Annual Auction Sermon 
Based on the Book: 
 The Gift:  Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property 
by Lewis Hyde
with special thanks to Mary Seymour for purchasing this sermon
By Reverend Eva S. Hochgraf
August 29, 1999

Opening Words
By May Sarton, from her book Journal of a Solitude  
“There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that 
is not to be able to give one’s gift to those one loves most ...  The 
gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even 
sometimes a kind of poison.  It is as though the flow of life were 
backed up.”
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Sermon
	“I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or in fear, nor 
those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the 
gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to 
the soul and irresistibly moves us.” these words by Lewis Hyde begin 
today’s journey into the realm of the gift.  
	This book begins with helping us to see the difference between a 
community of abundance where all wealth is shared and thus distributed 
through often complex gift exchange, and a community of scarcity where 
all wealth is given value and sold.  It leads the reader through a 
progression of the concept of property ownership and movement as 
society developed. It then moves on into these same realms internally – 
that we each have a creative, abundant side and a rational, 
discriminating, market-oriented side.  We then are left pondering how 
to balance these two sides both within the self and within society, so 
that the art - the communication of value and culture is allowed to 
blossom along side the commerce side, when the commerce side doesn’t 
recognize the value of gifts.
	
						


There is so much to digest in this book.  It takes the concept of 
the gift, and holds it up and examines its many facets. Drawing from 
very diverse areas of expertise, he somehow brings them all together.  
	Lewis Hyde likes teaching stories, and the book is full of them.  
The one he begins with helps us to see how gift can mean markedly 
different things.  He writes, "Imagine a scene. An Englishman comes 
into an Indian lodge, and his hosts, wishing to make their guest feel 
welcome, ask him to share a pipe of tobacco.  Carved from a soft red 
stone, the pipe itself is a peace offering that has traditionally 
circulated among the local tribes, staying in each lodge for a time but 
always given away again sooner or later.  And so the Indians, as is 
only polite among their people, give the pipe to their guest when he 
leaves.  The Englishman is tickled pink.  What a nice thing to send 
back to the British Museum!  He takes it home and sets it on the 
mantelpiece.  A time passes and the leaders of a neighboring tribe come 
to visit the colonist's home.  To his surprise he finds his guest have 
some concerns in regards to his pipe, and his translator finally 
explains to him that if he wishes to show his goodwill he should offer 
them a smoke and give them the pipe.  In consternation, the Englishman 
invents a phrase to describe these people with such a limited sense of 
private property. "Indian giver."  And perhaps the opposite would be 
"white man keeper" - a person who’s instinct is to remove property from 
circulation.  This story helps us to see how our culture can be quite 
different from others, each making sense to those who live in them and 
perhaps making no sense at all with those unaccustomed to them. It also 
points to the kind of external, community binding gift exchange that 
the Native American peoples used to create society.
	For those of us raised primarily in this market-based society, 
this might not be obvious, but gift exchange creates society, as well 
as individual relationships.  Hyde tells and retells a wonderful story 
about a couple who visited a band of Bushmen in Africa in the early 
50’s.  As going away presents, they gave each woman in the band enough  
Cowrie shells to make a short necklace, one large brown one and 20 
smaller gray ones.  There had been no Cowrie shells among the Bushmen 
prior to these gifts.  When they returned a year later, they found 
hardly a shell left in the band.  Instead of making necklaces they were 
found in ones and twos in people’s ornaments to the edges of the 
region.
	Hyde writes, “This image of the seashells spreading out in a group 
like water in a pool takes us from the simple, atomic connections 
between individuals to the more complicated organization of 
communities.” Gift exchange helps create, unify, and bond a society as 
the property moves around.
	Before I get too far along, I need to explain the title.  Talking 
about sex usually draws a crowd, so I had to use Mr. Hyde’s whole title 
so I could get this word “erotic” in.  Now “erotic” is generally 
thought of to mean sexual attraction, but Hyde uses the word 
differently.  I think he wants to speak of attraction, of a kind of 
pulling towards, pulling inward to the center, of a unifying force, 
without evoking imagines normally conjured when talking about the 
material, wanting or desiring to possess something that would be 
conjured up, if he had simply used the word “attractive”.   And so he 
uses “erotic” and when I read it in his text, I connect it with the 
realm of “eros” which he separates out from the realm of “logos”:  
"eros" being passion and "logos" being reason.  Also in the word 
erotic, he is invoking the Greek god of love, Eros.  Hear, echoing in 
his term, all the earthy passion of the divine which is mixed up in the 
human heart.  So the “erotic life of property” has to do with the way 
in which property, when used in a society as gifts has a way of drawing 
that society together and lifting it up. 
	Imagination, the other part of the title, speaks to a whole 
different realm of the concept of gift, moving away from property and 
into the interior self.  There is a part of each one of us which can 
see the world as a gift, a unifying force, and from that vision, labor 
to bring a gift to the world - a work of art.
	Hyde covers so much ground in this one book, unless you want to 
sit here for a couple more hours, I'm only going to be able to cover 
some of the highlights.  And since Ken's been gone for a while and I 
thought you might be missing his three points, I particularly want to 
tell you about gifts and 3 things: the Obligation of Return, Gender, 
and Usury.
	
