7 
TRUE GENEROSITY
RANI DID NOT MAKE IT to my son’s birthday party. She had started working the night shift, so she had been sleeping. A few days later, at the English class I teach for parents in our community, Rani told me she had a present for my son. He was sitting next to me, like he sometimes does during class, his hair golden blond, swinging his legs off of the cafeteria bench. I saw her take the paper envelope, the kind you get at a bank, and put it into my toddler’s chubby little hand. “Oh, Rani,” I said, trying to appear happy and regretful. “No, no, no. He doesn’t need the money.” She nodded her head vigorously, smiling at me, and kept trying to get my baby to take it. Two-year-olds don’t care about envelopes, but he smiled at her, his dimples flashing, and when I told him to say thank you to her, he did.
Sometimes Rani takes pictures of my blond baby and sends them to her family in Myanmar. She wants them to know she has American friends, that she is doing okay here—even though her husband just got laid off from his warehouse job because he hurt his back, even though she is only getting two days a week at her housekeeping job when she really needs five. At home, I opened up the envelope and took out a brand-new crisp $50 bill. I should have felt grateful, but instead I started to cry.
I am forever being given things by people who can be perceived as poor: food mostly but sometimes money, sometimes long, sad, or strange stories, sometimes hugs, and sometimes green tea with hints of cardamom or ginger. My children as well are constantly receiving gifts, to the point that they beg to go visiting in the apartments of our friends. They know they will be showered with love and affection, and they are right.
But the privileged part of me doesn’t know what to do with these realities. I don’t know how to be grateful in a world where I was taught that I was the one to give to those in need. But the people I think of as needy would bristle at such a description; they would be offended at the categories the world puts them in. Sometimes I wonder if they see it in my eyes, as hard as I try to hide it.
I often find myself paralyzed with shame, living in such close proximity to people who remind me constantly that my reality is not the same as theirs. My husband, a therapist and one of the kindest men the world has ever seen, tries to gently tell me that shame is never very helpful in the larger picture. Guilt, at least, can point out that something is wrong or indicate places where we have done or benefited from injustice; guilt can hold us accountable for our actions. But shame is a far murkier monster; indeed, I imagine it in the shape of a serpent. Shame is the whisper not that what you have done was wrong but that you, at your very core, are wrong. This is a lie and one that deserves to be crushed under the heel of a God who loves us.
Talking about affluence brings up shame for some people. So does paying attention to how unkind America is toward those without stable incomes or homes or families. So does asking people to interrogate their pasts, to think through the systemic factors that maybe benefited them and harmed others. But shame is unhelpful. I should know because I experience quite a bit of it. And no matter how much I wallow in shame, it doesn’t actually make the world a better place for my neighbors. It doesn’t undo how high the rents are, how backbreaking manual labor is, how the only shifts my friends can work and still take care of their kids are at night.
When my friend Rani gave my son that $50 bill, the shame bloomed in my chest until I sobbed. When my friends cook extravagant meals for me on limited budgets and in the midst of a busy life, I sometimes can barely eat I am so choked by the knowledge of my privilege. When my daughter excitedly wants to bring home a new umbrella from school, I turn and whisper that we don’t need it, that we should save it for the other kids, and I see the confusion grow in her eyes, her cheeks becoming pink.
The older I get, and the more people my life crashes into, the more aware I am about how debilitated I am in my ability to receive. To receive the truth of our hard world, to receive gifts from those who in my eyes have so little, and to receive the message that even though I am not perfect, I am still loved.
One time Rani and I took the MAX train to attend a rally together. We had made signs and were going to protest the genocide that was happening in her home country. It was a solemn affair to be sure, but we were happy to be together, going downtown to add our voices to the chorus. A few stops in on the train, a man came walking by our seats, asking people for money. He was old and worn-looking, a baseball cap on his head. Nobody in our section looked at him. I smiled and shook my head: no, sorry, I don’t have any money. Black purse in her lap, Rani opened it and got out her wallet. She snapped it open and I could see a $5 bill. She took it out and said, “Yes, here, for you.” The man took it, surprised, and said, thank you. Then he looked at her, his eyes taking in her head scarf, and stammered out as if asking a question, “God, God bless you?” Rani simply smiled and nodded and turned back to me.
