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
101: Service, Courtesy, & Giving
"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
This week, I’m reflecting on the words of Henry Drummond from The Greatest Thing in the World, published in 1874.
Reflection question:
- How are we showing the generous love found in service, courtesy, and giving this week?
Reflection on quote:
How we treat those we serve whether our constituents or donors and volunteers is an outgrowth of how we love. A generous love includes three aspects: service, courtesy, and giving. In my opinion, this quote truly sums up the aspirational nature of fund development work. Service, courtesy, and giving.
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Music credit: Woeisuhmebop
Welcome back. This podcast explores the wisdom of generosity, from ancient to modern, and the beautiful space where generosity occurs. Don’t forget to subscribe for this weekly podcast in your favorite podcast app.
How we treat those we serve whether our constituents or donors and volunteers is an outgrowth of how we love. A generous love includes three aspects: service, courtesy, and giving. This week, I’m reflecting on the words of Henry Drummond from The Greatest Thing in the World, published in 1874.
Quote:
Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to please and giving pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure; for that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit. "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Whenever you attempt a good work you will find others doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. Courtesy is love in society, love in relation to etiquette. "Love does not behave itself unseemly.” Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their hearts they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he loved everything— the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with any society and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word “gentleman." It means a gentle person —a man or woman who does things gently, with love. That is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle person cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything else. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly.”
There is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Half the world is on the wrong scent in pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It consists in giving, and in serving others.
Unquote.
In my opinion, this quote truly sums up the aspirational nature of fund development work. Service, courtesy, and giving.
Let’s reflect on one question this week:
How are we showing the generous love found in service, courtesy, and giving this week?
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