						
One aspect of the gift exchange society is the obligation to 
return. This is what some sociologists call a feeling of generosity 
which also feels like an obligation to share by those who are within a 
gift-based society.  I thought this a very interesting thing to think 
about in terms of the church, because I wondered what this ‘obligation 
to return”, this implied need to be generous feels like from the frame 
of reference of most people in today’s society, where most all of our 
time and experience is the realm of the market-based society.  As I 
thought about it, it seemed like it might feel a bit greedy, needy, or 
money hungry.  For the gift based society, although it operates by 
supporting all by moving the wealth through society, it relies on 
people understanding their obligation.  Yes this is a heavy word.  
	But I've experienced how this works.  In my old neighborhood in 
Chicago, I lived right next door to a seamstress who worked out of her 
tiny apartment.  She was single with grown children and one school aged 
son.  Puerto Rican, she struggled with English and never had enough 
money.  She often didn’t have enough money to have her phone hooked up.  
And yet she lived in the gift-based economy.  People always brought her 
things, and her generosity was incredible to me.  Although she rarely 
had money to cook other than rice and beans for a meal (the only meal 
usually), she once a month or more she would show up on my doorstep 
with a bowl of rice.  "I made too much" she would say, or "I have extra 
today."  She knew my son Peter loved her rice, and she enjoyed sharing.  
But after the second time she brought rice, I felt the obligation of 
her gift-based society.  I knew that every so often, I needed to make 
too much, or have a little extra.  And I did.  In that way, we built a 
friendship, and she varied her diet a bit from the rice and beans.  At 
first, my mind had a difficult time with feeling the obligation this 
woman was pulling me into.  Later my heart knew that she was artfully 
building a relationship with skills she had learned from childhood 
which nurtured and sustained us both through many trials.


The obligation of return.  After reading this book, I think I will 
better understand that I need to comprehend that pulling feeling which 
sometimes comes into my life from the eyes of the gift relationship, 
not the market relationship. It really is okay to not comprehend or 
anticipate a reciprocal exchange if you are in a gift relationship.

	Another really useful concept to me was the way in which Hyde 
looked at gender, though this lens of the gift. Within our society, 
traditionally men have functioned to establish a bond between god 
and/or the king and individual.  And in latter times this moved to 
between the state and the individual, as in “she gave her son for the 
country.”  The son’s death in war was a gift to the state. Woman have 
served to establish bonds between families, and as we know have been 
"given in marriage."  He encourages us to think of both of these things 
in the context of the gift-exchange community, rather than the market 
economy.
	More on gender: over time there has been a change of perception 
about spiritual life between the time of the founding fathers and the 
nineteenth century.  People who first came here were very concerned 
about their spiritual lives - both men and women.  But by the 
Industrial Revolution, spirituality was seen as feminine, and a “big 
man," a "real man," was one who consumed, produced, sold in the 
marketplace.  This market society is one where you have the ability to 
act without relationship. And it is still the mark of the masculine 
gender (in white society).  A woman can do the same thing, act the same 
way, but it won’t make her feminine.
	While labeling things as traditionally the realm of males and 
females, we must distinguish between feminist cry of equal work for 
equal pay with that of the necessary gift labor - volunteerism, 
homemaking, the arts. There is a need to admit women into the money-
making jobs, while at the same time realizing the societal worth of 
gift labor - both are really human tasks, not really male and female 
inherently.
	Before we quit gender entirely, I have to tell you what he had to 
say about Emily Post on showers, because one of the things I learned 
when I read this book, is that I was gypped out of a shower when I came 
to this church six years ago.  
	
