Jim and his wife Martha went to the state fair every year. Every year Jim would say, “Martha, I’d like to ride in that airplane.” And every year Martha would say, “I know, Jim, but that airplane ride costs ten dollars, and ten dollars is ten dollars.” One year Jim and Martha went to the fair and Jim said, “Martha, I’m 71 years old. If I don’t ride that airplane this year I may never get another chance.” “Well, that may be,” Martha replied, “but that airplane ride still costs ten dollars, and ten dollars is ten dollars.” The pilot overheard them and said, “Folks, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take you both up for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say one word, I won’t charge you, but if you say anything it’s ten dollars.” Jim and Martha agreed and up they go. The pilot does all kinds of twists and turns, rolls and dives, but not a word from behind him. Finally the pilot gives up and takes the plane in for a landing. As they come to a stop the pilot says over his shoulder, “By golly, I did everything I could think of to get you to yell out, but you didn’t.” Martha replied, “Well, I might have said something when Jim fell out of the plane, but ten dollars is ten dollars.”

Talk about knowing the value of money! That was something my parents tried to instill in me from an early age—and I suspect the same was true for a lot of you. My parents came of age during the depression and frugality was in their bones. And, though my parents were better off than their parents had been, money was still tight when I was growing up. I received an allowance—but I had to do my chores to get it—and on a farm, chores, unlike money, were in abundant supply—and I was expected to save most of that allowance. It was something of a rite of passage when I turned six and my father took me to the bank to open a passbook saving account. When I was fourteen I became responsible for buying all my own clothes and personal items. The value of money was something my parents tried hard to raise me to understand.

But at the same time, my mother also tried to teach me about having a generous heart and the joy that comes from giving. Let me share a poignant example. When I was in grade school, there weren’t the kind of enrichment programs schools have today—no music or art classes. We didn’t even have a library in that small rural school until I was in the fourth grade. But one thing we did have on occasion were “Assemblies”—special events when the whole school assembled in the auditorium to watch a traveling show of some kind. They might be a puppet show, a play or a music program. They were a big deal! But they cost money to attend—25 cents per student.

Now, there were a brother and sister—Wayne and Curtis—in my class every year. Wayne was several years older but he was mentally challenged and it seems that the school had just decided to let him advance with his sister, Curtis. Wayne and Curtis’s family were, no two ways about it, dirt poor. Their dad had trouble holding a job; their Mom cleaned houses for others; they lived in a house without indoor plumbing . Curtis and Wayne were never able to go to the Assemblies—while the rest of the school was in the auditorium they just had to sit in the classroom. Well, somehow my mother learned of this—I guess I told her—and so she started paying for Wayne and Curtis to go. On the day of an assembly, she would send 75 cents with me with instructions for the teacher that the extra fifty cents was for Wayne and Curtis. My mother continued this practice all throughout my grade school years.

I tell you this story not so much to impress you with my mother’s generosity as to illustrate something of the emotional, and, I would even say, spiritual, changes her generosity led my grade-school-self through. The first time my mother told me what she was going to do I was puffed up with my self-importance—I was going to be a big shot because of my largess. Well, my mother stuck a pin in that right away—I was not to tell anyone but the teacher, least of all Curtis and Wayne. Well what good was doing it then, if no one would know, I protested—but my mother was adamant. I remember as well an occasion when I must have said something to my mother that revealed I secretly harbored a feeling of superiority toward Curtis and Wayne because I was paying for them. My mother sat me down, fire in her eyes and said—Rebecca Edmiston, you are not to ever, ever, feel like you are better than someone else just because you have more than they do! You should feel joyful that we have this to give. And there was the time I pocketed that fifty cents for myself. When my mother discovered that, my bottom and the back of a hairbrush had a very unpleasant encounter. There were few times, too, when my mother didn’t have an extra fifty cents. (Remember fifty cents back then meant a couple of loaves of bread, three pounds of ground beef.) She might have twenty five cents, but if she didn’t have seventy five, I did not get to go to the Assembly either. Oh how I smarted at the injustice, how I resented Curtis and Wayne, how angry I was at my mother as I sat through that long miserable hour in the classroom—and how humiliated I felt—not just that I couldn’t go, but that I was now in the category of the have-not. This was supposed to teach me the joy of giving? Huh!

