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Sparks + Embers Episode No. 020: Relationships of Abundance or Transaction
99 Plays5 months ago
We've explored how community begins with an inner capacity for connectedness, and how that capacity must be large enough to hold intensity without flinching. But this raises a new question: if community isn't manufactured through desire or design, what actually sustains it? What keeps the connections alive across time and distance, through seasons of plenty and seasons of scarcity?
The answer lies in a pattern of exchange as old as human culture itself – one that looks nothing like the transactions that dominate modern life. To understand how communities sustain themselves without exhausting their members, we need to explore what happens when giving creates relationship rather than debt, when circulation generates abundance rather than scarcity. We need to understand the gift.
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Transcript
Introduction to Sparks and Embers
00:00:05
Speaker
There's something about a campfire. We gather around it, stare into the flames, and find ourselves in conversations we never planned to have. I'm Tiffany. And I'm Tyler. And this is Sparks and Embers, 10 minutes of what sticks when we step back from the fire.
00:00:21
Speaker
Each week, we distill insights from our Kindling newsletter, sharing the questions that won't let go and the connections that surprised us. We hope this creates space for whatever wants to emerge around your own fires.
Tiffany's Spiritual Journey
00:00:34
Speaker
My wisdom tradition of origin started with the Catholic Church and eventually ended up in the Evangelical Church here. And though I left those traditions in the early 2000s, in the last five years, a number of the things that I was raised with have come back allegorically to have new meaning for me and for my family and to help make sense of some of the things that we've been learning and enduring.
Metaphor of Jesus and Transactional Dynamics
00:00:59
Speaker
One of the stories that has come back to me is one that I was raised to think of through the lens of righteous anger, of the profane versus the sacred. Instead, what it has shown me and how it has come alive in a new way is a picture of relationship.
00:01:18
Speaker
and how relationships are oftentimes undermined by transaction when our relationships really are about abundance, about sharing, about the genuine, about authenticity.
00:01:31
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And so I'm going share that story today and then the interpretation that I take from it that brings more life to the relationships and provides a lens of understanding on where relationships sometimes get stuck in a transaction mentality versus an abundance mentality, which is what we discuss as one of the foundational aspects about community continuing from our last discussion around this gift economy.
Temple as Authentic Relationships
00:02:06
Speaker
Jesus was bumping around the countryside with his homies and approaching the capital city of Jerusalem again. And in the distance, rising over the horizon was the temple.
00:02:17
Speaker
This structure that represents so much for the Jewish heritage and culture. and also can be lost in its meaning for that culture, for that relationship that this nation is supposed to have represented as a chosen people of the divine.
00:02:41
Speaker
And as they enter the gates and walk towards the temple, and as he approaches, he realizes what's going on. There's a whole bunch of vendors outside the temple that have set up shop and are selling their sacred animals for sacrifice within the temple.
00:03:00
Speaker
In multiple versions across the Gospels, the text tells the tale of a righteous, angry Jesus who crafts a form of a whip and descends upon these unsuspecting vendors and overturns the tables, causing chaos and telling them that they are profaning the very nature of the temple and what it represents.
00:03:29
Speaker
as I was raised, this was a picture of that sacred versus profane. And in some respects, that is true. But for me, it holds a different form of meaning.
00:03:41
Speaker
If I hold the temple out as a picture of the types of relationships that we want to have relative to one another, The temple is described as having different levels, different levels descending deeper and deeper to a very real, genuine authenticity where even the nature of words are not sufficient to describe the sense of being known for who we are, that we cannot hide from it. We can't hide from it, from the language that we use to describe what's going on, from the protocol, from the etiquette, As we get closer and closer to the center, that sense of authenticity itself becomes so great that we are even consumed by that sense of knowing.
00:04:27
Speaker
As we get further and further away from that center, there is more decorum, more rules, until we get outside the gates of the temple. And even there, we start to think in terms of relationship as being transactional.
Beyond Transactional Views in Relationships
00:04:44
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When I listen to this story today, what I hear is that nature of relationship and where relationships get stuck and why they get stuck. We could go into the temple of authenticity, of the genuine relationship, but for many of us, we're stuck at the entrance of our relationships.
