How to Become Generous

Suppose you were taking a survey, and came across this question:

It’s the bottom of the ninth inning of game seven of the World Series. You are at bat, and a fastball is headed for the plate. What would be the best thing to do?
A. Hit the ball over the centerfield wall for the winning home run.
B. Swing and miss.
C. Pop the ball up to the shortstop.
D. Stroll into the stands and buy some peanuts.

It’s easy to say “A.” To actually do it will depend on habit-skills developed by practicing. And practicing. And practicing.

Or:

You’re standing on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera dressed as Aida. The orchestra is playing the intro music. What’s the best thing to do? Belt out a stunning aria that brings the house down, or stroll into the audience and buy some peanuts?

Or:

A little boy is running toward you crying, blood running down his shin from a scraped knee, and he’s calling you Mom. You recognize that he is not in error about you being his Mom. What’s the best thing to do? Pick him up, speak soothing words, sing his favorite song as you move toward a sink and a cloth to wash the knee – or look around for where you can get some peanuts?

No one can be a good hitter, singer, or Mom without practice – without developing the habit-skills. We can all pick out the best answer on paper -- but we can’t execute unless we’ve practiced. A lot.

Some of that practice can be purely mental – even for skills that seem largely physical. When researchers asked people sit still and focus on imagining themselves throwing a basketball throw a hoop from the foul line, those people’s free-throw shooting percentage improved as much as the people who spent the same amount of time practicing actual free-throw shooting. Mental practice really counts.

The thing is, in life, I often don’t get the chance to do specific practice, mentally or physically. I have to rely on general habits to guide me in specific situations. I can’t imagine beforehand the specific situations I’m going to find myself in. So what I need to do is cultivate a general generosity of spirit – a general generosity that will carry over into unforeseeable specific situations.

I don’t know what practices that woman on the subway used to develop the habits of the generosity of spirit she so obviously had. Most of us have a rather different habit: hold on to your stuff. When we were children, we got scolded for losing things or leaving them unguarded where they could get stolen. The message: hold on to your stuff. Don’t lose it. Keep up with it. Guard it. That certainly became a very ingrained habit-skill for many of us. So when there’s one glove in your hand, and the other glove on the seat of the train, the habit of holding on to your stuff will take a few seconds to unpack – and by that time it’s too late. The doors are closed.

Develop your generosity muscles by exercising them, by performing generous acts. Also, for some really helpful "cross-training," include gratitude practice. Generosity and gratitude are mutually supportive. My guess is that the woman on the subway had a deep sense of thanksgiving for life and experience. When gratitude pervades life, it loosens the impulse to cling and facilitates generosity -- which, in turn, facilitates greater gratitude.

To develop the habit-skill of thankfulness, simply to take a moment each day to name five things you’re thankful for. For example, here at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, I’m am so grateful for the commitment of our leaders, the imagination and vision that motivates this place, the wonderful staff I have to work with, all the Unitarian and Universalist forebears through the centuries that created what I could never have invented, and the Gainesville founders in the fifties and sixties who laid the groundwork for this fellowship – the groundwork upon which we now stand.

Those are some things for which I’m grateful. You?

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Part 4 of 4 of "Celebrate!"
Previous: Part 3: "The Thing to Do With One Glove"
Beginning: Part 1: "Unitarian Universalism: Welcome Home"

The Thing to Do With One Glove

Service is rewarding and meaningful. Providing opportunities for life-enriching service is a key part of this faith community I love. Weeks occasionally come where you might spend 20, 30, 40 hours on a project of this Fellowship. And you do it gladly, joyfully. You go home at the end of long days of Fellowship work and collapse on the bed with a smile on your face. That generosity with our time and energy feels good. As long as such days and such weeks don't come too often.

Some of our volunteer work isn’t so concentrated -- it might be extensive rather than intensive. Serving as our president, for example, might mean 10 hours a week average -- every week for two years. That can be tremendously fulfilling, and I feel good about our Fellowship being a place that offers an opportunity for meaningful service at that level.

I don't feel good about putting our wonderful volunteers in positions that oblige them work beyond those levels that are fulfilling, wholesome, rewarding, and joyous. Our Fellowship is about transformation through service, about spiritual deepening through learning together, worshiping together, engaging in spiritual practice, and serving. We need our Fellowship to be NOT about burn-out. I am concerned that some of our volunteers, bless their beloved and loving hearts, are pushed beyond "transformative service" into "working too hard."

