Giving, Gifting, Gratitude

For Ongoing Need, For Renewing Life, For Strengthening Connection

Hi Friends,

I’m going to write a little more about gifting and gratitude here in the context of my Substack writing.  I wanted to give a little report to all of you as 2023 ends and 2024 begins and share some thoughts I’m currently having about the writing-as-a-gift project and other projects.

First, the report:  According to Substack, I “made” about $1000 in 2023 with my writing.  But I didn’t make it, did I?  Those of you that are “paid subscribers” gifted it to me.  And it does feel like a true gift. I really, really love that. Thank you!   It makes that $1000 different and somehow more special than other money that comes my way.  It ties my work to your generosity and encourages me, because it communicates to me that you find my writing to be a gift, and you’d like to give a return gift, and you’d like me to keep it up.  I like writing and thinking, but I like doing it even more in this framework.   It feels entirely different than, for example, if I were contracted to do this work for a set hourly rate.  I also feel grateful for those that are “free subscribers,” and read my stuff and interact and share it around.  Those words, “paid” and “free,” are both misnomers, aren’t they?  They imply a transaction and what’s happening here, for me, is not a transaction.  It is a conversation and a relationship, with all of you.  

Now, some of those further thoughts and musings about money, and giving, and gifts:

Our household runs monetarily mostly on my spouse’s income.  We used to be a DINK (double-income-no-kids) household, and the crazy thing to me is that, with a much larger budget, we found ways to spend all of that money without any problem at all!  Since our daughter came along, not only for that reason alone but prompted by it, we decided to try to be mostly a one-income household and have an adult at home.  We’ve each taken turns doing this, but I’ve done more, and so as it’s turned out, in the last 7 years or so, I’ve only worked full-time for 2 of those.  These days, I sometimes work in schools on a contract basis as a guest teacher or mentor or consultant, and that brings in some extra funds.  I also volunteer a lot.  We try to live within a budget that embodies some of our values and I think we do OK at that.  I try to think about Wendell Berry’s concept of thrift in as many ways as I can in our use of the resources we have.  I try to budget for relationships in my neighborhood at least as much as I budget for wages.  We’ve really tightened up from those DINK days, and I don’t miss all of the excess and waste at all.   With more time but less money I have freedom to “do what I want, gosh!”  We have generous grandparents and others who help us provide for our daughter's many lessons!  We have generous neighbors and church folks that give us gifts and do things for us all the time.  We are very blessed. 

We’ve also launched our family beekeeping “business” over the last three years. That has been another kind of financial education, about how to do that responsibly, what to charge that’s a fair price for the honey, how to cover our costs, and what to spend money on to build the beekeeping work up.  We’ve had to make decisions in that business-that-is-not-really-a business context too, as we try to prioritize the health of our bees and ecological education over maximizing honey production and maximizing profit.  But, we also have a number of customers that really like the honey and so we want to keep producing some for them and for our other neighbors and our own household!  I imagine this is what every small business owner encounters, and every small farmer. 

The long and short of it is that in the last few years I pleasantly find myself with all kinds of interesting new relationships to money . . . and I like this change a lot.  We are by no means living in anything like an “alternative” way, not really.  We live a very typical middle class existence.  I really enjoy reading the work of Adam Wilson on Substack, who is creating an inspiring entirely gift-based farming initiative in Vermont.  I have not advanced nearly as far as he has in pushing the envelope of “leaning into the gift”.  He gives all the food that the farm produces away, has regular Gratitude Feasts at the farm, and lives entirely on gifts from neighbors, friends and Substack subscribers.  The farm itself was gifted to him (a $500,000 gift!) by someone who wanted Adam to have a place to enact his dream.  I aspire to head more and more in that direction.  So I am “learning by leaning into the gift” more and more, and you are helping me to make that lean. (Writing that last sentence made me think that it’s funny that when a bank holds a mortgage on your property, it’s called a lien. I wonder if those two words originate from the same root?)

Receiving $1000 on Substack and all of your comments and compliments and engagement in my writing tells me that in addition to my other activities, I should also keep writing. Would I do it anyways, if I received no money or other engagement?  Yes, probably. Does it feel much more rich and full that I do receive these gifts, even though it is entirely uncoerced?  Yes!  If someone wanted to gift more money toward my writing, would I accept that?  Yes, happily! 

Jenny and I have always given away some of our money to our church and community and people who we feel are doing inspiring work in the world.  We’ve done this from the very beginning of our marriage, and it’s a shared value and priority for us to practice this.  I think about this quite differently today than I used to, however.  I think that I used to envision giving as setting aside a portion of our income to give away for “the need of the world.”  And this is not a bad way to think about it at all.  However, I have come further along a path of understanding that now differentiates in my mind two things that might at first seem to be the same: “giving” and “gifting”. Inspired by Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics, I’m trying things like the beekeeping initiative and this Substack work, which are attempts to work more through gift modalities.  It’s important to give our money where there is need.  But it is equally important “to gift” where there is relationship and mutual thriving.  

It’s like the difference between giving an anonymous gift to a homeless shelter (a noble thing to do), and throwing a party for all of your neighbors (also a great thing).  Interestingly to me, Jesus spoke about and enacted both of these ways of giving of himself.  He healed many people who suffered terribly . . . and he was also accused of being a party-boy and a drunkard for the lavishness of his joy in gathering people together and celebrating!  Both giving and gifting have an important role and place in our lives. In the first instance, you are helping to heal a wound and a lack.  You are “giving”.  In the other, you are celebrating life and freely sharing with others who you share life with.  You are “gifting”.  Both are ways we connect with other people and the world, and both are needed.  We need to give, and to gift, and we need to receive.  And we need to stay connected to each other.  That’s so important. 

So, thank you for the giving and gifting you choose to do through your engagement with me and my Substack.  We are doing this experiment together. Through this work, I remain open to the gifts I can give, and also to those that I can receive.  If you feel moved to give gifts to me monetarily, you can do that by becoming a paid subscriber through Substack, or by more direct means if you prefer (like a check or some other money transfer app; just reach out to me if that’s the case).  We are so lucky and blessed, aren’t we?  Yes, we are.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash