Nipun Mehta's Gift Economy

One day Nipun Mehta and his friends were sitting around talking about pranks. What is a prank composed of? “It’s challenging, it’s creative, it’s collaborative,” Nipun reflected in an interview with Richard Whittaker in Parabola Magazine. “We went through a whole list of motivations for what, at the end of the day, is essentially destructive. So we said, how about we reframe this? We leave all these motivations in, but we make pranks constructive. What if you just blew somebody away with kindness?”

That was the beginning of a remarkable organization called Charity Focus, “an experiment in the joy of giving.” Charity Focus, which recently changed its name to Service Space, depends entirely on the work of volunteers. It does no fund-raising, but relies upon the generosity of people who are moved to help. Services include website design, collaborations with other organizations, daily emails containing positive and inspiring messages, and weekly stories about people who have taken an unusual approach to some problem or seen a delightful possibility where most would see business as usual.

One surprising result of what Mehta calls the “gift economy” is an upsurge of honesty in the way bills are paid in Indonesian cafés. In the past, widespread corruption meant that customers, especially young people, would walk out of the café without paying for their meal. Now “honesty cafés” invite customers to determine what the meal and the service were worth and to pay that. Some of the cafés don’t even have cashiers, just boxes in which people can deposit their payments.

The gift economy starts with single, selfless acts, says Nipun Mehta. “I’m going to support you just because you’re a fellow human being and someone else comes and supports me in the same way.” In the long run an attitude like that results in “generosity entrepreneurs.”

Repercussions

The steps of an Earth Exchange are simple to describe:

1: Go to a wounded place

2: Sit a while and tell your stories

3: Spend time on the land and find beauty in surprising ways

4: Make a simple act of beauty

However, since we encourage each community to enact these steps in ways that reflect their own place and people, the events themselves and the ripple effects are very different. Steve Brown, an active member of a conservancy group dedicated to protecting Red Lily Pond in Craigville, Massachusetts, recently described a couple of interesting ramifications that their 2011 Global Earth Exchange had for both people and the pond. 

One of the participants at the event, Avis Strong Parke, is an artist. After the Global Earth Exchange, she was inspired to invite other local artists to join her every Tuesday morning at 10:00 to paint the pond. For several weeks a group that ranged in size from nearly twenty to about eight regulars set up their easels at different sites around the pond and created a variety of water colors, acrylics, and oil paints. At the conservancy’s annual dinner and auction, one of these works sold for $900, and in total the group raised thousands of dollars more than they ever had before. (The painting above is by Avis Strong Parke.)

 

The second surprise came about from an unexpected source. A man who was known to be vocal about his conservative political leanings arrived at the pond for the June 18 event, but immediately made it clear that he didn’t like the word “radical.” Steve suggested he read the Radical Joy for Hard Times manifesto that was taped to a card table on the dock and that explores our philosophy that damaged places are worthy of attention and beauty. A few minutes later, the man returned to Steve. “Well, I believe those things,” he said. “That’s right up my alley.” He ended up staying for the day’s celebration.

A few weeks later, when the development corporation that owns a condominium at one end of the pond put forth a proposal to construct a giant illuminated dock over the water, Steve and other activists were present in force at a State Commission hearing to discuss the plan. They were surprised when the conservative neighbor walked in the door, especially since he did not usually get involved in local issues. The man stood before the commission and announced, “I’m a Republican and I don’t believe in regulations, but this pond is too valuable to destroy.”

All kinds of people love the beautiful places that  they live amidst. And often we have more in common than we might suppose.

What Do We Do Then?

You know very well how many dedicated people are working hard to save the Earth. They're fighting Congress to protect the deserts, enforce clean air standards, make corporations disclose the toxic chemicals used to blast deep into gas-rich shale. Talented, passionate people are writing books about climate change and polluted seas, rivers, soils, and air. They take children on hikes and offer to adults wilderness trips in pristine places so people will remember how much the natural world means to them.

