it’s crazy, but it’s true
It’s crazy, but it’s true. Despite the hardships many are facing, others are finding they have more money than usual and more time.
Twice this week I’ve heard from friends who recently have done something creative and generous.
My friend Julia discovered that she has extra money since she began staying home. She’s decided to buy a new bed she needs and give a nice gift each month to causes she cares about. She is filled with excitement by the prospect of being a donor, as she has been living very carefully for some time.
My friends Dave and Dancy have been cleaning out and remodeling their garage. Dave, a talented finish carpenter, has built a fantastic area for Dancy, who is a gardener and flower arranger extraordinaire. She now has shelves and drawers for gardening tools, vases, etc. And instead of putting the 14 vases she no longer needs in a Goodwill bin, Dancy made 14 arrangements with flowers from her garden and put them on a community table for the neighbors, with a sign that said, “Please take an arrangement and enjoy!”
And here’s another example: Several of the women in my Dining for Women chapter received stimulus checks, which they felt were unnecessary. They’re donating the money to our local food bank.
These stories remind me of a book I read years ago by Lynne Twist, called The Soul of Money. In it, Twist describes a life-changing experience in Harlem, in the basement of an old church with a leaky roof. She was a new fundraiser for The Hunger Project and had been asked to speak at a fundraiser at the church. Twist, who is white, says, “I looked out at the audience, and I knew that the people sitting there did not have much money to give. I spoke to them about The Hunger Project’s commitment to Africa, as I thought it would be the most relevant to their own lives and their heritage. When it came time to ask for donations, my palms were sweating and I began to wonder if it was the right thing to do. I went ahead and made the request, and the room fell absolutely silent.
“After what seemed like a long silent pause, a woman stood up. She was sitting on the aisle in a row near the back. She was in her late sixties or early seventies, and she had gray hair parted down the middle and swept up into a tidy bun. When she stood up she was tall, slender, erect, and proud.
“’Girl,” she said, ‘My name is Gertrude and I like what you’ve said and I like you. Now, I ain’t got no checkbook and I ain’t got no credit cards. To me, money is a lot like water. For some folks it rushes through their life like a raging river. Money comes through my life like a little trickle. But I want to pass it on in a way that does the most good for the most folks. I see that as my right and as my responsibility. It’s also my joy. I have fifty dollars in my purse that I earned from doing a white woman’s wash and I want to give it to you.’”
Twist goes on to say, “It’s my experience that money is an inanimate object that we made up, and it has no power or authority other than what we assign to it. I see money as being a little bit like water. When water is moving and flowing, it cleanses, it purifies, it makes things green, it creates growth, it’s beautiful. But when it slows down, starts to sludge, and is still, it becomes toxic and stagnant. One of my missions in this lifetime,” she says, “is to enable people to keep money flowing and to assign money to fulfill their highest commitments and to send it off into the world with love, with voice, with vision.”
Now is a great time, if you’re one of the lucky ones, to assign your money to fulfill your highest commitment, and to sent it off into this troubled world with love.
Let me know how it goes.
pearlsofpauline 