From The Heart

A Generosity Hero at work...

"For Toni Dukes, love isn't delivered with a sugary sweet Hallmark card or an overpriced bouquet of red roses. It's given in a Ziploc bag stuffed with a hat, gloves and a packet of Kleenex, and the words "From the Heart" written in black marker on the outside.

The 39-year-old single mom commutes to San Francisco from her home in Stockton to work the swing shift as a 911 dispatcher. Her days are spent driving 187 miles round trip to work in an understaffed department where she handles calls ranging from mentally ill people screaming at her to women going into labor alone to somebody who's just found their mother dead.

But Dukes hasn't been able to call it a day after her high-stress shifts. Her route to work takes her through the Tenderloin, and last year, she couldn't help but notice the homeless people and others down on their luck who were huddling outside in the cold.

So, using her own pocket money, she began venturing into the rough neighborhood on foot a few times a month to hand out the packets and to chat with people on the street - many of whom seemed more grateful for the conversation than the hats and gloves.

"My job is over the phone. I like to meet and greet. I like to talk to people face to face," she said. "It's amazing just for people to smile, to acknowledge them and show you know that they're there. They're not animals. They're just people without the same opportunities a lot of us have.""

Secret Santa Society

This is beautiful and inspiring and I hope I have the abundance to be this kind of giver some day...

"Larry Stewart, Kansas City's original Secret Santa, anonymously wandered city streets doling out $100 bills to anyone who looked like they needed it. For about a quarter century, Stewart quietly gave out more than $1.3 million to people in laundromats, diners, and thrift stores, saying it was his way of giving back for all that he had received in his lifetime. Stewart died of cancer earlier this year, but his legacy lives on: this Christmas, an anonymous friend who told Stewart in the hospital that he would carry on for him is out on the streets, handing out $100 bills, each one stamped with "Larry Stewart, Secret Santa," giving away $75,000 in total of his 'own money. "Anyone can be a Secret Santa,' he says. 'You don't have to give away $100. You can give away kindness. Help someone.'"

And he's not the only one. He has some elves and other Secret Santas joining him this year...

Secret Santa World

Some of the heartwarming stories of those who received gifts.... CNN, CBS, The Arizona Republic, & The Kansas City Star.

Gift Economy Round Up

I've been holding on to some generosity and gift economy related web pages for several days in hopes of blogging about each of them. But since I've been too sick to write a lot I've decided to share them all at once instead. I'm watching It's A Wonderful Life tonight, which is one of my favorite generosity stories of all time, so it seemed the appropriate time to share.

These days nearly everyone has read or heard the White Envelope story about giving on behalf of a family member for Christmas (it was originally published in Woman's Day in 1982). Now there's the White Envelope Project, a totally Zaadzy kind of idea to inspire young adults into generosity and service.

Crossroads Dispatches is posting about giving a lot recently. This is one of my favorite blogs! It's a lovely combination of art, philosophy, and gift economy musings.

Running a Business in a Gift Economy Fashion (blog post The Gift): "And one of the things we've learnt is something incredibly counterintuitive to current North American culture: the more we give away, the better we do."

The Pyschology of Giving at the New York Times.

An excerpt from The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde.

Need a favor? Want to offer a favor to someone else? Check out FavorsUnlimited, a new forum based on a lovely gift economy idea.

Intentional Acts of Kindness: Free Pass-Along Gift Cards

Reverant Generosity at the Mythic Journeys newsletter.

This Holiday I wish ...

I was just visiting Wishcasting and this week's prompt got me thinking...

This holiday season I wish to . . . open my heart and my daily consciousness to the spirit of generosity that abounds during this particular season and find reasons to celebrate. I'm not feeling particularly holiday spirited this year, nor did I last year, although several previous years I reveled in the opportunities to give from my creative stores and in the beauty of creative decorating. I love victorian and unusual Santa Clauses, the greatest archetype for generosity in the modern world. I love burgundy and gold ornaments and garland, which bring a rich sparkle to my home. I love the lights. I know it's not pc with environmental issues being what they are, but I love the lights sparkling everywhere. However I think my health issues and the state of my family have driven away the desire for celebration. It all seems energy draining. I want to find the place in me that can hold space for my family to enjoy this season, so I need generosity stories to feed my fire. Perhaps I need to spend some time at HelpOthers.org.

This holiday season I wish to . . . inspire people to consider being as generous the rest of the year, not in material gifts, but in the general sense of good will. We say Happy Holidays to each other all the time, strangers and friends alike. We give a lot, often spending considerable energy in efforts to show our love in the manifest world, whether through gifting or cooking or organizing events. We open ourselves to one another's stories, good feeling stories, generosity stories, peace stories, stories of overcoming selfishness (ego) in service of the greater community. But once Christmas Day passes, we stop greeting each other with the same level of cheer, we stop being so generous, and we give our consciousness to stories of violence (action movies and video games) and competitiveness and greed (reality tv, game shows).

Much of the intent of The Conspiracy of Blessings is to inspire people to reconsider generosity and recognize its value in every day life. Why do we limit ourselves and/or store up our natural propensity for lavish generosity until we're given permission by a cultural tradition to be blissful in our giving? I started the Conspiracy in December 2005 because I had all this art around me that I had put my loving and creative energy into and I knew it didn't belong hidden in my house. It needed to find homes in the world, needed to bring some kind of good feeling into the world.

