A Possible Newsletter Piece (it also might make no sense)

Another Taste of Fruit...

How are you a generous person? How does generosity guide your decisions?

Yes I am making an assumption there but I believe that most people are in fact generous, at least most of the time. I believe that most people know that sharing is a good thing. After all it is that list of things we learned in kindergarten. Sharing, they say, is caring.

So how does generosity make an impact on your life?

I am going to suggest that for most of us generosity makes an impact both in the giving and in the receiving. When we share something it makes us feel better, but also when someone shares something with us it makes our lives richer. I also suggest that this mutual benefit then results in a spiral of generosity. We become more generous because we have been generous and because we have experienced others being generous.

And I think that for people of faith it all starts with God. We have been the recipients of God’s overflowing grace and love. If we sink into that Divine generosity I believe it changes our hearts and moves, pushes, cajoles, maybe even requires, us to pass it forward. As recipients of gifts we share them with the world around us. It is how we live into our calling to be citizens of a New World.

In the end the key to generosity is not, I think, in the stuff we share. It would be easy to turn a column on generosity into a column about what we have to share. But I don’t want to do that, largely because I find those columns become a little pushy. I think the key to generosity is the heart behind it. I think the generous spirit is more important than listing off all that we have shared (which sometimes sounds a bit like bragging anyway). I believe that God is inviting all of us to have a generous spirit and when we accept that invitation generosity can become part of our very being.

There is a certain aptness to talking about generosity at this time of year. It is called the season of giving after all. But I encourage all of us to be aware of generosity all year round. I encourage us to look at the world with eyes that see what is being shared. I encourage us to look at ourselves with eyes that see what has been shared with us. As I said above generosity breeds generosity. In today’s world we talk about things going viral, about the contagious effect of memes or TikTok dances. Let’s help generosity go viral.

I have always found that St. Paul’s is a very generous community of faith. I may even have bragged about it on your behalf more than once. Let us continue to be generous. After all sharing IS caring.
Gord