And still the forests are being cut, the oceans are being clogged with oil and scarred with plastic. Still mountaintops are being exploded and wetlands filled in.  Still wilderness is plowed up to make housing developments and malls. Still poor communities of color are the ones slated for the most toxic projects of incinerators and mineral extraction.

Still, people who are proud to be environmentalists tell themselves they need the latest iPhone and iPad and have to dye their hair and use beauty products to make themselves young. and going on vacations to eco-paradises like the Gallapagos.

Still babies are being born, here, there, and everywhere, and when they grow up they too will want a place of their own and they will believe that they need the newest gadgets to survive. And how will they survive?

It is not going to get better. The places we love are going to continue to disappear.

Then what? Will all the work of the environmental educators and litigators and preservers be for naught? Does their success depend solely on staving off the inevitable?

Or does real ecological activism come from a new kind of realism? Not just realizing the world is changing and "we're to blame," but the realism of being with and attending to the places in our midst that are a part of us still, no matter what has happened to them?

Radical Joy for Hard Times says: When the places we love are damaged, we humans hurt too. And tempting as it is to ignore both damaged places and our own difficult feelings of loss and grief, it is by encountering these places and feelings with openness, compassion, and curiosity that we blaze the way forward. It is by telling the stories of our relationship with the place and above all making beauty there until we fall in love with the place all over again... that we become citizens of the future of Earth, not just surviving, but loving where we live and empowered to live with it with wild, bold creativity and community.

"Wounded Places on Earth Are Like Wounded Places in People"

“We have physically created wounded places on the Earth, and that is exacerbated by us ignoring them. Becoming whole in ourselves and in the way we approach existence is the beginning of healthy, dynamic systems. It’s exactly a parallel to our own inner psyche. The parts we cut out and don’t want to look at are the ones that cause us the most trouble. And if we look at them and pay attention to them, they shift.”

This comment by Kinde Nebeker (standing in the center in the photo above, at her 2011 Global Earth Exchange in Salt Lake City) of Salt Lake City zeroes in on one of the subtle but vitally important aspects of the practice and the path that is Radical Joy for Hard Times Earth Exchanges: that actually going to wounded places strengthens the bond between person and place, brings new life to the place, and empowers people to act with more energy and more compassion on behalf of what they love.

We all wish, naturally, not to be uncomfortable. Hence we avoid the things that we fear will make us sad or angry or embarrassed or guilty—or any of a host of other emotions we’d rather avoid. Avoidance, of course, doesn’t make the shunned thing vanish. It only makes it grow and fester there in the dark where we try to hide it. It grows bigger. It pops out of its hiding place when we least expect it, causing problems and making us even more determined to keep it hidden.

When we decide, once and for all, to take a look at what’s wriggling there down unseen, we’re often surprised to see how mild it is. How, instead of sinking us in despair, the attention we give it actually liberates us. Dealing consciously with what we discover enables us to bring to the problem new understanding, peace of mind, and creative solutions.

As Kinde observes, the same is true about wounded places. When people go to polluted rivers, eroded hills, farms torn up for gas drilling, or abandoned industrial sites like the one Kinde and her friends honored in the 2011 Global Earth Exchange, they discover that, far from depressing them, the encounter fills them with a sense of community, creativity, empowerment, and even joy.

Tree of Life Blooms in Palestinian Refugee Camp

Photo by Teresa Yeh

Lily Yeh founded Barefoot Artists in 2003 to bring the transformative power of art to people whose communities have been buried in poverty, dilapidation, and despair. In the past twenty-five years she has worked with people all over the world, from her native China to Kenya, Ecuador, Italy, and Rwanda, to North Philadelphia, where she lives today and where Barefoot Artists was founded. At Radical Joy for Hard Times we are honored to have Lily Yeh on our Council of Advisors.

Recently Lily received an invitation from Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, to come to Balata, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, located near the city of Nablus. Balata is currently home to 23,000 people, all living in an area of less than one square mile. There are only two schools, the unemployment rate is very high, and the young people are homesick and without hope.

