About thirty-five years ago, I lived in a community of a hundred men who kept everything in common. We literally pooled our money. Out of that pool we paid for our clothes, food, rent, and even our cars.
Before we had a non-profit name, the cars we bought were registered in one of the men’s names (usually whoever was convenient at the time). We had a little fleet.
One day I was in a car with Bruce (the first time I’ve used a real name) when he was pulled over for speeding. 
The officer sternly asked for a driver’s license and the car registration. We always kept the registration in the glove box; always … except this time.
Bruce told the office he didn’t have the registration, and the officer asked Bruce who owned the car. Bruce glanced at me red-faced, turned to the officer and stuttered, “Sir, I don’t know who this car belongs to.”
The officer replied incredulously, “Let me get this straight. You are speeding in someone’s car; you can’t find its registration. You don’t even know who it belongs to; but you don’t want me to think you are stealing it.” He strode back to his squad car.
A few minutes later he marched back with a speeding ticket. After handing the ticket to Bruce, he leaned in the open window and he dead-panned,
“By the way, sir, just in case you’re curious, this car belongs to you. You own it.”
I long to own so lightly
I long to hold onto my life (talents, and calling) the way Bruce held onto his car. What I admire about Bruce’s ownership is not his self-denial giving; it is his self-forgetfulness.
There are a whole set of services we offer to others out of conscious self-denial. Let’s not stop. The world needs people who give money to the needy and time to good causes. It is good and right for us to offer from conscious self-denial.
But there is a better way. There is unconscious self-forgetfulness. C. S. Lewis portrays the biblical vision of believers using their gifts as artists when he paints this picture,
God wants to bring us to a state of mind in which we could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) … glad at having done it ourselves than we would be if it had been done by another. (Screwtape Letters, slightly edited)
I long to live my life with this artistic self-forgetfulness, creating art for the sake of beauty not acclaim; I long to turn my service into art, and to give it freely.
Giving or getting
Has anyone ever “given” you something when the reality was they wanted to “get” something? It’s like the time a friend invites us to dinner and we discover—to our dismay—that the dinner is a network marketing promotion. We hoped for discussion with friends; we became a business target for entrepreneurs.
It’s easy to “give” our service—our art—in the same self-serving way, to feed our ego, to satisfy a thirst for applause, or to gain prestige.
We know people like this. There is a force field around them; there is a gravitational pull to applaud their “gift.” It feels like the goal of their giving is to get.
We not only know people like this, we often are people like this. But God is working to free us from this self-focus. Lewis continues,
God wants us, in the end, to be so free from any bias in our own favor that we can rejoice in our neighbor’s talents as frankly and gratefully as in our own—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. (Screwtape Letters, slightly edited)
God is shaping our hearts to offer service as art, and to appreciate it simply as beauty.
But how is he doing that?
Our giving to get—our cosmic self-consciousness—comes from a type of pain. When was the last time you thought about your elbow? I never do. Last week I slipped on the driveway and smacked my funny bone. Now I think about my elbow all the time.
When my elbow was working perfectly fine, it would bend and straighten and twist and turn beautifully, like an oiled machine or a work of art (can’t you see my beautiful elbow in the Louvre?). When my elbow worked, I enjoyed it with unconscious forgetfulness.
But when my elbow got banged, I noticed it’s every movement. The reason we “give to get” is our pain from a banged up heart; we look for applause to salve the pain.
God’s plan to salve our hearts with long term satisfaction is for us to know his love. Lewis describes this love:
To please God… to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness… to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in her work … it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. (Weight of Glory)
As we come to know his love for us—indeed his delight in us—as his artistic masterpiece, it is then that we begin to receive the salve our heart has been longing for.
Artistic self-forgetfulness
My friend—from the beginning of the article—lived in a community of men who shared their money, time, and their fleet of cars. Nothing was their own.
I long to offer to others what God has given me in a way that is simply giving; without comparing, envy, or restraint; not to feel good about myself but to offer beauty in a way that would delight me just as much if someone else had done it.
Someday God may knock on my window lean in and chuckle, “By the way, Sam, just in case you’re curious, this art belongs to you. You made it.”
Because I wouldn’t have known. Or cared.
Sam
Should We Ever Wrestle With God?
Yes, yes, yes. And to create and offer so much of our “art” that we can’t and don’t want to keep track of it…because we’re too busy creating and offering.
Hi Gary,
Just this morning I read this quote: “Artists and athletes speak of something called “flow.” When they are deeply involved in what they are doing, time ceases to exist.” (Taylor, Barbara Brown, An Altar in the World).
