Skye Isaac recently dug up a copy of Lewis Hyde’s quarter-century old book The Gift. Its radical ideas on money and creativity immediately rang true for her – both as an artist and a Christian. When she lighted on a much newer, but no less visionary text – Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein – it confirmed some of her deepest suspicions about the world we live in.

Money, gift and society

I’ve spent my life as an artist and healer, between the edges of the known and the unknown.

Until I read Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift, it remained a mystery to me why I made artworks from a well, or inner impulse, then gave so much of my art-making away.

Perhaps I intuitively understood, that as Lewis Hyde says, ‘the form of exchange’ fosters scarcity or abundance.

“Wealth ceases to move freely when all things are counted and priced,” he says.

“Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity.”

He contrasts that with other systems, which have worked on an entirely different basis. Hyde refers to tribal cultures who thrive on the assumption of shared abundance. 

“Jews of the Old Testament, ... like the Maori and North Pacific tribes developed a relationship to the natural abundance of their environment based upon a cycle of gifts...

“The gift becomes an agent of social cohesion. ... If it brings the group together, the gift increases in worth immediately upon its first circulation. ...” 

According to Hyde, a gift is “given with a hope that one at least may catch and form a link, a bridge, a communion joining self and another.”

All this rings refreshingly true to me.

Hyde’s ideas remained with me as I read Charles Eisenstein’s book Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition, which is dedicated to “the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible.”

He starts with a question: “Is not my ability to labour and my life itself, a gift?”

Christians would certainly say so.

“When we truly realize this, we desire to give..to all that have contributed to our being and granted us the gift of life...”

Eisenstein calls for a new kind of economic system that “liberates, celebrates and rewards the innate urge to give”.

He describes a system that rewards flow, rather than accumulation, describing this ideal as “creating and not owning, giving and not having”.

Eisenstein’s theory sits well with the early Church economy “... the early Church leaders ... were especially clear that the things of the earth were for all to share.” 

“Now ...natural, social, cultural and spiritual commonwealth is converted into property and money.”

Today, says Eisenstein, we are reaching the limits to growth and so the end of humanity’s childhood.

“Perhaps we now need a kind of money that continues to coordinate human ...[life], but no longer compels it to grow.”

Charles Eisenstein’s vision for a new economy means we will choose to “revitalize local, small-scale, labour intensive production as the only way to meet important human needs.”

For him, this radical new economy requires a reorientation of ‘value’,

“We need beautiful food prepared by someone who cares. We starve for authentic communication and hunger for all that is intimate, personal and unique. To be truly seen and heard, to be truly known is a deep human need.”

He goes on to say what we’ve known for so long in  the church, that authentic community is the hearth of spiritual nourishment.

“Spiritual nourishment can only come to us as a gift, as part of a web of gifts in which we participate as giver and receiver.”

Imagine a world where this will be the norm. Where work will be about ‘How may I best give of my gifts?’

If we can work towards this sort of economy, by the end of our lifetimes we’ll live in a world unimaginably more beautiful than now.

Let’s trust this knowing, hold each other in it, and organize our lives around it.

Do we really have any choice, as the old world falls apart? Shall we settle for anything less?”

Ms Skye Isaac writes and illustrates picture books and is a member of St Peter’s Anglican Church Waipawa, Central Hawke's Bay.

skye.isaac@clear.net.nz