00:05:04
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We're stuck at this level where in order for us to be seen as worthy, validated, offering value to the relationship itself, we have something to sell. We have something that we feel must convince, must persuade.
00:05:23
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We are stuck because we are convinced that we are only valuable when we convince, when we persuade, when When we sell, what we think is going to solve the other person. We tell ourselves, i will stay here at this level because that's the level where we think we deliver value.
00:05:43
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That can be really hard for others who are in relationship to us who want to proceed into this more genuine authenticity, into the temple of relationship and what that looks like. where we're showing up vulnerably, where we're risking, not because we are guaranteed safety, but because what is needed within relationships that are deepening is a good faith trust that allows for us to share parts of ourselves without expecting that it's doing anything for the other person, but that it is a gift of ourselves that we offer without fear of consequence.
00:06:22
Speaker
And when we stand outside with somebody who is fully convinced that the only way that they are validated is by convincing us that their truth is the truth, that their relationship to themselves is only understood through the language of how they understand themselves,
00:06:44
Speaker
Rather than risking and seeking to deepen the relationship, to go in and say things like, I don't know, I don't have a ready answer for what it is that I am today or what I am becoming.
00:06:59
Speaker
When people are so preoccupied with defining themselves through what it is that they've sold themselves on and selling it to you, I can stay here with you.
00:07:11
Speaker
But the more you try to sell to me without understanding the fact that I am not a buyer, I want to go into the temple. I want to go into depth with you. And we don't need to transact in order to walk through that gate.
00:07:27
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that can be very destabilizing to those whose whole identity is rooted in selling. What is going on is as they are selling themselves on the idea that they will only see themselves whole and valuable when they have convinced themselves that I am a buyer.
00:07:45
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I may never be a buyer, but if they, in their mind, fully are convinced that they need to sell me something in order for us to proceed to a deeper level of relationship, then they themselves are blocking.
00:08:00
Speaker
The relationship cannot deepen as long as they demand to be met on the field of transaction. Their relationships will be transactional. for those who are outside the temple, who have set up their table, who say, this is my mode of demonstrating
Embracing Authentic Community
00:08:17
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my value. This is my purpose for being here.
00:08:20
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is Is that the picture of Jesus coming over and overturning the tables is this form of impassioned entreatment to say, what are you waiting for? The gift of yourself does not need to be scrutinized by whether or not you convince people of who you are through the lens of the language of transaction, of trying to pitch, of trying to sell, of trying to persuade people to buy what it is that you may have already bought.
00:08:52
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If we want to move into relationship with one another, we must stop selling to each other. We must learn how to move into more of a genuine, authentic communion with each other in a way that says the gift of being, the gift of becoming who you are. doesn't require validation in order for me to witness it, in order for me to bump into you, in order for us to bump into each other. And that's a big part of what we're talking about here in the cultivation of community itself. We need to step away from this transactional view of what it means to be in relationship with each other.
00:09:32
Speaker
It starts with us as individuals looking at the ways that we seek to sell to others in order to validate ourselves. That is what we're exploring here, that at the end of the day, we are relational and we must start recognizing that the more that we believe that our relationships are going to be validated or enriched by whether or not we are convincing and persuading each other to buy into what we believe our truth to be,
00:10:00
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then we are only capable of having relationships at the transactional level. And we are built for so much more than that.
Invitation to Engage with Content
00:10:08
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We are built to be gift givers, to explore the opportunities of what it means to be together and to offer ourselves up knowing we will get burned, but that we are strong enough to offer ourselves as the gift without expecting anything else in return.
00:10:30
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for sitting around the fire with us. If these conversations sparked something, subscribe to Sparks Numbers and all our shows on Apple and Spotify. And if you're moved to, please leave us a review or share this episode with your friends.
00:10:42
Speaker
Both help us build this community. For the longer material that feeds these episodes, subscribe to the Kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com backslash kindling. That's goodpainco.com backslash kindling.
00:10:56
Speaker
We release it weekly with the kind of content that keeps these unexpected conversations going. We provide the kindling, you bring the fire. Until next time, keep the questions burning.