						
Now, I’m not big on Emily Post, so I didn’t know this.  But he 
says, that Emily says that showers are to be given to brides-to-be, 
expectant mothers, and new clergymen.  (Well, maybe I don’t count 
because I’m a clergy woman?!)  Why put the man, in with these two 
categories of women? Because Hyde suggests, he (the clergyman) performs 
a “female” role in the community - by being nurturing and engendering a 
community.  (In case you are wondering what to give at the next clergy 
shower you’re invited to, the appropriate gift is food for the larder.)  
	Now besides this last bit from Emily Post being very amusing, I 
found that it answered one of the questions that was welling up inside 
of me as well. How much of my own time is spent in the realm of 
commerce, and how much of it is spent in the realm of gifts?  As a 
minister, our church community operates as an inside group to a certain 
extent - but not so very much, we don’t share food, housing, or 
clothing, physical stuff. So what realm am I in here as your minister? 
From this bit on Emily Post he makes it clear that clergy are in the 
gift realm. The realm not just of physical gifts but of the 
imagination.  We nurture the gift of the unifying forces of nature and 
human nature in our choosing to create this community.
	Hyde sees that even those of us who live in this market-based 
society do have another side to ourselves and to society.  One which 
Mary and Valerie were trying to tap into during last week's service.  
This imaginative, creative, unifying energy which when we are open to 
it, gives us access to our gifted selves and the gifted, or loving 
community.  This energy, this gifted art can't be given a market price.
	Now on to the third point: usury, the concept of usury, in its 
old, historic meaning, and a bit of history about it, really did help 
me to understand how we came to be where we are today.  We often use 
the word usury today to mean astronomical, abusive interest rates.  But 
historically, it just meant making money from the exchange of money.
	To begin with the history, in brief Hyde sees the idea of usury 
beginning when the spiritual, moral and economic life began to separate 
from one another. We have a very old text, 23 Deuteronomy 19-20:  "You 
shall not lend upon usury to your brother, usury on food, usury on 
anything that is lent for usury.  To a foreigner you may lend upon 
usury, but to your brother you shall not lend upon usury. . . ."
	It sets for the Hebrew's boundaries between us and them, which was 
important because they had contact with people outside the gift cycle, 
but depended on the tribe for survival. This double-law protects the 
inner circle and assures that not too much fluid property is lost or 
spread too thin.
	The double law worked well for the Hebrews until after Jesus 
arrived on the scene.  Suddenly the idea that “all men are brothers” is 
taught, and the whole world becomes part of your tribe.  In the middle 
ages, usury is outlawed in most places. 
	But its prevalence in the western world ended with the coming of 
the Reformation. Luther and other leaders of the reformation organized 
a division of moral and economic life.  Reformation ideas, in some 
ways, revive the double law of Deuteronomy, but the dualism is very 
different.   In Deuteronomy - humankind as a whole is either family or 
other. In Reformation thought - each person is divided. So we see early 
Christians widening the radius of the circle originally cast in 
Deuteronomy, and then Calvin narrowed it to the very soul of an 
individual.
	In early tribal living through middle ages, we see in their 
writings intense feelings of attainable grace, confidence in its 
bounty, and ample abundance. Then once we reach the Reformation and 
Luther on all sides are dis-grace and scarcity. Luther sets both the 
divine and the possibility of gift farther and farther away, a 
spiritual form of the scarcity economics that always accompanies 
private property.
	Hyde comments on how this feels to people living within these 
laws. The outer circle of tribal law is erected primarily due to fear 
of the “other.” And when the radius of the circle of the gift is pulled 
down from the tribe into the heart of each person, then each of us 
feels the risk. When all property is privatized, faith is privatized 
and everyone feels fear at the boundary of the self.
	
						
This point really helped me to better understand some things.  I 
think that this speaks directly to the experience of religion, and 
church.  As most UU’s know, it takes bravery to set out on a religious 
path which is not charted by anyone other than yourself.  In being on 
your own religious path, you are very much alone.  You may palpably 
feel the fear. Any mistakes you make, you must assume responsibility 
for them.  And, to me that is the beauty of our church - that we serve 
as a place where you can find companionship on your religious journey, 
even though it still is your own.  The difficulty with coming into the 
church, is that although most of us feel that Reformation teaching of 
individualism surging through our blood, this place really still is in 
the realm of the gift-community.  As we, like Hyde speaks of, “feel 
fear at the boundary of the self,” in order for this community of love 
and trust to function, we must overcome that fear, and embrace the 
community experience of not being in absolute control not having things 
done the way we’d like to see them done, of living within the unity.  
	In the old times, usury among the Hebrews would have limited the 
circulation of wealth, but in modern times just the opposite is true.  
A prohibition on usury would leave wealth static and barren. In the 
modern world, interest no longer sets up a boundary between people.  
Interest is the sign of a lively community. The gifts of nature and the 
wealth of society now are kept in motion and grow through usury.  At 
least this is current thought. The debate over usury usually divided 
the world into brother and stranger, but the dividing line isn’t always 
that sharp--there is the cordial stranger, and the dubious relation.  
There is a middle ground.
	“But market relationships and capital let out at interest, do not 
bear the increase-of-the-whole that gift exchange will bear. Equitable 
trade is not an agent of transformation, nor of spiritual or society 
cohesion.”
	The bustle of trade is NOT the bustle of life.
	And this is where this whole history lesson starts to get 
interesting. I think this is why I became a minister.  Because I never 
could see myself struggling in the realm of the marketplace, I wanted 
something which helped people come together, to focus their thoughts, 
their energy on the unity of life.  People who help people, people who 
work for our environment, people who spend time with civic projects, 
all help to contribute to the bustle of life.
	This book gives us language to express what is so very different 
about our church community from the community at large that we live in.  
This is a gift-based community.  We support each other and buoy each 
other up because we are a community which gives to each other without 
looking for a direct exchange of value.  
	In a market economy community--one would expect to come here on 
Sunday morning and give into the offering plate an amount of equal 
value to what you received that morning.  But how can you do that?  It 
doesn’t make any sense in the case of church, because here people 
invest in time and energy and money as much as they can, because they 
know that when they are in need, the community will support them.  And 
because they know that they are receiving back gifts that you can’t 
value.  
	How can you value making a great connection with a kid who you 
know has been having a rough time of it?  How can you value the voices 
of the choir lifted up in song, or for that matter, the accumulative 
effect of each of our voices lifted up in song together as we sing our 
song of aspiration?  Where can you go where you know that people are, 
like you, trying to live by these values, these commitments?  How can 
you value these things, and so much more?  
	You can’t.  You know, it is about this time of year that I always 
get a note from whomever is running the pledge drive that they need a 
little message from me to put into their brochure for this coming 
year’s pledge drive.  Most years I groan a bit and put off writing it. 
It is hard to talk about money and church.  I find myself feeling 
awkward, just as I know that those who have to run the pledge drive do 
sometimes.  It just feels a little weird, even though (believe me, as a 
minister’s daughter as well as being a minister supporting her family),  
I know how important money is to this place. This week, as I was 
thinking about writing the sermon, I found myself actually writing that 
message over and over in my head.  I knew what I wanted to tell you.  
And so I’ll tell you right now, and then you can skip reading my 
message in the pledge drive brochure if you want to - just call it one 
of the many benefits you get for being a summer attender!
	