But there was one moment when I got it—fleetingly for sure—but one crystal, shining moment when I really did feel unadulterated joy through my mother’s, and by extension my, generosity. The Assembly that day was on the magic of electricity. I remember it like this: The stage curtains opened—there was a man in the center of the stage holding two poles up in the air, standing between two huge chrome balls on pedestals. His assistant flipped a switch and visible trails of ions arced across the stage from one ball to the poles in the man’s hand and then to the other ball, and back again. Then the man stepped back, tossed a Kleenex into the arc and it was immediately incinerated in a puff of smoke! Do you remember seeing anything like this when you were a kid? The assembly proceeded with equally graphic demonstrations of attraction, repulsion, the concept of grounding, and so on. And then there came the moment when the man asked for a volunteer from the audience to demonstrate static electricity. He pointed to Curtis, who had hair down below her waist. Curtis hesitated, but the man’s assistant led her up to the stage, placed a thin metal rod in Curtis’ hand and guided it to touch one of those big chrome balls. The switch was flipped—and Curtis’ hair stood completely on end!! And Curtis, whose countenance was usually clouded and downcast, beamed. She was radiant! And that’s when I felt my heart open and swell in an expansive movement that had nothing of self pride or ego gratification in it—but was, instead, a moment of pure transcendent joy that what I had to give had a part in making this happen.

My parents tried to instill in me both the value of money and the joy that comes from giving without regard to self. I feel confident that if I were to ask those of you who are parents, you would say that these are also qualities you would like to instill in your children. But how easy is that to do in our current society? How easy is it for any of us to live those values in today’s world?

We here in the U.S. live in a culture that shapes us to be consumers before and beyond everything else. Think about how many messages you and I receive in a day, how many messages our children receive, about what we need to buy in order to be okay. Everywhere we look there are messages that say we need this, we need that, we won’t be complete without this or that, that we won’t have “made it” unless we drive this or that kind of car, wear that kind of clothes, live in that Mc-Mansion. Our culture teaches us to confuse needs with wants and it manufactures wants where none existed before.

I’ve been surfing the net, exploring websites dedicated to salesmanship. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am amazed at how blatant they were regarding this confusion of needs with desires and about how to manipulate the feeling that this or that product will create emotional satisfaction, relieve stress, or even give people a sense of meaning. One site quoted a woman interviewed while plunking down $475 for a pair of Prada shoes, “Oh, I know they’re a little expensive, but who would I be if I didn’t have these shoes?” And another who, examining wares at another high end store, said, “You need to buy things that are frivolous to make life less boring. It makes you feel better about yourself.” The site went on to remark that these were exactly the kinds of feelings that advertising is meant to create in consumers, because, it continued, this kind of satisfaction only lasts so long and soon the consumer will need to buy something else to feel good. Remember, it said, it is the act of consuming rather than the item being consumed that is most important to sell.

We are constantly bombarded with messages that tell us to buy, buy, buy, and that if we don’t or can’t buy, then we are somehow less—less acceptable, less worthy. At the hairdressers the other day I heard a mother in the next chair describing this year’s “must have” backpack that she had to buy for her twelve-year old daughter. Price tag? $600. “Oh and then,” continued the mother, “there are the $200 pairs of jeans she has to have. It’s expensive to keep up, but if she doesn’t have these things, she just won’t fit it and then I wouldn’t feel like a good mother.”

$600 for a backpack! What are we thinking? The problem is we aren’t thinking. We are like Pavlov’s dogs, conditioned to respond, or worse, junkies, perpetually in search of that next fix. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with having nice things, or even enjoying a little frivolity on occasion. Certainly, I don’t mean to suggest that we need to deny ourselves enriching experiences, like a plane ride at the fair before we die. But when our sense of self-worth and meaning to life depends upon material things, something is seriously wrong—seriously spiritually wrong. And it’s not that I don’t see myself here. The messages to consume are so seductive. They prey on our self doubt, the chinks in our self-esteem, and they’re incredibly hard to resist. How many times have I come home with more than I needed? How many times have I bought something I didn’t really even want? How many times have I later returned something because I was sucked in by a sales pitch that suggested that I was somehow going to be “better” if I bought this or that thing? None of us are immune. But when we are able to step back, we can even feel sickened, over sated, by the amount of stuff we possess. Our consumerism is sickening and it is making us and our planet sick. Consumerism, and its accompanying competitiveness and one up-man-ship, has direct consequences on the planet’s ability to sustain itself. And, just as important, it is poisoning our souls. It has its effects not just in our consumption patterns, but also in how we respond to the needs of others, even what we think and feel about others. Our society’s bottom line message is that life is all about the individual self and there is not enough to go around—not enough goods, not enough money, not enough attention, not enough worth, not enough love—so you better grab yours while, and however, you can On the spiritual level, ours is a culture of scarcity, even though it looks, on the surface, like a culture of excess.

