early effort to determine a single demand, nothing seemed to be enough…and no one wanted to beg for anything from the powers that be.
When a couple thousand people came to New York City, they wanted to practice democratic decision-making. They wanted to tell their stories directly to supporters and the public. They wanted to share food and tents with people who lived in the park…and to negotiate peaceable with those who resist inevitable change. (Nathan Schneider, The Nation, Oct. 19, 2011)
I notice values among Occupy demonstrators that I resonate with:
I see “justice, equity and compassion in human relations” in sharing food and tents .
I hear creative collaboration in music, drumming, chants and calls to carry messages around the camp.
I sense, through the physical presence of the range of bodies and faces, that there is a yearning for economic justice that goes beyond self-interest… to take on greed with a challenge of fairness .
Because of the Occupy Movement, we were especially alert to Bank of America planning to add a debit card charge. And when someone suggested moving money to small, local banks – it struck a chord…it was an action we could do that might have an impact:
Bank Transfer Day on 11/5 seems to have been a great success…localizing the economy by shifting out of large banks to local credit unions. The Christian Science Monitor initially reported that the “Move your Money” movement had 650,000 followers, but recently reported it was expected to continue…and be passing 1 million shifting their money…which could be just a beginning. That so many people are taking this concrete action shows an interest in and maybe even the beginning of a commitment to localizing the economy – which McKibben says is how we will save the world:
Once we’ve started down the localizing road…maybe we’ll be increasingly willing to pay people we know more for less – because that will be more fair in the long term.
“Grateful to have enough and to be able to share” – is personal and its also structural/an economic system.
Its about portion discipline at Thanksgiving dinner, about noticing generosity and being grateful…
Its about examining assumptions beneath our economic system and if we have different values, seeing how we might disentangle ourselves a little.
Just like Occupy demonstrators, we may not see exactly how our gifts are needed to make wholeness, but we can persist with awareness until it becomes apparent.
This Thanksgiving, enjoy noticing generosity and limits, with a heart full of gratitude.
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