In a first-person reflection recently published by the CBC, Manon Christensen shares a story of generosity that emerges out of the space between comfort and discomfort, safety and risk. This story — https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/first-person-loan-car-to-stranger-9.7306763 – tells of a chance encounter at the driver’s licensing office, in which Christensen and her daughter overhear a new Canadian trying to book a driver’s test. This fellow is disappointed to learn that the driver’s licensing agency does not provide a car for people to take the test; it is necessary to provide one’s own. Christensen writes that her daughter, upon hearing this, fixed her with a stare that said “We have a car. He does not.” Hence – the problem could be fixed! However, the problem required stepping forward with an offer that would at minimum require time and inconvenience – and, beyond that, the possibility of an accident of some kind. Nerve-wracking!
There is much in this story, and it raises points to ponder. That it is Christensen’s daughter who is the catalyst for what came to be an offer to let this fellow use their car to take the test bears subtle witness to the ways in which what is nerve-wracking and risky can very easily (and often for very good reason) get in the way of generosity – once we have stuff, we want to keep it! Once we have stuff, we must manage it! (Of course, it is fair to point out that the voice from the side might also be the voice that doesn’t own the car and isn’t ultimately responsible for it either! But the voice from the side is always deeply important if we think it important to prevent ourselves from keeping too tight a grip on our stuff – we have a car; he does not!)
In this season of thanksgiving, we are reminded not only to give thanks, but to participate in the spirit that makes thanksgiving possible – the spirit of generosity itself.
The word ‘generosity’ carries Latin roots: genere – to beget, produce, bring to life.
Put simply, to be generous is to participate in bringing forth life – to generate something in the world.
Christensen’s first person narrative brings to the fore the tensions and challenges that can arise from such a spirit of generosity – she highlights that it challenges, for instance, the difference between being ‘nice’ and being ‘good.’ To move toward the good, she says, is to make space for another. To go beyond the norm “asks something of us.”
St Paul writes that “Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10, NRSV). Love, in other words, pushes us to consider that the basics of doing no harm – of being nice – are stretched and expanded when love joins the conversation.
The philosopher Alain Badiou, in a book titled, “St Paul, the Foundation of Universalism” (2003), reflects on this passage of scripture, and argues that to put law and love together is to embrace “the living unity of thinking and doing” that “turns life itself into a universal law”. Badiou concludes: “This is what Paul calls love” (Badiou, 2003, p.87).
That will require the wisdom of discernment and the Spirit’s direction in the moment, but the default setting of a generous spirit is perhaps best rooted in an awareness that to participate in what is good means being open to that voice from the side that calls us to make some room so that new life has space to come to the fore. This might well be at the very heart of generosity, and so also at the heart of love.
Or as St Augustine of Hippo put it: “Love, and do what you will.”