“If you give money,” she whispered to me, “If you give money to people who need it, then when you are in trouble you will get money. Do you understand, Daniella?” I did understand. But still, that $5 was so hard-earned that it pained me to know that I could not control what that man in the baseball cap would do with it. In her own words Rani tried to tell me how there are different types of people in the world. There are people, like our mutual friend Hafsa, who, when they get a dollar, carefully place it in their purse and close it: saving it, watching it, taking care of it. “And then,” Rani laughed, then there are people like her. “I get money,” she told me, “and it flies out.” She waves her hands outward. Clothes for her children, eating at restaurants, going to the Indian buffet, money, money, money, until it is finished. “Do you understand, Daniella?” I do understand, Rani, I do.
This is how my friend understands the world. She is generous because she has been in need. She has been wealthy and she has been very poor, and now she works hard to stay afloat in a land of rising rents and insurance and bills to pay. She does not go through life with a scarcity mentality as I do. She reveals my imagination to be one that has been trained in the ways of the pharaohs of old: there is never enough. We need to hoard, and we are justified in literally working people to death to accomplish our goals. If I was listening to the Spirit, I would have followed Rani’s example and given that $50 bill she shoved into my hands away to any person who asked, believing that I had a role in providing for others just as I trusted that my own needs would be provided for. But I didn’t because shame had stunted my imagination for generosity. I suppose I deposited that money in our bank. I don’t remember because I try hard not to think about it.
For all the Bible has to say about wealth, it constantly praises the poor. In recent years, as I’ve read the Gospels with my neighbors in mind, I have been astonished by this. In the Gospel of Mark, for instance, nearly every encounter Jesus has depicts the marginalized as the faithful ones. The poor, the sick, the demon possessed, the outcasts, the hungry, the women. And conversely, it paints a powerful picture of those who were constantly arguing or trying to entrap Jesus, who were constantly missing out on the liberating presence and work that Jesus came to do. It was, of course, the good people. The religious ones. Jesus’ own family. The ones who were considered successful, charitable citizens.
I wonder about this quite a bit because it relates directly to me. Why did the good news of Jesus feel so much like bad news to those who had affluence, autonomy, safety, and power? My husband and I argue about this sometimes. He doesn’t believe Jesus ever used guilt or shame to motivate people, because that isn’t how love works. Perhaps he is right. But still, when I read the Scriptures, I see story after story about how the educated, the rich, the religious, and the powerful not only missed out on Jesus’ message but actively responded in ways that were angry, defensive, depressed, and eventually violent. Jesus, I believe, did not want people to live in cycles of guilt and shame and fear.
But Jesus was committed to telling the truth. And when we’re forced to confront the truth of a world that has been kind to us but not to others, we can start to feel as though we are horribly bad, impossible to redeem, implicated without any hope of forgiveness. We can feel the spread of shame, and so most of us do what is perfectly natural. We stop thinking about it as soon as possible, in whatever way we can manage. We are terrified of having our greatest fear realized: of waking up to the reality that we are not good, we are not wanted, and we are not loved.
The antidote to affluence is not shame. It is, instead, thanksgiving. This is not a truth I learned on my own but one that has been revealed to me by my friends who excel in the duties of delight and gratitude and celebration, tempered by their very hard realities.
