Scarcity Vs. Abundance

Last week, I wrote about the Wednesday Night Dinners I started at my church. My reflections were influenced by a book I was reading:  The Abundant Community, by Peter Block and John McKnight.  Well, I've finished the book now, and it has led me to do some more reflecting on the dinner gatherings that I've come to find so meaningful.

At these dinners, the group that attends basically creates its own entertainment.  We're not paying someone else to provide us with their idea of a "good time," which is what happens when we go to a movie, a theme park, watch a DVD, or even eat at a restaurant (especially a chain restaurant where the meal you order in Long Beach is exactly the same as the meal that is being served to hundreds or thousands of other diners in restaurants all over the continent).

It's nice to pay someone else to entertain us once in awhile.  However, paying someone else to entertain us is an idea based on scarcity.  We can only experience as much entertainment as we can afford.  Also, when we pay someone else to entertain us, we are living out the belief that our own gifts aren't good enough to share.  Our own gifts aren't good enough, so we have to pay someone else who is "gifted" to entertain us.

Creating our own entertainment, on the other hand, is an idea based on abundance.  Every person has gifts, and is empowered to share them.  The amount of entertainment we can experience is limitless, as long as we are willing to share our gifts.

Christmas is approaching.  For some reason, we believe that the best gifts are ones that can be purchased from someone else, gifts created by someone we don't even know.  Thus, our generosity and gift-giving is limited by the money in our bank accounts.  Christmas shopping is an exercise in scarcity.  We can only give so much before we run out of money.

Why is it that we think that paying for a gift that was made, created, or cooked by someone else is preferable to - and more meaningful than - a gift that is made, created, or cooked specifically for us by someone we love?

You're Invited to Dinner

Six months ago, I announced that from now on, I would be cooking and eating dinner at church every Wednesday evening - and that anyone who wanted to join me was welcome.

A few people accepted my invitation.  Throughout the summer, there would be seven to ten people joining me for dinner on Wednesdays.  I put out a basket and invited those who had come more than once to put a few dollars in to help pay for the food.  The money received almost covered what I spent.

The meals were simple:  quesadillas, hamburgers, spaghetti.  Later on I would get creative, trying new recipes, like the time I made Turkey & Vegetable Chili Verde from scratch.  Delicious, fun to make, but still simple.  The only beverage I provided was ice water, although our church does have a vending machine with reasonably priced beverages.  We ate on paper plates with paper napkins.

At the end of summer, the number of dinner guests began to grow.  Soon we were 15, then 20.  One week we had 25.  Some of those who came said they wanted an opportunity to cook, so I got to enjoy some Wednesday dinners without having to plan, shop, and prepare the food, which was nice.  And the money in the basket soon began to surpass the amount that was spent.

As we begin our seventh month of Wednesday night dinners, I'm surprised to discover that each week is more enjoyable and satisfying to me than the previous week.  I'm surprised, because I've been trained to expect just the opposite from life.  Normally, satisfaction decreases over time.  The new clothes I bought six months ago don't bring me nearly the same level of satisfaction today that they brought me when they were new.  The DVD I bought over the summer now sits on a shelf collecting dust.  I can say the same for just about everything I've ever bought.  They quickly become old, tired, boring, or obsolete, and never bring me the long-lasting satisfaction that I crave.

But Wednesday night dinners remain fresh, exciting, and deeply satisfying.  I figure this is true for several reasons:

1. It's REAL.  So often we seek to amuse ourselves with things that are VIRTUAL:  TV, internet, tabloid magazines.  But the people we encounter there aren't real.  They're not there with us.  We can't interact with TV and movie personalities, and we can only interact in a limited way with people via the internet.  This leaves us dissatisfied.
2. It's ORGANIC.  By that I mean it's something we create ourselves.  We're not dependent on someone else (TV producers, fashion designers, or corporate advertisers, for example) to mass-produce entertainment for us.  This is something we've created.  It's unique, and it's ours.
3. It's DYNAMIC.  The shirt I bought six months ago, it's still the same.  The DVD I bought: the story never changes.  But an experience that is real and organic will always be changing, different every time.  It's dynamic, not static.  New people show up, and the old people have new stories to tell.  The menu changes from week to week, and so does the location where we eat: outside on the patio when it's warm, inside when it's not.  In conversation around the dinner table, we listen and respond to what's going on in our lives and in our families:  births, deaths, lost jobs, new jobs, new relationships, and the joys and challenges of raising children or caring for parents.

