Three feet above me, perched atop a ponderosa pine branch, squats a chipmunk no taller than my thumb. She embraces a pinecone slightly larger than herself. With nimble twists and turns and rapid flurries of bites, she strips off the scales, eating parts of them and the nuts hidden within.
A quick scan of my surroundings reveals hundreds if not thousands of pine cones, dropped with profligate abandon. Each one bears the future of the forest: ponderosas scattering the hope for subsequent generations of orangey, cinnamon barked, straight-trunked trees. Each points to heaven, reaching out thick-armed boughs in worship.
This tree is massive and mighty. And yet this tiny rodent chews speedily through the conifer’s chance at children with the haste of one whose sole diet is caffeine.
And it occurs to me: There is enough for all.
There are enough pine cones for saplings to arise. And there are enough cones for hosts of scampering rodents to consume and be nourished. And there are plenty more for me to step on bare-footed in pain.
There is a generosity built into nature. The creation isn’t stingy. And that tells me something about the Creator. If anything, abundance is the word to describe the creation.
There aren’t just a few stars in the sky. They are countless stars and galaxies flung across the universe. And switching from the telescope to the microscope, there are countless biota inhabiting my own gut, billions of creatures I can’t even imagine which eat the things I eat and enable me to be nourished at the same time. I am unwittingly generous to them as I take in the generosity of the world.
The symbiosis is stunning. We each give and we each receive and all are the better for it.
A raspberry bush produces seed-filled berries by the dozens. Birds and other creatures gobble them down and wander away. But not only do the berries feed others, those others excrete the seeds and spread them further afield than any Buch could achieve on their own. The same is true of other fruit- and berry-bearing vegetation.
The generosity of giving away fruit is repaid in the scattering of seed.
I watched a movie in some biology class when I was in my early teen years. I can’t recall which year, but I can recall the movie. It followed a sea turtle as she made her nest on a sandy beach. Loads of eggs were lain and she did her best to keep them safe until her brood hatched. Then the race began. The small, slow-moving turtles left the nest for the sea only to be met with an army of seagulls. Swooping down, they greedily gulped down the newborn amphibians. Only.a handful made it to the waves. And there, some fell foul of other predators.
Watching the movie, I felt pity for the turtles and anger for the seagulls. I wanted all those little guys to survive and live long and happy lives. But what I was watching was the generosity of nature. Too many turtles would devastate the ecosystem. Only a few should make it for there to be an all-around healthy system. Turtles lay so many eggs because only a few will survive. But maybe they also lay so many eggs in order to feed their predators. Really, it’s both. Generosity is built into the system.
As apex predators, the food chain leads to us. Generosity isn’t built into us in the same way it’s built into the rest of creation. We have to choose our generosity.
Farmers do so by cultivating a particular plot of land, knowing its contours, its flora, its fauna, its weather, and raising crops that fit best. Land and crop and animal, they all benefit from a well-run farm.
Artists do so by sharing the truth and goodness and beauty they experience through song and sculpture, painting and pottery.
Many more do so. But we live in a culture that grabs instead of gives. We hoard instead of sharing. We gather the bounty of the earth and look around for more, leaving nothing for the poor among us. We tear down our barns to build bigger ones.
I grasp. I wish I could say I’m better than I am. I’m grateful to be married to a woman who has continued to teach generosity to me over many years by her generous spirit.
Sin is an inward move, a collapsing into Self. It grabs and clutches to itself.
Love is an outward move, an expanding toward others. Its hands are open, extending and offering to others.
The nature of generosity is the nature of love, the nature of God.