thinking about gifting.

Some weeks are full of gifts given and received.

This week, off the top of my head, we gave away an aluminium shed, a bike trailer, clothes and books, firewood and seeds and we gifted time to the community garden, to transporting people to the library, to a friend who needed some support with childcare and another who needed a hand with turning compost.

We received (again, just off the top of my head) gifts of clothes, fresh food, seeds and a few seedlings, a large cast-iron frypan, flowers, aswell as a music lesson and concert.

These were all gifts that arrived into our lives unannounced as it were and allowed ourselves and those whom we gifted to, to be a little less reliant on the money system.

In the process of gifting we built new friendships and maintained current friendships, discussed ideas, learnt new skills, were physically active and got rid of stuff we no longer wanted.

We also built trust. Trust in reciprocity, in community and in cultivating qualities such as friendship, loyalty, sharing and cooperation; qualities that are not recognised by the market economy and yet qualities that we will rely on in the economic chaos that is to come.

Indeed, the qualities that the people of our city have relied on this year during and after the earthquakes.

The gifts in our life make a difference; they support our life, are the backbone of the girls' "education" and nurtures our deep sense of belonging. I've written about this before here.

We do our best to put our energy into exchanges which support our interdependence with others. These exchanges have always brought us optimism in the beauty and resilience that comes from respectful human connection.

(And if you want to extend your thinking around gift culture then check this great booklet out.)

stuff

The owner of our house is returning soon so we are packing again....

a chance to go through our stuff and check whether it all comes with us.

This is certainly one of the benefits in moving a lot; paring down and traveling lighter.

This time around I'm letting go of quite a few of my books. Two boxes full in fact. People who know me know I'm good at moving things on for others to benefit from, but there have been just some books; books I have heaved around this country.

It is time to share them with others.

So as I have been filling boxes, I have been thinking about our

stuff.

......

We generally don't buy it.

We don't have TV, we don't get junk mail, we don't do malls and so we remain free of the constant monologue from advertisers (actually that's relatively "free" since the menace seems to be pretty much everywhere).

We want people; ourselves, our family and our community to bring up our children. We figured a long time ago that we don't want to be competing with massive corperations on a daily basis nor are we any match to their billion dollar budgets and so we choose to keep them out of our lives as much as possible.

The freedom is sweet.

What we buy is usually well thought through, based on need and a resource that others may have an interest in sharing. Better still it's multi-functional. Op shops is where we buy the odd thing just because it's pretty.

We pool resources where we can so as not to carry more than is necessary.

We went without a vaccum for a year when we lived across the road from friends who periodically lent us theirs (we have a wonderful carpet sweeper handed down from my mum for the daily sweep) and we haven't owned a lawnmower for years but borrow one when needed and maintain it while we are at it.

Both these are done through our local timebank which I have written about before here.

This kind of sharing of resources feels good for all involved.

We also try to resist the "just incase" thinking.

This is our most challenging catergory.

Wanting to be open to creative projects, crafty quests and general spontaneous learning, there are always "resources" that can be accumulated "just incase" it can be used in the future. It's not like we have cupboards full - we don't have the cupboard space - but still the clearing is fairly constant.

Fabric and books are my vulnerabilities - old fabric, particularly my Nana's.

I have never missed anything that I have passed onto others.

The books that I have had for years and had been so dear to me at different times of my life are now gone; onto someone else's lap, on someone else's shelf.

I feel relieved as always. I'm happy that someone else is reading them.

And amongst all of this packing, it is spring here.

I feel blessed that she never forgets to return.

what holds us together

For many decades, an artificially induced hysteria about "basic skills"

has been the masquerade used to intimidate us into abandoning children

to a form of schooling that simply doesn't work. Behind this mask,valuable

lessons of service to a vibrant community of real human beings have been denied to the young - and all of us have been denied the reciprocities healthy adults need with children across the full spectrum of ages.....When schools consume the youth of the nation in confinement, and all the products of their labours become paper to be thrown away, there is no joy possible in the seeking of such goods. The pricing of time through grade points establishes an irrational currency by which something precious, time, is corrupted in the service of arbitrary and nonsensical urgencies."

-John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher."

I've been wondering about what we lose, as communities and as human beings, by sending our children away for most of the day into schools for the majority of their childhoods. Apart from what the children gain from a life without school, I'm excited by the social implications of communities accepting children into their midst each day.

Service or gifting time to others is part of the ethos in this family. We see it as part of being part of a community, with or without natural disasters to deal with.

Cultivating generosity, love and interconnectedness just seem essential to living well with others and anyway it's usually fun and always feels good.

What better way to debunk greed and separation than to give of your time freely and where better to do it than in the exact same community as you live in. These relationships that are created in the act of gifting time can be maintained more easily and these in turn feed the rich web of community connectedness and the health and well-being of the community as a whole.

So when we can, we spend time doing things for others.

Ruby and Sky take their role seriously helping out where they can as well as spending a lot of time laughing, chatting and dancing, among other things.

A few days ago we had a load of visiting university students helping us out around Lyttelton; we collected rubble from people's access ways and used it to fill a retaining wall at the community garden. It was a thoroughly satisfying day for all involved. The lecturer and I chatted over lunch. The students were doing a day of "service education" and she informed me that this is what the girls were doing as well. Living outside of institutional definitions we see our work simply as taking responsibility for our part of our relationship with this community we live in.

a week of timebank trading.

Given
4 hours (2hours each from Gunt and myself at a working bee): Painting window sills for a family preparing to shift. The girls played with their children.
2 hours: use of trailer

2 hours: The girls helped to plan a nature trail for a upcoming festival.