So dream with me. Expanded staff means expanded programs. Our wonderful sexuality education program, called OWL, for Our Whole Lives, could be offered continuously – Gainesville needs some place offering that to the whole community, and we’re the only place that can. We could add a religious education assistant, more music assistants, a sexton. "If we were a wealthy church."

These are extrinsic benefits of your generosity. Generosity is much more that. It is a central spiritual practice for blessing your own life. Let me illustrate. Here's a story I heard a few years ago that impressed the heck out of me:

A woman was getting off the subway in Washington, DC. on a cold winter’s day. She was clutching one glove and fishing around in her coat pocket for the other one as she walks. It wasn't in her coat pocket. She was several steps onto the platform when she spun around to look back into the train car. She clearly saw her other glove sitting on the seat that she just left. The doors started to close. There was no way to get back in time. So she took the glove she had and flung it back into the train – just as the doors closed.

Such a logical thing to do. Let somebody have a full pair. Would you have done that? Me, I’m in awe of that capacity – that spontaneous generosity of spirit.

I have the thought to do that. I have the values, I endorse the principles, to have thrown that glove back on the train. If I were taking a multiple-choice survey, and I came to the question, "What would be the best thing to do in that situation? A., curse the bad luck and continue on your way with your one glove; B, march immediately to the information booth report the lost item and inquire whether subway officials might look for it and hold it for you; C, shout desperately for someone on the train to throw the glove back out to you; or D, throw your glove into the train;" I would answer D. Seeing it on paper, that’s pretty clearly the way to go.

So why do I doubt I’d have been able to actually do it?

In the bustle of the moment, so much going on, thinking about getting to where I’m going, I would have to rely on my habits rather than the sort of considered judgment I could use in calm setting of a paper and pencil test. Most of our lives are run by our habits, not by decisions we make in a calm, removed setting in answer to questions about hypothetical situations. So if you want to be generous, if you want to live out a spirit of open and loving generosity, the habit of generosity must be carefully developed and nurtured through long practice.

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Part 3 of "Celebrate!"
Next: Part 4: "How to Become Generous"
Previous: Part 2: "If We Were a Rich Church"
Beginning: Part 1: "Unitarian Universalism: Welcome Home"

If We Were a Rich Church

I do love being a Unitarian Universalist. I own the label "Unitarian Universalist," so that I can help the world know that there is such a place, and know what I’m all about. As my colleague, Rev. Kimi Riegel, put it:

“I love being a Unitarian Universalist and I'm not going to be quiet or shy about it any more. As a kid I was a shy Unitarian Universalist. I guess I figured since we weren't as big as the Presbyterian Church down the street we weren't as good. I didn't tell my friends about our wonderful church, its exciting heritage or the challenge it offers each of us. But I’ve come to believe this is the faith of the future, as well as the past, and it’s O.K. to be proud. It is exciting to be a Unitarian Universalist.”

I love being a Unitarian Universalist, not because we can believe anything we want. Spiritual deepening isn’t about what you want. It’s about discovering what you are called to – a calling which you can hear only if you quiet down the ego’s cacophony of what it wants. It’s not about what ego wants to believe. It’s about what you find within yourself that you have to believe. I love being a Unitarian Universalist because whatever it is that you find you have to believe, that will be respected and honored here.

On the other side of the coin, I love being a Unitarian Universalist because I am called to relationships of accountability. That discernment of what our spirits call us to believe and do cannot be a solitary task. We cannot go it alone.

We need each other because we humans have such an amazing capacity to fool ourselves. We need others to check in with, to ask us questions, to hold the mirror up so we can see ourselves. We need relationships of accountability -- and we need those relationships to exist within a context of respect for diversity. That’s why I love being a Unitarian Universalist – so much that if it didn’t exist we would have to invent it.

I love being a part of all that we do – our dangerous bastion, and our groups that bring people together to explore and grow, our worship and music, our work together for peace and justice.

This fellowship is not a rich church. We may be rich in tradition, rich in talents, rich in people, rich in wisdom and experience. Our budget, however, is modest.

