Emanuel Biggs Gets Ramen, Not $5

Buddhist teachers will tell you that if you have trouble giving, practice by taking a thing or money and pass it back and forth between your left hand and you right hand. With enough practice, the premise is you’ll eventually be able to release said object to another person (presumably who needs it more than you do).

And while I think that’s a wonderful idea for those who cling to material possessions and wealth, that’s not a problem for me. I’m one of those people who finds that they never really have enough to give, which is one reason why I daydream about winning the lottery. In my mind, I buy a house and good car for one of my little brothers and pay for my nephews to go to the best schools all the way through college. My mother gets an apartment in Atlanta by Piedmont Park. I call Patricia and set up a lunch where we hash over plans for a St. Dunstan’s mountain spiritual retreat center for church members and poor children to experience nature.

As we’re having this mental lunch at which Patricia expresses thrill and approval of my retreat center idea and of course the orphanage south of town and the a soup kitchen, I find my present self suddenly awash in guilt. “Gifts should be anonymous,” I remind me. “I’ll have to sneak my $10 million into the offering plate.”

And then, I’m pulling into my driveway and the daydream dissolves of its own accord because, after all, it’s hard to win the Georgia Lottery when you never buy lottery tickets.

But in reality, for the little I do have to give, it’s really in knowing how to give and when to give and who to give to that usually trips me up. Patricia’s sermon last Sunday was about Jesus asking a blind beggar named Bartimaeus what he could do for him. She went on to share an example in her own life about when she was in the Peace Corp. and taught school in Thailand. One of her favorite students needed glasses and seeing the problem, Patricia went about taking the girl to the eye doctor, getting her fitted for glasses, and in the end giving the child the gift of sight. At first the little girl wore the glasses every day. Soon, she wore them only in Patricia’s English class, and then eventually not at all.

“None of the other children wore glasses and it made the child different from everyone else around her. And suddenly I realized that I had never asked the child if she wanted glasses. I had assumed that I could fix this child’s problem by giving her the gift of sight. After all, it was obvious that’s what she needed,” Patricia preached.

Now Jesus, the good teacher, does not assume anything about what the blind beggar needs, he asks what Bartimaeus wants.

For me, the sermon was a needed reminder because I have a long history of misguided giving. For instance, as a young mother, a man knocked on my door, asking for work for food. His name was Emanuel Biggs and the specific amount he needed was five dollars. Feeling sorry for him, I took him around the house to the backyard, which was covered in kudzu. That was work that he could start right away, I said. Emanuel scratched his head and mumbled something about being hungry, the gist of which was that the work would take a long time but he really needed the money right away.

Misreading the request, I insisted that Emanuel come inside and I would make him something to eat. I “cooked” him a bowl of ramen noodles, about the extent of my food repertory at the time, and he suffered through that scant meal, finally leaving without the money.

A couple of weeks later, I was having lunch with a police sergeant. When I told him the tale, he was incredulous. “Emanuel Biggs is a known glue sniffer!” said the sergeant. “Haven’t you heard about the Alday family murders?!”

And I could go on about giving unwanted clothing, furniture, an extra umbrella to someone on the street one day when it was raining. About giving with the expectation of approval, about giving with the expectation of being paid back, about giving with regret.

As ill-equipped as I am to continue this practice, I’m not giving up on giving really. Lately, I’ve been thinking how it’s good to sometimes depend on the experts to make the best use of small resources. Fortunately, at St. Dunstan’s, I have options. For one, we’re kicking off this the Parishioner Relief Fund, via Patricia’s discretionary fund. It’s to help with real needs of parishioners during this terrible recession and the money is given with complete discretion and wisdom—Patricia’s. And then we’re also heading into stewardship season, the time of pledge making for the next year.

The truth is, I’ll never be able to give as much as I want to, though I really should start playing the lottery. But with 2010 pledges and the relief fund, I'm pretty confident that I can't go wrong and can feel good in the knowledge that I've given in the right way.