Perception is Fickle

Velocity Meadows
by Mark Strand

I can say now that nothing was possible
But leaving the house and standing in front of it, staring
As long as I could into the valley. I knew that a train,
Trailing a scarf of smoke, would arrive, that soon it would rain.
A frieze of clouds lowered a shadow over the town,
And a driving wind flattened the meadows that swept
Beyond the olive trees and banks of hollyhock and rose.
The air smelled sweet, and a girl was waving a stick
At some crows so far away they seemed like flies.
Her mother, wearing a cape and shawl, shielded her eyes.
I wondered from what, since there was no sun. Then someone
Appeared and said, "Look at those clouds forming a wall, those crows
Falling out of the sky, those fields, pale green, green-yellow,
Rolling away, and that girl and her mother, waving goodbye."
In a moment the sky was stained with a reddish haze,
And the person beside me was running away. It was dusk,
The lights of the town were coming on, and I saw, dimly at first,
Close to the graveyard bound by rows of cypress bending down,
The girl and her mother, next to each other,
Smoking, grinding their heels into the ground

Truly Free Market

I am part of a group within my church that has recently been looking for creative, and, most importantly, fundamentally Christian, ways of sharing our faith. This led us to ask questions about what our faith truly is (or, what/who it is in). How can we share the gospel if we don't know it?

I am in no way claiming to exhaustively "know" the gospel. But we did quite a bit of hard reading, discussing and praying and came to appreciate that the gospel is so much more than being able to recite the four spiritual laws or walk someone down the "Roman's Road." The gospel is about the inbreaking of the Kingdom. Christ ushered in a new rule that is now mixed in with the here and now. It is about allegiance to a King, and this is about a total way of life.

This King is an entirely different kind of King, so, as his subjects, we are called to live an entirely different kind of life. Sharing the gospel is living in such a way that it invites others to come and participate in the Kingdom of God, in the here and now, in the ordinary parts of everyday life, as we wait for the Kingdom to come in its fullness.

This is a big task. So, again, I am in now way claiming that we have figured out how to do this perfectly. But I think we're headed in the right direction.

We realized all this means that the gospel even has something to do with economics. How we value, buy, use and get rid of stuff. So we came up with something we decided to call the "Truly Free Market."

Here's how it worked/works: First we asked our congregation to go out and buy some new clothes for us to give away. We didn't ask for anything ridiculous, simply that when people went out to buy something for themselves, that they think of someone else as well. We also asked for new stuff because we wanted to show people we loved them, and old underwear full of holes says, "here, you throw this away," not, "we love you."

Our congregation responded with incredible generosity. We received hundreds of articles of (good) clothes and over $1,000 in monetary donations we used to buy more clothes (Old Navy clearance rack is awesome for kids clothes, by the way) and diapers, toothbrushes, bottles etc. We then took all this stuff down to a pre-school and set it all up like a garage sale. Except nothing was for sale. We gave it all away.

I was a little surprised how reluctant people can be to receive a gift. We are so conditioned to think something must be earned. One lady even started yelling at one of our girls, saying "Liar! Nothing is ever free!"

She said, "Except maybe this stuff?"

However, not all had such a hard time realizing what this was all about. Once people accepted that we simply wanted to give gifts the responses were as much a gift to us, perhaps more so, that what we gave them.

Especially the kids. You could tell they were used to getting second-hand crap. My wife, Amy, would begin to walk them around to "shop" and they would be all detached and jaded, until she would hold something up and they saw that it really was cool stuff. At those moments, the looks on their faces were worth more than all the stuff we gave away combined. They then went into a funny little exercise of picking up just about everything and asking, "How much for this? How about this? Is this free too?"

Now, I'm not saying that everyone there thought about the event in terms of economics. But, whether they realize it or not, everyone involved learned something about the economics of the Kingdom. It is one based not in shortage or supply and demand and the "freedom" to use this for one's own benefit, but in abundance and grace and therefore in the exchange of gifts for the good of another. Our Lord is one who gives amazing gifts, so we desire to be a people who give gifts too. I pray that as we do this people will come into the sphere of the Kingdom.

UPDATE:
If you're interested, Eric has a nice little post with some good links that deal with the economics of the Kingdom and gift giving here. There is also an insightful little comment that links economies of gift with sustained relationships. You know, FYI.