Paul Davis is a member of the Presiding Bishopric and counselor to the presiding bishop. He and his wife, Jeanne, live in Kansas City and have three children: Mike, Jake, and Julie.

Discernment and Discussion Activities

Doctrine and Covenants 163
Commentary Series

We Receive, and Then We Share

by Paul Davis

I use Elmer’s glue when I make furniture. Elmer’s glue is eternal, as far as I am concerned. Is it the best glue in the world? I don’t know. I have, of course, read up on it, as any obsessive/compulsive woodworker would, but I have ignored the findings. I use Elmer’s glue because my grandfather did. While he made cabinets in his basement shop, whistling happily, I was granted free access to the Elmer’s and stuck scraps together to make little masterpieces.

I don’t remember any woodworking lessons from my grandfather. People who knew him and now know me assume that I got my woodworking from him. That’s how they say it: “Did you get your woodworking from your grandfather Harry?” I say no, I don’t know where I got it from—books, I guess, and trying stuff, and fixing mistakes. Grandpa was in his own world when he was in his shop—I think he might have forgotten I was there.

When I grew up and moved into my first house, a $7,000 fixer-upper in Lamoni, Iowa, I needed some kitchen cabinets. Grandpa took measurements, and a few days later I came home and discovered the cabinets already hung in my little kitchen. They were visibly, shockingly out of square. I stood open-mouthed, trying to adjust my worldview to this new reality. Was my grandpa not the best woodworker in the world? How was I to continue on, with a hack for a grandpa? I left the room, then for days tried not to look at this out-of-squareness in my well-ordered world. I avoided Grandpa as well, forgetting to thank him.

A few weeks passed, and one day I willed myself to look upon the cabinets again. Steeling myself, I fetched a cabinetmaker’s square, and held it to the forsaken joint. Hmmm. It was, in fact, dead-on square. Then I checked the wall, and learned that all of the misshapenness was in my abode. The cabinets were right, the space was wrong. (Having now, years later, dealt with such a situation myself many times, I know that it is possible to conceal a mismatch between one’s good work and the unsquare universe. That my grandfather did not feel compelled to conceal it still makes me shiver with affection.)

In addition to an Elmer’s glue inheritance, I have been passed down a spokeshave that is stamped with the owner’s mark “W Davis.” A spokeshave is used to shape curves into wood, and I have used this spokeshave to do just that. Its blade is of fine English steel, but it has been sharpened so many times in the 150 years since my grandfather’s grandfather put his mark on it, that little is left. Someone once wrote that while people almost always are crazy about their grandchildren, the degree of personal connection falls sharply with succeeding generations. I was not known, or imagined, by William Davis. But still, here is his tool, in my hand.

I am just finishing a Communion table that will be used by visitors to the Kirtland Temple. I made it from white oak, harvested from trees that were a hundred years old when my grandfather’s grandfather was working wood. They were alive before the Kirtland Temple was built. I patterned the table after one I saw in Conception Abbey, a monastery built in 1873 (about the time a thirty-year old William Davis emigrated from England to Canada to make his living as a shipwright). The Conception Abbey table is just right. It was built by a skilled craftsman, using sharp tools, from good, solid oak. It has fair angles, and it sits in an upper room, lighted naturally from windows facing in four directions on rolling Missouri fields. It is rare to see an object that is so right, and I sat and looked at it for three-quarters of an hour, taking it apart and then putting it back together in my mind, so I would know how to build it.

Only when I had taken in all that I thought it could tell me did I discover that the table was not only the sum of its dimensions and material, but the repository and vessel of its creator. And who was its creator? Was it the woodworker, or the toolmaker, or the timber miller, or the woodworker’s teacher, or the farmer on whose land the oak grew, or the earth, or the monks?

Faithful disciples respond to an increasing awareness of the abundant generosity of God by sharing according to the desires of their hearts; not by commandment or constraint. Break free of the shackles of conventional culture that mainly promote self-serving interests. Give generously according to your true capacity. Eternal joy and peace await those who grow in the grace of generosity that flows from compassionate hearts without thought of return. Could it be otherwise in the domain of God, who eternally gives all for the sake of creation?—Doctrine and Covenants 163:9

When we talk of the generosity of God, the word fails us, as words do. We have been made suspicious through its overuse by people (like me) who are trying to induce giving, in the manner of American tourists who believe that increasing the volume of their English will induce comprehension. Properly invoked, the word has more to do with generation than solicitation.

