Sharing

Climate change is — rightly — the foremost concern of our age. I think about it a lot, as everyone else does. I'm interested in the forays into zero waste living, and technologies that need less fuel, in lowering food miles and finding wiser farming methods. I admire, and I am so grateful for, the work of Allan Savory and permaculturists like Geoff Lawton (see here and here). I continually explore into the lives of such people as Dee Williams and this Australian family. What they are doing lifts my heart and gives me hope. 

I was so blessed to discover the life and influence of St Francis when I was only fifteen. Life is lived moment by moment, and I had no idea then how slow I would be to learn and how little I would achieve. And yet in so many ways the influences I have found shaped my life, and my children's lives, made a difference to the family and home we created, the choices we made.

Ina May Gaskin's book Spiritual Midwifery came out in 1976, four years before my first child was born — in good time to radically shape my approach to childbirth and mothering, and give me the chance to find Frederick Leboyer and Sheila Kitzinger and Michel Odent as well. And then as my children grew, I found the work of John Holt (of all his books I loved How Children Fail the best. So wise) and A.S.Neill, and so it went on. Studying, thinking, learning as I went, following the trail of simplicity, peace, health and faithfulness to the gospel, looking into the Catholic way, the Methodist way, the Anabaptist way, the Quaker way, the Taoist and Buddhist ways, growing gardens and making music and finding new friends and writing and teaching, padding along the trail . . . 

And always himself was with me:

He still is.

Then the other day, thinking about climate change and social problems, about poverty and environmental degradation and all the challenges we face, I realised that of all I'd learned and read and seen and discovered, there is one outstanding, simple, accessible powerful, life-changing thing that any of us and all of us can do; and that is nothing more sophisticated or spectacular than sharing. 

Sharing is revolutionary. Of itself it doesn't necessarily cost any money, so you can start right in and it doesn't matter how poor you are.

Sharing fosters humility and simplicity — you have to put up with other people and you don't have all the space to yourself. Sharing information by learning and teaching is life-changing, and it is in encountering those who are different from ourselves, sharing life with them, sharing our perspective and letting them share theirs, that we acquire wisdom.

The tiny house movement is lovely, and the little dwellings delight my soul — I like anything small! But in terms of loving the earth, sharing is better. On a winter's day in a northern climate, you could have 6 tiny houses all in a row, each with their propane heater or log burner keeping the 6 inhabitants individually warm, — or they could share one house with a fire in one room, gently warming the whole house and there to sit round together in the evening.

Loneliness and isolation are huge problems to people growing older, and the practical tasks of life don't get easier with the passing years. If people share, living together in households, old and young, then strength and knowledge unite and the possibility of maintaining a garden and carrying firewood and fetching groceries all extend — plus the money goes so much further. One fridge, one freezer, one furnace, one TV, one kettle, one car — four or five people.

I love the possibilities of what's called grace/gift economy; of sharing what you have in a John the Baptist kind of way. If you give away anything you can spare — give it, not sell it — the exchange generates joy and gratitude, in yourself as well as in the recipient. Giving freely makes life flow easily.

Sometimes, though, there's a good reason to sell rather than gift what you have, whether in a steady ongoing pursuit of your trade or in moving on to others what you no longer need. And when you do that, if you give over and above what the money you are paid should buy, again it generates joy. 

In an era of mass-production, buying and selling (or giving away) second-hand belongings is a vital aspect of slowing down the demands we place on the earth, giving the forests and the land a chance to renew. And this, too, is a form of sharing, even if money changes hands. The same winter skirt can be bought and sold numerous times if it's gently cared for. People lose and gain weight, change their style or taste, move into different climates and occupations — clothes once appropriate are no longer so. Then they can be donated or moved on, and be just what someone else is looking for. 

If ever you are feeling despondent about the dying of the earth and the disintegration of society, then you can maybe think of one act of sharing as a candle you can light in the holy space of your life. Sharing brings hope and generates joy; it also develops the muscles of patience and humility. Sharing is a fundamental element of the gospel. It's the way of love. It's the root of revolution.