When I give, even store bought gifts, it is always with conscious love and desire to show that person I honor who they are as an individual. I buy books and music for my children that I hope will inspire good feelings, a sense of belongingness and their own creativity. I give my children and family gifts that support their bliss--like a book on Soul Collage for my sister the art therapist or a drawing tablet for my son's pc. Or I give gifts that honor their spiritual traditions and foster self reflection (both of my children have learned how to use divinatory tools to bring insight into their personal journeys).

But giving to my family in this way wasn't enough manifestation of my bliss--creative generosity. I needed some place to give more. So I started homemade gifts for my friends and co-workers. I've done homemade candles, soaps, and holiday art ornaments. One year I painted or otherwise colored images from Shiloh McCloud's Color of Woman Journals and laminated them for each of my women friends. I chose the images based on who I knew those women to be, and included poems about womanhood printed on beautiful papers and laminated them as well.

In 2005 I needed to give more. I wanted to give beyond the holidays and felt like I needed to create a reason, a permission to be so generous. The Conspiracy came to life. I had already participated in the gift economy of the altered artist communities online and learned about random-act-of-kindness art that people would leave in their communities to be found by whatever stranger happened upon them. I decided to create a long-term project and document it online, as well as provide a forum for interacting with those who found my RAK Art in the community. I left little packages with beaded snowflake ornaments and my first art/word cards in public places...on restaurant tables, in public bathrooms at the mall, in planters outside of business downtown, and in free newspaper dispensers.

I later added the component of allowing people to request blessing packages for themselves or others. I have some other ideas of how to evolve and expand the project further but do not have the abundance to do more at this time. So I patiently use the supplies I unwittingly stock piled when abundance flowed more towards the project in the past until the Universe offers an opportunity to do more.

This holiday season I wish to . . . inspire and motivate myself to find and/or plan a way to make creative generosity a full time endeavor, at least for a little while. I'd love to have a year to commit my time to creative generosity ideas and manifestations, to discover what I'm truly capable of and here on earth to give my human family. I'd love to have at least a year to develop and live a gift economy lifestyle in every possible way. I'd love to have one year of my life where I did not have to make every single decision based on my family's survival and could have the space to truly find my place in the world.

I know it will come. I know every life experience I'm having will help me to evolve to greater capabilities of service. But I'm in a phase of feeling frustrated and questioning of my faith in the evolutionary process. I want to get to the part where I can focus on what and how I'm giving through my work instead of having to choose what will support a family of four. I don't know how to make the transition yet, but I know it will happen.

This holiday season I wish to. . . replenish and nurture my spirit. It's been an intense year. I want to focus on what brings me the greatest joy but is restful...like reading, writing, and doll and journal making. Creative generosity is what feeds my spirit most deeply. I know now what my bliss is. I just need to figure out how to make it my life's work.

This holiday season I wish to . . . be the change I wish to see in the world and learn how to bring my capacity for generosity into my relationship with my ex-husband/co-parent. It's time to heal the wounds, forgive the past and move forward in friendship. It's time to be generous with my love again.

What do you wish for this holiday season?

I Serve Life Because It Is Holy

An article by Rachel Remen:

In recent years the question "how can I help?" has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help, but how can I serve?

Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I'm attentive to what's going on inside of me when I'm helping, I find that I'm always helping someone who's not as strong as I am, who is needier than I am. People feel this inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals.

Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one. But serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the person I am serving. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction. When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude. These are very different things.

Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It is what I am responding to and collaborating with.

There is distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing. Fixing is a form of judgment. All judgment creates distance, a disconnection, an experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of expertise that can easily become a moral distance. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This is Mother Teresa's basic message. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.

If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery and expertise. Service, on the other hand, is an experience of mystery, surrender, and awe. A fixer has the illusion of being causal. A server knows that he or she is being used and has a willingness to be used in the service of something greater, something essentially unknown. Fixing and helping are very personal; they are very particular, concrete, and specific. We fix and help many different things in our lifetimes, but when we serve we are always serving the same thing. Everyone who has ever served through the history of time serves the same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and mystery in life.

The bottom line, of course, is that we can fix without serving. And we can help without serving. And we can serve without fixing or helping. I think I would go so far as to say that fixing and helping may often be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. They may look similar if you're watching from the outside, but the inner experience is different. The outcome is often different, too.

Our service serves us as well as others. That which uses us strengthens us. Over time, fixing and helping are draining, depleting. Over time we burn out. Service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will sustain us.

Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. Fundamentally, helping, fixing, and service are ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.

Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing. In 40 years of chronic illness I have been helped by many people and fixed by a great many others who did not recognize my wholeness. All that fixing and helping left me wounded in some important and fundamental ways.

Only service heals.

25 Days to Make a Difference

Today I came across a wonderful blog by a girl named Laura who wants to spend the 25 days leading up to Christmas making a difference in the world in small ways. She's only 10 and she's doing this project to memorialize her grandfather. She started a blog three days ago and she's already had thousands of visitors! She's also inspiring others to do the same. Go check it out!