I think you are right; as we are simply delighting in creating, we begin to forget ourselves. Time ceases to exist.
Thanks.
That is a lovely story, and a very good point abut generosity. Thank you.
David,
You’ve been doing this yourself: http://li0nman.blogspot.com/
Thanks for YOUR artistic creative generosity.
Powerful illustration! And a new thought in “self-forgetfulness.” I share with you a “longing” to experience this as well.
Hi Jeff,
Yes, I know this about you. It’s one of the (many) things I love about you; you long to bring what God has put into you to the world. Freely.
And God has puts LOTS in you!
Thanks.
My wife is the artist in the family, and, yes, I watch her at times get so lost in her art that she has no concept of time. I long for the day wherein my heart will be so healed and touch by God that I can give and/or create from that deep place of wholeness – where nothing matters but Him!
Hi Richard,
I know your wife is an artist, so ask her: How many mediums are there for art?
Because I’ve seen you work in the medium of other people’s lives, as you look into them, hear them, draw them out, and speak encouragement (you do it for me all the time).
Don’t kid yourself. You ARE an artist. I’ve been the beneficiary of it.
Sam
What a great desire, and so very hard to achieve. Good words, Sam. Gave me a real lift this morning.
We all need this. We need to know the are in ur soul … And give it freely.
As you well know, and do!
Sam,
He has set eternity in our hearts, but we have sought out many devices. God has put a desire for something–in reality Someone–more in every human being you and I have ever met, but embracing the Great Lion is not always comfortable. We can take the risk, embrace, and find the fulfillment He intended, we can ignore or deny the desire, we can seek a substitute (e.g. possessions), or we can attempt to convince ourselves that we are in fact that transcendent someone by seeking fame and affirmation.
You, Bruce, and the rest of your community took the dangerous plunge, and you are on the trail toward the permanent, unlimited fulfillment you were meant to enjoy. Savor the pursuit.
Hi Michael,
I always love that phrase, “God has set eternity in our hearts.” I needed that reminder today. thanks.
You paint an image of utter bliss, to me. To be free at last of self-… -absorption? -concern? -consciousness? -importance?
The struggle against it can feel even worse than the suffering from it, though.
I used to provide passages to be read during worship at church, and I was free to use any translation or paraphrase I pleased. I began to do my own, occasionally. One Sunday I was walking in for the late service and someone on the worship team grabbed me by the arm. “What is that translation you used today? Everybody wants to know where they can get it!”
I behaved well. I said, “It was my own paraphrase, so there’s nothing to get, I’m afraid. Feel free to copy it, though.” But I was thrown into a whirl of inner warfare, beating back both pride and pleasure while still attempting to “receive” the encouragement, begging God for deliverance for what seemed like ages.
Then, suddenly, POP! I was in a different interior place: God and I together, enjoying the blessing that the paraphrase had produced, just grateful and happy and disentangled from my need for man’s approval. God’s pleasure was everything in the world. (Thanks for the C.S.Lewis quote! Perfect.)
I haven’t been that free since—but I know where I’m going!
Martha,
You comment here is a brilliant insight and illustration.
I love that way you can paraphrase a passage and bring it freshly to life for others. That’s GREAT. Of course, there is always that bit of self-attribution thrown in too….
Alas.
And then, “POP! I was in a different interior place: God and I together, enjoying the blessing that the paraphrase had produced, just grateful and happy and disentangled from my need for man’s approval.”
I love it.
Giving up who you are = accepting His love and His grace. I felt this way during my Army training, all six months of it, and during my deployment. Those were honestly my closest times to Him, when I let him shape my heart with no distractions. I was stripped of any self-strength — the same self-strength, or as you say it, self-consciousness, that takes me away from Him, now, in every day life.
Hi Amy,
That’s good. Sometimes the difficulties of the desert (literally this time) can free us from the addiction to self. Good point.
Sam (U.S. to you!)
I remember that story about Bruce! We still tell it around the sisterhood. 😉 Didn’t know you were a part of it . . . Now we can include you in the telling as well, Sam.
Hi Sr. Dorcee,
I was just a passenger. In many ways, we’re all passengers.
But it’s still a fun story, isn’t it? And so illustrative of the lives we wish to love.
Good to hear from you.
What lovely inspiration this is! Thank you.
Thanks!
Good word brother Sam and good piece of writing. I long for that attitude too and pray that I live it out in my life. God bless you.
Hi Donaisabella,
We both long for it; I think God loves us simply longing for it. Even that delights him.
Sam