Reflections on Generosity
Kick off your week with a 5-minute reflection on generosity to ground yourself as you go about your fund development tasks. Each reflection includes a question to ponder throughout the week to aid your work.
Reflections on Generosity
54: Generosity in the Face of Ugliness
"...Suppose someone standing by a clear, sweet spring were to curse it: it just keeps right on bringing drinkable water bubbling up to the surface. Even if he throws mud or dung in it, before long the spring disperses the dirt and washes it out, leaving no stain..."
This week, I am reading quotes from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, written around 171 AD.
Reflection questions:
- Are we holding onto ugliness from a past interaction with a donor?
- How can we let go of the ugliness and turn to kindness, simplicity and morality, as Marcus Aurelius states, or can we turn to generosity?
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Music credit: Woeisuhmebop
Welcome back. Fundraising can be lonely with seemingly endless to-do list. This podcast isn't about best practices or trends. It's about the deeper wisdom of the beautiful space where generosity occurs, a weekly five-minute reflection to ground you for the week ahead. If you like this podcast, please leave a review in your favorite podcast app.
At some point, we will face a donor who is upset for reasons out of our control. Perhaps they had too high of expectations. Or, they misunderstood us. Or, there was an unintentional mistake. How do we stay generous? This week, I am reading quotes from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, written around 171 AD.
Quote.
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.
He goes on to say.
Suppose someone standing by a clear, sweet spring were to curse it: it just keeps right on bringing drinkable water bubbling up to the surface. Even if he throws mud or dung in it, before long the spring disperses the dirt and washes it out, leaving no stain. So how are you to have the equivalent of an ever-flowing spring? If you preserve your self-reliance at every hour, and your kindness, simplicity, and morality.
Unquote.
When we face an ungrateful, surly, arrogant, jealous, dishonest, or meddling donor, we have a choice. We can hold onto the ugliness. Or, we can choose the generosity of knowing that the donor shares the same human nature and yet they don’t implicate us in the ugliness. Our generosity can be the equivalent of an ever-flowing spring.
Let’s reflect on two questions this week.
Are we holding onto ugliness from a past interaction with a donor?
How can we let go of the ugliness and turn to kindness, simplicity and morality, as Marcus Aurelius states, or can we turn to generosity?
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