Indigenous scientist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer visited a school on the Onondaga Reserve in New York, where every day the students recited the Thanksgiving Address—a very old and long and beautiful poem that starts their every school day. Very different from the quick mumbled grace a Protestant Christian might say at the dinner table, the Thanksgiving Address takes its time to thank various elements of the earth—water, wind, fire, plants, animals, and more. At the end of each section there is a time to invite the listener to agree, to come back to the mutual of understating: “We give thanks to the stars, who are spread across the sky like a jeweler. . . . With our minds gathered as one, we send greetings and thanks. . . . Now our minds are one.”1
Kimmerer writes about the importance of those words: both the thanking of specific elements and the refrain “now our minds are one.” She calls it a “statement of solidarity, a Bill of Responsibilities” that is couched in gratitude. Kimmerer sees in the Thanksgiving Address a radical discipline of cultivating a culture of gratitude that is vital to all life on earth. She believes true gratitude is couched in reciprocity where each person—human or not—is bound to each other in a reciprocal relationship. And this makes us unique among creation: “It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our gifts.”2
Learning to say thank you to my friends like Rani strengthens my faith in a God who bestows good gifts freely and infuses what could become a hierarchical relationship with mutuality. When I practice gratitude, it draws me into a reciprocal relationship with my neighbors, where I see their full humanity as distinct individuals with gifts to offer me. Learning to receive meals, clothes, affection, and even money from my friends and neighbors has renewed an ethic of thankfulness in me—even to the point where I am more likely to notice the seasons, the flowers, birds of the air, and the insects all working busily in tandem. Kimmerer sees the same connection: “Thanksgiving reminds us of how the world was meant to be in its original condition. . . . [W]hen we can no longer see the stars because of light pollution, the words of Thanksgiving should awaken us to our loss and spur us to our restorative action. Like the stars themselves, the words can guide us back home.”3
Kimmerer was changed by listening to the voices of children chant the Thanksgiving Address: thank you to all the elements, let all our minds agree together in this gratitude. And she said she couldn’t help but feel wealthy as she listened to the words. The Thanksgiving Address went on and on, so many reasons to be grateful, so many reasons to be present. So many entities to feel responsible to and for. What can sometimes feel like a burden to me just needs the lens of thanksgiving to set it right: what a richness of human experience God has gifted me. What a wealth of people, plants, and animals I have the privilege of being connected to.
There is a verse in the Bible that has always puzzled me. In the books of Luke and Matthew it says that Jesus had a reputation for being both a glutton and a drunkard. He was partying too much with tax collectors and sinners. In a world where many people lived in abject poverty—indeed, a large percentage of Jesus’ community perhaps did not even know where their next meal was coming from—Jesus hung out with people who were wealthy enough to throw the kind of parties that earned him a reputation.
This does not fit with my mental image of Jesus. In my mind he usually appears sober and disappointed with the world, just like I am. But here we have it, in this bizarre book, that Jesus was a storytelling agitator who ate and drank his fill in a world full of suffering. I don’t understand it, Jesus modeled how to live in a world where affluence and poverty coexist side by side, just like they do in my own city. I think Jesus understood the importance of both lament and celebration, and that there was a time for each.
Recently, my friend Ayana got my children Christmas presents. Ayana doesn’t celebrate the holiday herself because she is Muslim. Her own children get very modest gifts for Eid—usually some new clothes and maybe a favorite meal. But she bought my kids gifts and presented them right in the plastic bags from the store. I squirmed in discomfort. My children did not need toys, and this was too much money coming from my friend who had four children and a husband who worked nights at the convenience store. I hadn’t bought her children Eid presents; did this make me a terrible person? While these thoughts skittered through my brain, my children joyfully opened the plastic shopping bags. My daughter got a baby doll with a tiny pacifier, which she loved. My son pulled out a cartoonish gray object shaped like a cross between a revolver and a trumpet. He pushed the trigger button and a loud fart sound emanated from the plastic toy. Ayana, all forty years of her, caught my shocked and slightly horrified eye. She didn’t quite have the English words for it, so I said it for her: “You, you gave my son a fart gun?” “Yes,” she said, leaning back into her couch and starting to giggle, “Yes I did.”
Ayana and I laughed and laughed until we both had tears in our eyes. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt: Jesus would have been laughing with us. He would have eaten my friend’s lamb meatballs and biryani rice too—three plates, maybe four. He would have graciously received second and third cups of tea and pocketed a few boxes of juice to hand out to kids in the stairway. And he would have laughed his head off at that awful toy. Jesus, who reminded us to live like the birds and the flowers that his Father so desperately loved, would receive what was given to him that day in faithfulness. He would celebrate with those who had hard stories, as an act of resistance in an empire of scarcity.
My son ran around Ayana’s small apartment, stuffed full of couches and coffee tables and vases filled with fake flowers. He pushed that trigger until the entire place was filled with the sounds of farts and glee, the room erupting in laughter each time he did it. His smile could have split the cloudy Oregon sky and brought the sun out on us all—he was as pleased as if he himself was the author of all of those rude noises. When I tried to leave the loud and noisy toy at her apartment, accidentally-on-purpose, Ayana slipped it back into my son’s chubby little hands. She kissed him on the head and waved to us until we walked out of her sight. I could still hear her giggling as we trudged toward our house around the corner. As my son made fart noises in my ear all the way home, I envisioned my friend smiling at the gift that would keep on giving. And I decided to receive the good news of that terrible toy precisely because it had been given with such great love.