This is community at its best.  This is LIFE at its best.  It's much more satisfying than anything I could buy.  And it just keeps getting better.

So:  Who wants to join me for dinner? 

(For those seriously interested in coming, yes, the invitation is real.  Weekly updates are posted at www.facebook.com/bixbyknollschurch.  If I'm organized enough, I'll even post the menu there.  Everyone is welcome.)

Thinking About Christmas

A few weeks ago, I started to write a post about how I have decided to let Santa bring my family a new TV for Christmas this year.  But before I say any more, here's an assignment:  Grab a pencil or pen (go on), and write down a list of your ten favorite things.  And by ten favorite things, I mean, if you were moving to a new city and were only allowed to take ten things with you, what would you take?  What ten things that you own would you not be able to live without?

OK, put that list aside for a moment.  Grab a new sheet of paper, and describe the one or two or three happiest places you've ever been; places where your soul was at rest, where you felt free and alive and peaceful.

Now take both lists and put them side by side.  How many of the things on your first list did you have when you were in the places you listed on your 2nd list?  How many of those things are what made those places so special to you?  Was it those things that put your soul at rest, that made you feel free and alive and peaceful?

Now, about that TV...

There's just, oh, one or two of fifteen problems.  One, Christmas is still three and a half months away.  Well, it was when I first started writing this.  Now it's only two and a half months away.  A month ago, I was finding it hard to wait for a new TV, because I saw all those beautiful, large screen TVs in the stores, and I wanted one NOW.
After all, compared to our giant box of a TV with its cathode-ray tubes and un-sharp picture and off-color images and permanently-on captioning (the color and the captioning the result of having broken the remote which is the only way to adjust such things), the wall of new TVs at the Big Store down the street sure do look cool.  "Let's go get our TV!" My wife said to me.  "Yeah, but then what will Santa bring us?" 

"Oh yeah."

I went to the public library the other day, intending to return a giant monster of a novel that took me all summer to read.  (I mean that literally.  I renewed it once, then tried to renew it again but was told someone else had placed a hold on it.  So I turned it in and immediately placed a hold on it myself, so that I could get it back and finish it.)  I didn't intend to check any new books out, but on the shelf I saw "The 100-thing Challenge." 

Perhaps it goes without saying, but it's about a man who decided to live a whole year with only 100 "things" in his possession.

Reading the book reminded me of the lists I've made for myself, the same lists I assigned you at the beginning of this essay.  And I remembered then that none of my "happy places" made my list #2 because of anything that was on my list #1.

Not even a fancy TV or any other electronic device.

In fact, at the top of the list of happy places is a cabin with a bare plywood floor and a canvas roof - more of a tent, really than a cabin - where I spent several summers while counseling summer camp back when I was in college.  Everything I had with me while I lived in that tent-cabin came with me in a duffel bag. 

In the month since I first started writing this, it has dawned on me that we don't really watch TV all that much.  At this moment, I can't even remember the last show I watched on the TV.  I think it was some DVD movie from Netflix that none of us remembers requesting and which was incredibly boring, despite having some big name actors in it.  (Incidentally, it is also the last DVD movie we'll be watching from Netflix, since we, like so many others, have cancelled that service.)

I mentioned this to my wife.  Together, we then decided that Santa could bring us something else for Christmas, something that isn't really a "thing," but more of an event, an activity that our family can do together.  Santa has already paid for this, in fact, and it's just waiting for Christmas day.  And, unlike the TV, this gift might actually make our family happy.