Gifts of Money, Class, Vision, and Equity

A personal reflection by Mary Layton

I have been reflecting on several educational experiences that I have had while a member at UUCUV that relate to a person’s relationship with money. They mesh with personal experiences that I have struggled to understand over the years. The educational experiences include a workshop with Class Action, a North West Sustainability Institute seminar that included the book Your Money or Your Life, the movie “Capitalism: A Love Story,” and a stewardship workshop at the Rowe Conference Center.

Money is certainly a visceral topic. My grandmother, who was a stern, wealthy Presbyterian, always said never to talk about money or sex, though it was quite clear that these were essential to life. My friend Candy Darcy says money and sex are what we never have enough of. So maybe the idea in either case is to never talk about it and try to have lots of it.
My other grandmother was a very good friend of the wife of the Chairman of Lever Brothers Corporation. My grandmother used to describe how her friend would offer to buy houses for her children, fully furnished with eighteenth century antiques, and how the children always rejected the offer. They had no say in anything about these houses. It would be better to live on the street.

I once provided Personal Care Services to a povertystricken Norwich resident who lived in a little fallingdown shack back on one of the dirt roads. He had some health issues and lasted about a month. He was the uncle of the local Post Mistress who begged me to take care of him. Before he died we became great friends. He had had an egg business where he kept some hens and had a delivery service. He told me about driving teams of oxen, and about slaughtering beef. He was very sad about the slaughterhouse work, as he loved steers. I made curtains for the shack and listened to his stories. He gave me a metal candy box that was full of buttons that had been cut off garments that were no longer usable. This was his legacy to me. I still have the box of buttons. Who says he did not lead a rich life?

Frugality seems both necessary and worthy to me. My friends on the Sustainability Committee remind me that excessive consumption uses up the world’s resources and contributes to global warming. I lead a fairly simple life in that regard. After perusing Your Money or Your Life I have tried to be very mindful of what I spend, and for a year kept a journal of my expenditures.

The Class Action Workshop was an opportunity for people of different socioeconomic classes to self identify and also to learn about the political and economic implications of the huge income disparity and concentration of wealth in the top 1% of the US population. This is a topic of great concern. Will we end being an oligarchy as is true in some South American countries? Can we have an equitable political system when huge amounts of money raised from relatively few sources are necessary to run a political campaign? Wouldn’t it make sense for the wealth of this country to be invested in infrastructure, health care, education, and energy efficiency of benefit to the public, rather than that wealth be concentrated in the private accounts of a few privileged individuals? Don’t we need to have a sizable middle class in order to foster the character needed to maintain a stable and equitable economic and political system? Perhaps taxation, regulation, and anti trust laws should come back into style.

The fundraising workshop at the Rowe Conference Center was an eye-opener. At UUCUV and the Open Fields School I have been involved with running many small fundraising events. The information at the workshop indicated that fundraising events are only incidentally about making money. Their real purpose is to make friends who believe in the cause for which you are raising money. You then keep in touch with your friends who are happy to donate money to help the cause. This idea has been very startling to me. You mean money is about relationships? It is not about selling stuff? Who knew?

I am trying to use my experiences with money to inform my involvement with the Stewardship Committee. I think it would be a good idea if everyone in the congregation were to start thinking about what really matters to them about their involvement in this congregation, and to decide if it is worth it to continue to contribute. Why are we doing this, anyway? We have been given a Fair Share Givers Guide to help us understand what constitutes a significant gift. This opens up many other questions. If the size of your gift is small because you don’t make much income, does that make your gift unworthy? If you are more well off the size of a Fair Share gift might well be in the five figures. If you give a gift the size of a private school tuition, what exactly will the impact of that gift be? Will you feel as though you are “carrying” everyone else? What actions or services could we be involved with that would make you excited and proud to support UUCUV in a significant way?

The conversations I have had with other congregants have all been about scarcity. Perhaps we need to turn this idea back on itself. What is the best experience that you have had in this church? When have you felt that it is the right place to be and to serve? What makes it unique and important to you personally and to the world? What would your attitude to money be if you believed that a person’s money does not belong to her or him? If you had all the money you needed, what would your vision be for this church?