Lily worked with volunteer artists, members of the Balata Women’s Center, students at the Balata Girls’ School, and local participants to create art that would reflect their deep pain, their intense longing to return to their homeland, and their hope for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. This mural they made is called “The Palestinian Tree of Life.” It depicts an old and rugged olive tree filled with blooms and upholding the sacred Dome of the Rock. Doves, symbol everywhere of peace, fly through a starry sky. Amidst the cramped streets the mural is a sign of creativity, resilience, and yes, even joy.

 

Cross Bones Graveyard Honors Medieval Prostitutes

It was desolate patch of ground in South London, long abandoned, its original purpose forgotten, before Transport for London slated it for redevelopment. But poet, author, and local historian John Constable knew the history of the place, and he was determined not only to preserve it, but to shepherd it toward designation as a world heritage sight.

Now, on the 23^rd of each month people gather at the iron gates of Cross Bones, the small plot of land that, from medieval to Victorian times, was an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes and paupers. Participants in the monthly ceremony include office workers, prostitutes, artists, and witches. They sing songs, read poems, and tie on the fence offerings of ribbons and the kinds of gaudy baubles a woman of the night might appreciate.

In the Middle Ages the prostitutes in the area were known as “Winchester Geese” for the Bishop of Winchester who granted them license to ply their trade there in the Liberty of the Clink, beyond the jurisdiction of the City of London. When the women died, however, the church wanted nothing more to do with them, and they were buried in unhallowed land.

In 1996 John Constable suddenly received a visitation from what he calls the “spirit of a medieval whore”—or “the Goose,” as she called herself. The result was a long poem written in the voice of this spirit, along with Constable's determination to revivify that forgotten piece of land and the people who once inhabited it.

Hearing about Cross Bones from my friend and colleague Eugene Hughes, who lives in London, was one of the things that inspired me to start this blog in the first place, and the story of Cross Bones was the second piece I wrote for it. Here is a place that for hundreds of years was associated with crime, shame, and immorality and for hundreds of years more was forgotten. Now it has found new life thanks to Constable and the other people who see the beauty of the place not despite but because of what it was. What is particularly important about the re-sacralization of Cross Bones, moreover, is that it lives on not just as a little community park that has been beautified, not even as a series of poems written in the voice of a prostitute from long ago, but through ongoing ceremony, regular community gatherings, and the making of ever new and thoughtful offerings. Cross Bones is an active exchange of stories and gifts.

Delight!

My last post was about the wonderful Beauty Amid Destruction project in Tuscaloosa, which put works of art all along the swath of devastation left by the tornado that devastated the city last April. The post before that was about Juliana Santacruz Herrara's playful "patches" of colorful yarn, which she fitted into the cracks of Paris's sidewalks.

But acts of beauty for wounded places don't have to be big. They don't have to take a lot of time. They don't even have to involve more than one person. And sometimes you get a surprise burst of beauty and delight in the process.

Last month a family in our small village of Thompson, Pennsylvania cut down the three beautiful old catalpa trees that lined their front yard. One of the trees clearly had heartrot, but the others were perfectly healthy, and I was very sad to see them go. Their big heart-shaped leaves and dangling mahogany-colored pods looked very elegant, almost whimsical, on this block of small homes.

After the tree surgeons and their shredding machine had left, I went over to the house with a bag of birdseed and started sprinkling offerings on the stumps for the birds that had lost their home. This was my simple act of "making beauty," which Radical Joy for Hard Times suggests as part of every encounter with a wounded place.

A sudden movement startled me. I looked up and saw nothing. Then the movement flashed again. This time a chipmunk popped up from the tree with the hole in its core. The chipmunk had immediately adjusted to the new situation. Now it had a place to hide, both itself and its store of food. Its appearance was a delight, proof that nature invariably and persistently will find a way to prevail.

The chipmunk would have moved into that hole in the stump anyway, but because I happened to be there attending to the broken trees, I got to witness it... a little joy for hard times.