Remember those Kadampa Buddhists? Brian and I had a little fun with that exercise, but the Kadampa Buddhists really did discover that most often when they added up their stones, they had far more black stones than white, that they were more likely to act without regard for others, to withhold, not only goods, but charity of thought and feeling. The point of this spiritual discipline, was not to make themselves feel guilty or evil, but to heighten their awareness, to actively practice, to train themselves to become, generous of spirit. If those simple Tibetan Buddhists felt in need of this discipline, how much more are we in need of such a practice?

How do we cultivate generosity? We begin first with awareness. With noting how many ways we are not generous in the course of a day. We pay attention to how we not only refuse outright gifts to others, but also all the ways we refuse to be generous of spirit. How quick we are to take offense, to judge others uncharitably, to impute bad motives to others, to not extend the benefit of the doubt. How easily we are swayed by resentments and envy. How slow we are to forgive. We pay attention also to the ways in which we ourselves feel beaten down, the ways in which our egos feel discounted, assaulted, by life’s encounters; the ways in which we feel we need to pump up our self worth, or to prove ourselves at the expense of others. We pay attention and we notice how our hearts and minds are closed like a fist, how constricted we are. And then we begin to question, to ask, where do these constricting thoughts and feelings come from? What makes us feel we don’t have enough to give? We peel back the layers of the onion, asking, is this my true self ? Am I letting myself be defined by some external definition or object, by some former relationship, perhaps? Can I let go of this need I feel, this transient desire, this temporary assault? Can I open up, expand my heart, unclench the fist of my mind? Can I instead allow myself to be held by the source of life giving power, to notice all the ways I am already complete and whole just as I am? Can I let gratitude flow in and through me?

To cultivate generosity is also to cultivate gratitude, to recognize how everything we possess, everything we accomplish, comes to us as gifts of being from sources beyond ourselves. We tend in this culture to concentrate on all the ways in which we merit what we possess. To be sure, there is effort involved in making the most of one’s gifts. But the gifts we possess to develop—our talents, skills, ego strength, and resources of personality—we did nothing to earn them. They were given to us and nurtured by the people who have helped us become who we are. And our benefactors were, in turn, nurtured by those who came before them. and on and on in an unbroken chain to the very beginning. That we live at all is gift. A gift of the planet, a gift from the life-seeking force unfolding within the universe. Ultimately, everything we have is on loan to us, ours to use only for a time.

To know, to experience, the abundance of gifts in which we live and move and breathe and to live out of that sense of abundance—that is what it means to have a generous spirit. To cultivate such a spirit does require practice. But with each act of giving, whether through giving material gifts, or through the relinquishing of thoughts that diminish ourselves and others, we increase our capacity to give. And as our capacity to give increases, we take more delight in our generosity and we experience greater joy—the joy that comes from feeling our connections to others, to the earth, to the source of all. When we experience our own capacity for generosity we are fed in a much more powerful way, we experience a depth of meaning, greater than any possession. Our heart expands; our world opens up. Our mind moves beyond a feeling of rigid confinement to a space of boundlessness. And we realize no matter how much we have by the world’s standards, we do have enough and we always have something to give. We can share, we can afford compassion, we can be moved by the claims of justice.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to be generous people—self expansive, forgiving of self and others, inclusive in our concern, wanting good things for all people. That’s the kind of community we are trying to build here. That’s the kind of world we want to see. And that ultimately is what your commitment to our annual budget drive is about. Yes, it is about the need for and the value of money to fund our programs, campus and staff. But it is as much about cultivating generosity of spirit. All religions encourage the spiritual practice of giving. Not just for the sake of gifts to support the work of the faith, but also for the sake of the giver’s soul.

In a culture that emphasizes consumption and accumulation of things, in a society that values appearances over substance, to give generously to this religious community is an act of resistance. It is to bear witness that what we wear, what we drive, where we live does not define us. To give generously to this religious community bears witness to the abundant source of life at the heart of it all and the inescapable fact of our interdependence. To give generously to this church is to experience the power of our own giving, to feel the radiant joy of opening ourselves to the gift of life, expanding our hearts and minds so that we feel related, connected, to all that is.

My mother tried to teach me about that power. She wanted me to experience that joy. She has been dead for some time now and I’m still learning her lessons. I’m still learning that each of us has a Curtis and a Wayne inside of us; that we each have those things that hobble us, cause us to cast our countenances down. We each have things that constrict our spirit and keep us separated from others and from life itself. But each of us is also related to the whole and each of us has the capacity to enlarge our spirit, to live lives consonant with a conviction of abundance. We each can shine; we each can spread radiance. That is what we would practice here. That is the kind of life we would build—for ourselves, for the world.