One of the best ways we come to know God is as the source of all. If that is true—both that God is the source and that we come to know God in the manner by which the source finds its way to us—then it is fair to say that God’s identity is generosity. Generosity is not an attribute that God puts on and takes off, as is the case with a person who sometimes does a generous thing and other times is chintzy. God is generosity.

I am not generosity. I need an “increasing awareness of the abundant generosity of God” because I continue to be ignorant of generosity as a way of life, as a worldview, as a matter of character, as a spiritual practice. No one can be commanded or constrained into generosity, only invited and led and loved into it.

If God is the source of all, the first giver, then people have an essential role as receivers. God’s generosity, which is always on—all the way on—might be limited by our stinginess in receiving. You might say that my too-small cup fills up and runs over. But theological talk is failing us here—it is not the hand of God I see when I reach to receive actual things in my actual life, but the hands of other people. They have received,
and now they share, with me and everyone else.

I want to be clear that what I am talking about receiving is everything—not only money and stuff, but companionship, employment, and my place in a long line of people who make things of wood and Elmer’s glue. I am talking about the caretaking of me, and the use of me. I understand that these goods—tangible and intangible—often are shared in a dispassionate, or purely transactional fashion: A teacher may teach simply for income, not for love of me. I’m fine with that—my role is to receive learning, whatever the motives of the teacher. (And each of us can remember teachers who found an abiding joy in forming us, with gifts of insight, or confidence, in the few hours they were given to work their magic.)

We receive, often without knowing the mind of the givers. They must choose how to feel and act in giving. A few may give without thought of return, while others seek to buy something with their gift—our indebtedness, power over us, future consideration—giving only for return. Having received, it then is my turn to choose what to do with what I receive, and how to feel and act while doing it. Believing that God is in the gift does make a difference.

But what about that overflowing cup? Is God abundantly generous with all people, or does it seem that way only to those of us who have had to rent storage lockers to hold it all? Ah, it’s astonishing how quickly I lapse again into thinking that we are talking only about stuff. I cannot know how it would feel to not have enough to eat and still experience God as abundantly generous, but I have friends who know. I have only to receive their witness. It’s the first thing I’m hoping to learn when I meet new people from unfamiliar lands: What does the generous God look like to you?

Carolyn Brock, in her book, Asante Africa, quotes Father Joseph Healey, who lived for years with the Baganda people of Uganda: “I would give twenty years of my life for a thirtysecond bicycle ride through the mind of an African.” Carolyn writes:

One of the grand mysteries of West African worship is the significance of the offering. It is not an exaggeration to say that the offering is the central focus of most worship encounters. Scriptures and prayers are edifying, sermons are necessary and sometimes interesting, but the vital energy of the service is released through the music, movement, and physical act of giving that takes place during the offering. Witnessing a roomful of bored, tired people [services last 3-5 hours] transformed into a human chain of rhythmic joy radically altered my definition of the word “praise!” The paradox of people with the least of the world’s material wealth giving jubilantly and generously is one worth pondering.—Asante Africa (Herald House, 1990). pp. 173–174

Giving is power! It is an expression of the life force within each person as well as a sincere act of gratitude for the Creator’s gift of the life force. Giving is the inexplicable way in which the scarcity of the community becomes its abundance, and every member’s sharing grants equality and identity.

The offering is a commemoration of the life and resources bestowed on the community. That God has granted one being and breath for this present moment is reason enough to engage one’s whole self in grateful response.

Could our African brothers and sisters lead the worldwide Community of Christ to receive anew how it feels to have a heart that overflows with God’s blessings? I worked on an ecumenical committee once with Mennonites and Quakers, attempting to formulate an opinion on the partition of Jerusalem. In the gentle presence of members of two faith communities that had spent more than 400 years trying to figure how to create pathways for peace, I discovered that I really know nothing about what it takes to make peace. I became necessarily silent, feeling myself a child in a grownup world.

I admit that I feel that same level of ignorance about what it would mean to be really generous, at the level of identity. Sometimes I allow myself to hope that Community of Christ will become for the genuine spirit of generosity in the world what the Mennonites and Quakers have been for peace. They are equally complex subjects—peace and generosity—but also equally part of God. Peace and generosity flow from God as the source. We receive, and then we share.