Shareable

Although I have liked Shareable on Facebook and regularly look at your website, I did not know about this event. I am pretty sure I would have attended it, if I had been in town (which I was not).

I want to share a story from the long-ago time when I went to a Unity Church. Unity, technically Christian, is a woo-woo kind of Christianity. People of many faiths come together at Unity Chuurches, at least the ones I have experienced. I am sure there is a wide range. I started going cause I had a five year old and, having been raised with regular church-going (I went to religious school K-12), I felt like she needed some kind of spiritual mentoring from someone other than me. Our Unity Church, Unity Christ Church in Golden Valley, MN. built their Sunday School curriculum around The Wizard of Oz the year my kid was five. That was a church I could take my kid to . . and so I did.

I was introduced to all kinds of spiritual paths during my Unity years. This is a longwinded tale but I tend to tell longwinded tales. Sorry if this drags on for anyone reading.

One of the things our Unity Church did once a year was have Circulation Day. Unity's teachings focussed heavily on prosperity -- not on making money, but on trusting that this amazing cosmos we inhabit will always provide our needs, as long as we are able to be open to having our needs met. Sometimes, for example, a person willfully chooses to remain homeless, even when offered housing. There is a very wide range of what it means to be human. One of the biggest mistakes I think human communities make is to give into the impulse of wrongly concluding there are right ways and that 'everyone' should do the right thing. We don't really know what anyone else's karmic destiny is. We don't know what is right for others. We can't. Many humans think they know and that is, in my humble opinon, where lack, conflict and, ultimately, war, find openings. We don't really know the karmic destiny of a person who is homeless. For all we know, esp. if reincarnation actually happens, a person has chosen homelessness for the karmic lessons and that the karmic lessons of homelessness will perfectly serve them in a future, as-yet unforeeseeable lifetime. I kinda like seeing life through the filter of much mystery. It makes it a little easier to ignore some of the hard things, like war, hunger, excess wealth, capitalism. When I try to remember that there is endless mystery, in all things, sometimes -- not always -- I can trust that all is unfolding as it should.

Trusting that spirit/cosmos/love will provide is behind many religious teachings, such as the miracle of the loaves and the fishes or the gobsmacking glory that this earth provides food. I love the idea of manna from heaven. I happen to believe there is manna from heaven but some folks, stereotyped in the 1% that siphoning imbalances shares of the earth's bounty away from the 99%, do not trust that there will be manna tomorrow so they, in fear, stockpile wealth.

The sharing economy is, in my humble opinion, really about trusting that there is enough for all and if we share what there is, there will always be enough.

Anyway.

My old Unity Church used to have a Circulation Day. They had Circulation Day during Golden Valley Days. Golden Valley is the name of the suburb of Minneapolis where this Unity church is located. Golden Valley is not a magical or mystical name but it is a lovely name for a suburb, is it not? Since Circulation Day was held in conjunction with Golden Valley Days, an annual, weeklong community celebration, our church was able to use the nearby high school gymnasium for free for Circulation Day. Later, the suburb cancelled Golden Valley Days and our church cancelled Circulation Day: it was far too expensive to rent the gym for a whole week,, and it took a whole week to receive all the donations and arrange them for the big day. :-(

I loved the idea behind Circulation Day. We invited everyone in our church to let go of everything they owned that they had not used in the past year, trusting that if they ever needed it again, they would once again be able to have that thing. For my first Circulation Day, I dug deep. I released quite a lot of stuff. At the time, I was sharing a house with another single mom and many of my belonging were in storage. I let go all my stored stuff, trusting I would have more when I needed the stuff again. It was scary but I guess I was in a mood to take big leaps.

One nice little story: as I went through my storage closet for things to release to Circulation Day, I found a tea pot I had never used. Someone had sent me a Mother's Day bouquet that had come in the teapot. I already had other teapots and had never used this one. So I decided to release it for Circulation Day. But my instinct urged me to look in the teapot, which I had never done. Inside it were eight one hundred dollar bills. My mom had sent me that bouquet and, apparently, she had tucked eight hundred bucks in it. That money had sat in my storage closet a couple years! I gave away the teapot but I kept the money which, of course, I needed at the moment I found it!!!

That money converted me to the work of sharing, or of Circulation Day. I ended up coordinating the event for my church for several years. I became known as the Circulation Day lady. My kid was constantly warning me what things of hers i could not give away in my sharing, circulating fervor.

Our Circulation Day became massive. I opened the gym, which I could do because it was summertime, for drop off hours every day for a week. It was a ton of work to display all the donated stuff.

And then on Circulation Day, anyone who wanted to could come and take whatever they wanted. No money changed hands. The gym was mobbed with folks looking for bargains. Not everyone, I suspect, approached the event with inner reverence. I happen to believe humans should approach everything they do with reverence and if they did, well, things would improve all over and way way faster.

I like the idea of Circulation a tad more than sharing. The word circulation reminds me that nothing in life is fixed, all is static. We know this from physics. We live in an undulating, always moving universe: what if we are supposed to circulate all energy, including the energy of unused pots and pans and furniture and fruit tree surplus, etc?!!

Anyway, I suggest that instead of convening events like last week's to talk strategy for your organization -- which is a good thing and yes, you should keep having such days -- that shareable initiate a regular event, and hopefully do this in many cities, to create circulation opportunities or gift circles. A healthy organization uses multiple feedback loops, constantly asking itself who it is, what is its mission, how to advance its mission and has the mission shifted? Keep having such strategy meetings. You need those. But there are so many more things you can do to advance the idea of a sharing economy. Create opportunities to share. How about clothing swaps that women do these days? My former biz partner and I started having clothing swap parties back in the eighties: now they are run as a business by some. Clothing swaps are the ultimate in circulation (or sharing? I am not sure)

If I had attended, I would have urged Shareable to initiate a series of events like circulation day -- not quite the same as a gift circle, although gift circles are also fantastic. I belong to a gift circle and would like to belong to more. I have much to give and I need to receive much!

I like the idea of circulating, which is distinct from sharing. A tool sharing library is great. Letting go of tools one no longer needs, though, might not be sharing. It might be circulating.

I live in a building with a great rooftop garden. Our building gave residents a $100 budget for the garden's first year. With that budget, we had to buy tools, like small hand trowels, a shovel, whatever. But a member of our garden group had given up a whole house and he had tons of tools. He gave us many tools: he did not share them, he circulated them.

I like the idea of circulating. Sharing is great. I think we will see more and more sharing economy efforts, such as shared cars, shared tools, child-care co-ops, co-housing arrangements. When I lived in co-housing, I could trust that anything I needed existed in my co-ho and I could share it.

With public edible food forests, community gardens, gift circles, citycarshare, and more, sharing is the future.

Still, I like digging a little deeper and circulating things I no longer need as opposed to sharing them.

Libraries circulate. I like that model.

In order for sharing to expand, I think it might be beneficial to separate sharing from economics. I think we have to shed the economic carcass that has been damaging human culture, shed it the way a snake sheds old skin -- just leave the federal reserve economy behind and create something so new that new language is needed to reference it.