Personally, I don’t hanker to be any wealthier than I am. But I when it comes to our fellowship, I do find myself resonating with Tevye – the poor milkman in “Fiddler on the Roof”: "What would have been so terrible if we had a small fortune?"

Sing along! Substitute the words below.
(Play first 1:35, then skip to the 3:50 point.)
(

If we were a rich church, UU,UU,UU, UU,UU,UU,UU,U
I would be a happy one indeed, if we were a wealthy church.
Wouldn't have to worry, UU,UU,UU, UU,UU,UU,UU,U
If we were a biddy, biddy rich, UU,UU,UU,UU church

We’d build a great big new social hall, and expand all the classrooms for our kids.
No one would say we don’t have room to meet.
There would be much more staff for Lifespan Development
Offering classes every day
Meeting the needs of families and kids.

We’d give the first 10 percent of all that we had to support social justice in the world.
Think of all the homeless we could feed.
There would be funds galore to fix up the building, and add on if we should grow
And money left to host our own TV show.

If we were a rich church, UU,UU,UU, UU,UU,UU,UU,U
We could better fill the member’s needs, If we were a wealthy church.
Wouldn't have to worry, UU,UU,UU,UU,UU,UU,UU,U
All the world would start to turn around
if we had a wealthier stance in town,
We would spread love all over this earth
If we were a wealthy church!

(Thanks much to Sheri DiGiovanna, whose UU lyrics I modified for this version.)

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Part 2 of "Celebrate!"
Next: Part 3: "The Thing to Do with One Glove"
Beginning: Part 1: "Unitarian Universalism: Welcome Home!"

Unitarian Universalism: Welcome Home!

I just love being a Unitarian Universalist. I love what we are and what we do, so I want to let the world know that what it's getting with me is a Unitarian Universalist. We are a community of faith to grow our spirits amidst our religious diversity. As one of our postcards puts it: "imagine a place where people of different beliefs worship together as one faith."

Community

There are a lot of ways to find community in today’s world. People have Facebook, and volleyball leagues, and going out for a drink after work, mother’s groups. There are 12-step groups, and 12-step groups for people who are family or friends of people who should be in 12-step groups. In Gainesville, there’s the Civic Media Center, and Vets for peace, and the League of Women Voters. If none of that works for you, you can google “civic and social clubs, Gainesville, Florida” and find lots of options there. Those communities, however, are not communities of faith.

Community of Faith

If what you hunger for is a deepening of your spirit;
if you long to be fully charged with the charge of the spirit;
if you long for a refuge from the constant barrage of consumerist, materialist messages, somewhere where your soul can catch its breath long enough to remember that winning by being the one who dies with the most toys is not, after all, the point of this life;
if you need a place that will call you to deep connection, will call you to the work of awakening to the reality of love, that will teach the spiritual virtues -- peace, love, hope, joy, compassion, a fire for justice, the courage to open ourselves to the unknown --
then you need not just a community but a community of faith.

I don’t believe that faith means believing weird, unprovable things. Faith means opening our hearts to the unknown. Ultimately, it’s all unknown. Faith is the courage to be willing to be transformed.

For some people, believing certain unprovable claims is their strategy for opening their hearts to new realms, opening their hearts to transformation – but let us not confuse one strategy of faith with faith itself. Faith means openness to what you don’t control, and the thirst for connection with a wider reality and a wider truth than the daily routine of producing and consuming.

If you need not just a community, but a community of faith, you still have lots of options. In Gainesville, like most US cities, every three or four blocks there’s a church or a synagogue or temple or mosque of faith center of some kind.

Community of Faith and Diversity

If, however, what your spirit hankers for is a community of faith to grow your spirit amidst religious diversity;
if you want a place where people of different beliefs worship together as one faith, a place where Christians and pagans, theists and atheists, humanists and naturalists, Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, join together to share and grow the faith that life is good, that justice is attainable, that peace, inner and outer, is worth pursuing, and that joy is one another’s faces;
if you need a place to do the work of learning how to be the deeply caring, calmly loving person that you want to be, a place where you can be helped in that work by people whose preferred metaphors for alluding to that which is beyond words are highly varying -–
well, welcome home.

Welcome home! That’s what we are, and I love being a part of this. I love this chance to celebrate this wonderful community of faith and diversity.

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Part 1 of "Celebrate!"
Next: Part 2: "If We Were a Rich Church!"