Received
1.5 hours x 2 sessions: Printmaking sessions for the girls.
1 hour : The girls talked to a local elder about his childhood and his father's Confectionary business.
2 hours: borrowed a hedge trimmer.

This is a fairly average glimpse of our trading with Timebank. The trades change but the amount of hours traded are fairly consistent.
Four out of these five trades were with people we met through the Timebank.
Most of them we now call our friends.
All of them our now consciously part of our community.

Although our family's life is fairly full we hold Timebank trades as one of our priorities.
Giving to others feeds our family in so many deep and nourishing ways.
At times we strike the balance when the dichotomy of "Giver" and "Receiver" can fall away.
For instance, when the girls helped with the Nature Trail the woman and I couldn't decide who was the Giver and who was the Receiver. J, the elderly man who chatted about his childhood, also felt that he was the Receiver and not the Giver.
These times are special.

They remind us all of the wealth that is our interdependence.

And we have plans: we have just discovered that we have a retired Orchestra Conductor and a retired Opera Singer on the Timebank. The girls do really enjoy the limited range of classical music we have and singing is just what Sky does. Seriously, she sings all the time. So we are thinking it would be great to organise a time to meet up with these people. Perhaps they could show the girls some photos. Who knows where it could lead.


The photos are from a Spring Fair we went to a while back. Gunt pinched the camera and got excited by the machinery and the girls enjoyed helping T at the stall.

Progress in Economic models

A recent article I wrote for the local paper.
The vision is that our whole area will begin to grow a whole lot of these savings pools.

The local Savings Pool is a leading example of an economic model that benefits the people who earn the money. It is a model of the new kind of "progress" which communities need to begin to adopt.
Below outlines key ingredients in this new "progress." Read along and begin to imagine a new economic model that you can initiate in your own family, neighbourhood or circle of friends.
>Progress is when you get together with a bunch of people, you pool some of your finances and take turns at accessing the
pool of money.
It's not rocket science. There are few details but mostly it's stepping one foot aside from the old financial paradigm and
trying out a new model.
>Progress is actually using the money that is accumulating in the pool. Money standing still is money standing still. That money does nothing to serve the group. The benefit to the group comes when the money is used and circulated.
As an example, in our local Savings Pool three out of the eight family units have already benefited from the pool. We began two months ago. A chest freezer has been purchased, a solar hot-water system (party funded by the pool) has been given the thumbs up and a home improvement job including a double-glazed window has been approved, fixing a problem and adding to that family's energy savings.
>Progress is when money remains for as long as possible in your local community. Money in "the Bank", any bank, doesn't benefit the local community, but it's shareholders.
In contrast, a community savings pool is focussed locally, benefits the contributing members and supports local businesses.
>Progress is releasing families from crippling interest which the average family with an average mortgage can spend a large part of their life paying off. Access to a pool of interest-free money keeps the money, that those families have earned, in their pockets and their communities.
Localised Savings Pools is a new way of thinking about and using our money.
No bank can ever offer you such a deal with so many benefits.

Genuine Wealth

We like living frugally. It's a conscious choice we make as a family. A choice to grow a lot of our own vegetables and to be as close to the source of our food as possible. A choice to have a limited range of clothing and to wear clothes that last more than a season. A choice to always prefer at least second-hand, if not third or forth-hand. A choice not to have a TV so as to bypass a childhood infused with advertising. A choice to cultivate a simple life with simple needs.
It gives an ounce of balance to what often seems like to me as ostentatious over-consumption . It imbues my daily life with a meaning that is lost when I live disconnected from the source of what I consume.

And yet what is constantly astounding is just how rich we feel.
We are rich in all the things we need because money is only one of the streams of "income" we have. We manage our lives at this point with four major different currencies.
The Gift Economy is in good health in our community. A large majority of the possessions we have and almost every item of clothing my children have ever worn has been given to us. Simply and plainly given by a warm heart. Often this opportunity comes about through waiting before deciding to make any purchase. With this waiting often comes a realisation that life is just fine without whatever we thought we needed. At other times, the item is being given away and we are there at the right moment to give it a new home. We also give away often, feeding this wonderful cycling and recycling of goods.
Gifts from nature are ever present. We forage, especially fruit, in late Summer and always share produce, seedlings and fruit as it is harvested.

Another strand in our income is our local Timebank. Timebank is a way a community trades skills, paying in time rather than money. Timebank is a crazy, wonderful way of building community, as skills are shared within that community and friendships blossom. Both Ruby and Sky are members too. Just this week I have been able to get a tricky darning job done on a old, favourite jersey, I have had a baby quilt mended and I have had use of a piano to practise on in another part of town. I didn't spend one dollar.
The latest addition to our currency manifesto is being part of a savings pool. A group of us have been thinking about it for a while. Essentially, members deposit a monthly amount that they can manage, the group's funds accumulate, then at different times, members have access to these funds. They continue to pay into the pool, repaying the amount that they borrowed as well as saving the equal amount for themselves. So far it's freeing to have an alternative to an interest-bearing loan, it's powerful to be in a group which is transparent about money and it feels good to save, even just $15 a week.

The last strand is that Gunter works a 40 hour week for which he is paid.
The money is a strand, it is not the whole picture, and that feels good.
What excites me the most is the story we are co-writing as a family around wealth and well-being.
The girls are growing up and into this story. The story's main character isn't money but more like relationships.
Wealth isn't a place we reach but a way of seeing our lives and the often overlooked abundance that is already present.