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Now I think that story we just read, "The Quiltmakers Gift" by Jeff Brumbeau, has a moral lesson. And it's pretty obvious right? It's in giving that we find what we really seek; that there's no better way to express gratitude for the blessings of ones life than to share them with others. But the question for us may be and maybe as Lucia offered in her wonderful words, "Do we have to give away everything?" Do we have to give away everything in order to be happy? Like the King, do we have to give away everything we own? Most of us simply can't do that, at least not all at once. It's natural to want security, it's all right to feel content and well taken care of and many of us have our families to consider. I can't give away everything and just expect Aaron and Caitlyn to join me on the streets.
So maybe a better question is, "How much is enough?" Many of us ask this question a lot and it comes up in all sorts of different contexts: our giving, our relationships… How much is enough? Some people live with that question with a sense of guilt. After all, we do live in a very wealthy country whose well being often depends on the work and sacrifice of people who have less. All around us a simple walk through Santa Rosa will show that there are people who have less. And that guilt can be a clue it's not all bad a little message from our conscience that at least asks can I be doing more? But if we give out of guilt we will not discover the real blessing of giving. All we're doing is relieving our own anxiety not pouring out love. And after all we could give away everything we own and the world would still be filled with poor and troubled people. We can't be expected to solve the whole problem ourselves. We're not, each of us, a king who already owns everything. We deserve happiness as much as anyone else.
If I gave my house away today to a homeless person there wouldn't be any fewer homeless people. So we need to look a little deeper than the level of things, the level of money. Even though, of course, making sure everyone has enough of some things like food and shelter and medicine and love. That's essential. We must attend to the basics first.
But ultimately we need to remember, as the King learned, that self things don't bring happiness. Maybe what we actually have to give away is our attachment to things. Everything we own in this world is on loan to us, you can't take it with you. We never really own anything. As the king learned a Bible verse without knowing it:
"What good is it for a person to gain the whole world and yet lose his very self?".
So the answer to how much is enough can't clearly be found in the amount of money or the time or the things we give away. It's found in our self. How generous are we with our self, with this, how much of this do we give away with what we always have more of to give; our attention, our care, our generous spirit, our love. And in that regard the truth is, all of us probably can give a lot more than we think. There's a lot more in here than we remember. Everything we have may be on loan but when we see the world clearly and see how connected everything is then while we're alive we have everything. So maybe we really can give everything away. Maybe the answer to the question of how much is enough just never stops. Maybe we just keep asking and finding an answer and then pushing it a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and we don't know where it will end.
People of faith believe that the well of compassion and kindness is endless and the more we pour it out for others the more we drink of it ourselves. Maybe we can never give enough but that doesn't mean we can't give more. As we seek to be more generous people, to find that special happiness that the King found, the best clue is right here in our own heart and we can use an old Buddhist phrase which I've said before, "The supreme happiness brings benefit to self and other". We're also people who deserve happiness and well being. True happiness and well being for the world needn't come at anybody's expense. So if we're leaning too much into giving to others and not attending enough to ourselves it can drain us and make us unhappy and if we lean to much to ourselves at the expense of others it can drain them and make them unhappy. So we just keep asking, "What do I really need?" What brings my 'self' its most lasting happiness, and that's what I can give away. Lead with your heart, and the answer will come. Heed the King and the Quilt Maker when opportunities for generosity arise take them again and again and again.
I would like to give you an opportunity for generosity. You'll see some boxes right down in front there and those are from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. This is a long time program of our denomination called "A Guest At Your Table". Like the bear who had the Quilt Maker over for berries and honey, we're asked to set this box at our table during the holiday season and imagine that there is a person in need joining us. A real person. And there are some pictures on the boxes that help us with that.
The whole Unitarian Universalist Service Committee grew out of a simple act of generosity back at the beginning of the Second World War after Hitler took over Czechoslovakia. There was a couple named Martha and Waitstill Sharp | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. They were Unitarians and they just decided to go to Europe quote to see if there was anything they could do. He was the minister of the Wellesley Hills church, she had a degree in social work, they ended up in Prague and unexpectedly for five months they carried out a rescue and relief operation.
They matched endangered people with job opportunities outside the country so they could get exit sisas. They gave money from America to people who needed it. Over the course of their time there they rescued 30 children and 10 adults getting them to the United States. And out of that work a new organization was born, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee who first brought us the symbol of the Flaming Chalice. And as that work spread throughout Europe primarily in Portugal and France it is thought that the numbers of people who were rescued by that group, usually in collaboration with other agencies, was somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Just from two people who said, I wonder what we can do, I wonder what we can give.
So if my helpers can come forward with the boxes we are going to pass out these for all of you and I want to teach you a simple little song that perhaps you can sing when these boxes are at your table when you're at your meal. And since you can't put turkey in a little cardboard box and send it to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee you might think of just putting that days change in there and we'll collect these after the new year.
There's a simple little song at the back of our hymnal that makes for a lovely grace and we'll sing it together. It's easy to learn and it goes like this:
From you I receive To you I give Together we share And by this we live