Here are last two articles

Dear Readers,

Finally, I have my web site moved new server. You don't need to know what a server is -- ya just need to know this one works much better. No more repeated emails or failed deliveries of the column.

I'm off to Iraq 26 December. I hope to still be emailing the column.

Blessings!


It's the season to give -- of yourself
6 Dec 08

By the time I was 13, our Christmas became more about a way to dole out necessities such as socks, underwear and pajamas than about surprises.

By my mid-teens, our family stopped buying Christmas trees. Giving was limited to the exchange of single gifts of necessity on Christmas Eve.

Since many of my childhood Christmases were likely celebrated a little above poverty level, my wife says I shouldn't mention them in a holiday column. She remembers a different kind of Christmas. While her family wasn't affluent, her parents - a minister and a schoolteacher - surrounded her and her siblings with multiple packages wrapped in fluffy bows.

I wasn't there during her childhood, but I know what her Christmases looked like because she's brought them into our family tradition.

For the past 25 Christmases, our combined families bring a boatload of gifts to the Christmas tree. Traditionally, the person opening the gift is obliged to note the beauty of the paper and comment on the mystery of the contents.

Once unwrapped, bows, paper and ribbons are placed in their respective recycle bins. The whole event can be such a gift-opening marathon that sometimes we've actually scheduled a break for lunch and a nap.

It's not really such an overabundance - it's just that her family appreciates the color and wrapping of Christmas so much that they wrap every item individually. Say, for instance, a grandchild is given a remote-control car. Normally, my mother-in-law will wrap the car, the batteries and the remote control in three separate boxes.

While my wife says my childhood Christmases sound a bit deprived, I don't remember them that way. In fact, the recession we find ourselves in has caused me to more deeply cherish the most meaningful gift my father passed to me - faith.

It was a faith recounted many times during our frugal Christmases as my dad read and reread the story of the frightened village girl who heard the news of her pending pregnancy from an angel.

I love how "The Message" translates that moment from the first chapter of Luke's gospel.

"God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin ... Gabriel greeted her:

"'Good morning!

"'You're beautiful with God's beauty,

"'Beautiful inside and out!'

"'God be with you.

"She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, 'Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.' "

The simple story has a way of reminding us all that the reason for the season isn't so much about receiving gifts as it is about the giving of ourselves.

For if you celebrate the Christmas story in its full meaning, you are obligated to follow it through to its finale of giving, Easter. For it isn't until Easter that we can see the original Christmas gift wasn't gold, frankincense and myrrh but the sacrificial gift of God himself.

So while this Christmas you may not be able to afford the latest game console or the largest diamond, we may want to consider the ways in which we might give of ourselves in sacrificial ways.

Oh, by the way, when I was 10, we stopped doing Halloween, but I'll spare you that sad, sad story. After all, it is the season to be jolly.


December 13, 2008


Know what motivates you to give


If you haven't finished your Christmas list yet, you might consult another list written by Moses. No, not that Moses. This Moses was a Rabbi from the 13th century, Moses Maimonides.

His list -- Maimonides' Eight Degrees of Charity -- describes eight levels that motivate our giving to those in need. Read the paraphrased list below along with my comments and ask yourself which one best describes your motives.

1. Giving to the poor unwillingly.

This is what a Tibetan Buddhist named Trungpa Rinpoche called "Idiot compassion." It's the kind of giving we do when we can't bear to see someone suffer. That's co-dependency and we only do it out of our own need to avoid suffering.

2. Giving to the poor happily, but inadequately.

This happens when the coffee barista asks whether you'd like to add $1 to help AIDS orphans in Africa. We smile generously, because smiles are cheap, and we reply, "Certainly" -- even though we know a buck is a woefully "inadequate" for such a momentous task.

3. Giving to the poor after being asked.

This can either be giving pocket change to the homeless or writing a large check at a charity benefit. You do it because in some sense you had to be pressured before you "noticed" the need.

4. Giving to the poor without being asked.

Giving gets a bit harder at this level. You've got to be looking for needs. As Kaiser Cement Corp. used to say, "Find a need and fill it." Truthfully, I usually hover about a "4."

5. Giving to the poor without knowledge of the recipient, but allowing the recipient to know your identity.

This is giving to someone we don't know, but we still "allow" them to hear of our generosity, perhaps because we are waiting for the applause.

6. Giving to the poor with knowledge of the recipient but without allowing the recipient to know your identity (anonymous giving).

Some see this as the highest form of giving. Perhaps you give your pastor $200 to buy clothes for the Jones' family and whisper, "Don't tell them who gave this gift." It's a high form of giving, because it concentrates on the need and doesn't wait for applause.

7. Giving to the poor without knowledge of the recipient and without allowing the recipient to know your identity.

This gets much harder, because there simply is no "payback." This might occur where a person runs from a restaurant without paying. You pay the bill and he receives the gift oblivious to your generosity.

8. Investing in a poor person in a manner in which they can become self-sufficient.

This giving is illustrated in that saying, "Give a person a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime."

This is extremely hard, because "the gift" is really you. It requires that you know your ABCs of charity -- Assess the problem. Believe you can effect a change. And implement Charity.

These ABCs are best characterized in the radical giving Jesus introduced in his parable about a poverty-stricken widow who gave all she had, two coins worth half a cent.

In Mark 12, Jesus says, "This widow . . . has put in more than all those contributing to the treasury. For they all threw in out of their abundance; but she, out of her deep poverty, has put in . . . all she had on which to live."

Our current economy might be best benefited from this kind of radical giving. After all it's the kind of giving that God best demonstrated when he put a baby in a Bethlehem manger 2,000 years ago.