When I was in high school, my dad and I used to get up really early to go running. For some of these 5:30am runs, we met up with his friend from church, another local attorney named Bill. Bill was always in really good shape, and he was quite the extrovert, so we never had to worry about the conversation lagging. We would usually talk about things like how we were each doing, and how the Red Sox’ bullpen was looking that year.
One spring morning in 2002, we were doing a loop around the campus of Colby College. We were talking about out usual topics and after a while my dad, who was part of the pledge campaign that year, asked Bill if he might consider increasing his pledge to the congregation. Bill said his family had some pretty major financial commitments coming up that year, including his daughter’s college tuition, and while he still wanted to pledge, he couldn’t do the increase. Dad said he understood and thanked him for his support of the congregation, and we went back to discussing how excited we were for the Spider-Man soundtrack to feature a song by Nickelback.
This conversation stuck out to me because it was relatively rare that we openly discussed money in my family, much less in a positive way. Usually when it came up, it was in the context of how someone we knew was being too materialistic. We rarely talked about the good things that money could do. I bring this story up for two reasons: it’s important to talk about money in your family, how it relates to your values, and I encourage everyone to do it, especially with your children; also, I bring this up to remind us that money itself is not inherently good or bad, it’s what you do with it.
The question of money’s connection with spirituality can be the cause of a great deal of struggle and discomfort, but also the source of a great deal of wisdom and insight. In particular I have appreciated the book The Soul of Money, by Lynne Twist. As a side note, I want to make sure and mention that The Soul of Money was recommended to me by Mary Katherine Morn, who is former Director of Stewardship and Development for our Unitarian Universalist Association (our UUA, for short). Rev. Morn started out in ministry serving the High Street UU congregation in Macon, Georgia, and worked at our UUA alongside Terry Sweetser, Kaye Montgomery, Pat Kahn, and Jessica York as prominent UUA staff who are from Georgia or Alabama, or served congregations here. Since moving to Georgia in 2012, I have been proud to discover that being a UU in this region places me in a strong lineage of recent leaders in our movement. I’m still holding out hope that our UUA Nominating Committee is going to end up featuring André 3000, but we’ll have to see on that one…
Like many thorny and difficult topics, the connection between money and spirituality can be an enriching one if we are willing to sit with the discomfort. Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money, is a renowned philanthropist who has worked with Mother Theresa, Oprah, and many other world leaders to contribute to alleviating hunger and poverty. She describes how:
“Each of us experiences a lifelong tug-of-war between our money interests and the calling of our soul. When we’re in the domain of soul, we act with integrity. We are thoughtful and generous, courageous, and committed. We recognize the value of love and friendship. We admire a small thing well done. We experience moments of awe in the presence of nature and its unrefined beauty. We are open, vulnerable, and heartful. We have the capacity to be moved, and generosity is natural. We are trustworthy and trusting of others, and our self-expression flourishes. We feel at peace within ourselves and confident that we are an integral part of a larger, more universal experience, something greater than ourselves.
When we enter the domain of money, there often seems to be a disconnect from the soulful person we have known ourselves to be. It is as if we are suddenly transported to a different playing field where all the rules have changed. In the grip of money, those wonderful qualities are less available. We become smaller. We scramble or race to ‘get what’s ours.’ We often grow selfish, greedy, petty, fearful, or controlling, or sometimes confused, conflicted, or guilty. We see ourselves as winners or losers, powerful or helpless, and we let those labels deeply define us in ways that are inaccurate, as if financial wealth and control indicate superiority, and lack of them suggests a lack of worth or basic human potential. Visions of possibility dissolve. We become wary and mistrusting, protective of our little piece, or helpless and hopeless. We sometimes feel driven to behave in ways inconsistent with our core values, and unable to act differently.
The result is a deep division in our way of being, in our behavior, and in our sense of our own character and integrity…That gap exists for all of us–myself included–and is at the very heart of the toughest struggles in life for all of us.
…Money itself isn’t the problem. Money itself isn’t bad or good. It is our interpretation of money, our interaction with it, where the real mischief is and where we find the real opportunity for self-discovery and personal transformation…Your relationship with money can be a place where you bring your strengths and skills, your highest aspirations, and your deepest and most profound qualities… In a world that seems to revolve around money, it is vital that we deepen our relationship with our soul and bring it to bear on our relationship with money. In that merger and that commitment, we can create a new and profound spiritual practice. We can have our money culture both balanced and nourished by soul. Our relationship with money can become a place where, day in and day out, we can engage in this meaningful spiritual practice.”
Money itself isn’t bad or good, it’s what we do with it. But doing things to earn or spend money in a way that aligns with our spiritual values is often extremely difficult. It seems like in our spiritual lives, the closer we get to the topic of money, the harder it is to feel like we have confidence and integrity. And in our decisions about money, it can feel like the more we hold ourselves accountable to our spiritual principles in making those decisions, the more difficult they become. Money itself may not be good or bad, but in a world where money is so often the product of, or a tool for, exploitation, gaining it and using towards a goal of enhancing human dignity can feel like grasping at smoke.
Who here was involved in calling and contacting other congregants for a pledge campaign or a capital campaign in the last three years, could you please stand or raise your hands? (Applause) First off, thank you! We wouldn’t be the congregation that we are without you. I would also like to encourage folks to talk to them about what that experience has been like, and to please consider getting involved with calling or meeting with or contacting people for our pledge campaign this year. If there was one thing that I could suggest for everyone hoping to deepen your relationship with this congregation and our faith movement, it would be volunteering to talk to people one-on-one or in small groups about their financial commitment to Northwest. OK, actually it’s a tie between that and teaching Religious Education, but hopefully my point is taken: this is one of those areas that few of us are drawn to naturally, but if we can take a deep breath and face up to it directly, mustering the traits we cultivate through spiritual practice, we can come out on the other side of it with a deeper sense of what it means to be devoted to a community of free and responsible religious seekers. If you want to get involved with the pledge campaign this year, please see me or a Board member and we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction. I also want to note that if you’ve been coming for less than six months, it’s OK to take a pass on volunteering to help with the pledge drive, and we hope you’ll consider such a role in future years.
One of the gifts of being personally involved in the financial life of a faith community is that it gives you an opportunity to facilitate greater generosity in your own life, and in the lives of others. Generosity is a spiritual practice, and a powerful one. But we live in a heavily consumerist culture, and it can be easy to lose track of generosity as a priority amidst the myriad ways to spend money that are competing for our attention each day. But in this setting, it becomes all the more important to cultivate a practice of generosity.
This month’s worship theme is “Hope,” and last week I talked about how playfulness and creativity can both flow from and lead to hope in fearful and despairing situations. Hope can also unlock playfulness and creativity when it comes to whether and how we practice generosity. When addressing harmful patterns, even ones that have been in place for generations, generosity is one of the tools that can lead to unexpected hope. I want to share one more story from Lynne Twist in The Soul of Money, which speaks to generosity breaking harmful family patterns:
“Barbara, a woman in her late sixties, was the recipient of a five-generation New England family fortune…For Barbara and her two sisters, this inheritance had become a kind of curse, manifested in alcoholism that crippled one generation’s ability to responsibly parent the next generation…When I met Barbara in the early 1990s, she was a recovering alcoholic struggling to help her three adult children face their own addictions and other problems. Under pressure from the family to hold on to their fortune, and fearful of squandering it, Barbara and her relatives had given almost no money away. Instead, it had been used to respond to the constant crises that roiled behind the Ivy League façade. Personal and financial disasters were a constant state of affairs for many of her relatives and her adult children. She saw the family money being expended and depleted in ways that distressed her and drained not just her fortune but also her spirit.
Our first conversation began with Barbara’s interest in becoming a contributor to (the organization I was chief fundraising officer for,) The Hunger Project… She made her first contribution anonymously, knowing that her family would be angered by a big pledge of what they considered to be ultimately and eventually ‘their money.’ As her commitment and generosity grew, however, she took the bold step of making her activities and contributions known to family members. As she had predicted, they were angry–at first. Then she actively recruited their involvement in the hands-on work, inviting them to join in the partnerships with people who, not so unlike themselves, were struggling to become self-sufficient under difficult circumstances.
One by one, her children and other family members stepped outside their self-focused lives and into the larger world of experience that such genuine partnership offered. They came to know themselves differently, in selfless collaboration with other people, and as useful, productive, capable partners in making a difference. The transformation in their individual lives, and in the condition of the family, was remarkable. Barbara succeeded in changing the energy and the flow of the family money. She invested it with her intent to heal and build strong families–her own and others–and the money carried that energy and that healing full circle.”
When we give generously and with a full heart, we benefit not only the receiver and ourselves, but our families and our communities if we can involve them in that giving. We know what that feels like here at Northwest; not every faith community gives away half of its collection every week, and that practice enhances our capacity for generosity as a community in a way that pays dividends far beyond the amounts contributed. If we as a community continue to approach the work of generosity with playfulness, creativity, and hope, who knows… what we can do next.
May it be so, and may we be the ones to make it so.
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
January 20, 2019
© Rev. Jonathan Rogers