So this is what a want to say about giving money to the church.  
Sometimes people joke about giving until it hurts, and other times 
people have turned that around to say give until it feels good.  But, I 
think it is first important to not try and place value on the 
individual things that church gives to you.  That puts us in the realm 
of the market society, and we are not.  There is really no way you can 
divvy up and reckon all of what you get at church as something of 
worth.  You can't really say, well each time I go to church, that 
Sunday morning experience is worth so much, and well, when I was sick, 
Eva came to visit me in the hospital and that was worth so much.  This 
community isn’t about being a community where things are divided up and 
measured that way.  This is a gift-based community, that means what you 
have that you can possibly do without, you give to us, knowing that 
this community will support you and nurture you in ways you may not 
comprehend for years.  
	Last week, we had a memorial service for Bill Rave.  The Raves 
have supported the church for around 30 years, although they haven’t 
been so very active.  Still they sensed that this was a good community 
to support.  Well, when Bill died, we were here.  When Mary wanted to 
have someone conduct a service, in the middle of August, I was around, 
because this community supports my being around in August.  That wasn’t 
always the case.  Before I came here, about 6 years ago now, there 
wasn’t a full-time minister around in the summer.  There was a nice 
large ample room for Mary to have her service in, because this 
community gave to build the Sanctuary, and because it continues to give 
to keep the room here, the lights working, the air conditioning 
running, the sound system working (well, maybe less than ideally, but 
still we have one, and it’s getting better).  
	And perhaps most touching, there were people.  Some of whom never 
knew the Raves, and many who hardly did.  People who showed up and 
ushered.  People who showed up and created a lovely spread of elegantly 
served food.  Just the way that you or I would wish would happen for us 
when our spouse or father just died.  This isn’t something you can say 
is worth dollars and cents.  This is way that a loving community takes 
care of everyone.  Just like the small tribes of long ago, we give not 
so that we can receive something of equal or better value.  We give to 
create and mend the fabric of our community.  A tangled web of 
obligations, friendships, support and aid, giving and helping.  The 
church community is a gift we give to ourselves, by choosing to day by 
day and year by year, reconstitute this gift-based community.

	Before I end, I’ve got to mention that Hyde does talk a bit about 
Unitarians (sorry, Universalists, you weren’t in there.)  It is an 
interesting perspective. It is part of a long discourse about 
enthusiasm as a form of religion.  He explains all about the religions 
which are very much focused on feeling one with the unity, and how this 
is physical experience of religion. That these kind of religions have 
services which involve physical participation, clapping, loud singing, 
jumping up, dancing,  - many things which have to do with getting the 
body involved in the religious practice.  He feels that this is a way 
of connecting with the unity--with the internal gift realm. Then, he 
says “the deists attachment to reasonable discourse and his caution 
before the trembling body place the spirit of his religion closer to 
the spirit of trade than to the spirit of the gift.” Both market trade 
and abstract thought require alienation of the symbol to the object. 
This affinity between abstract thought and market exchange seems to me 
the reason why Chauncy’s “reasonable” deism (or its immediate heirs, 
Unitarianism and transcendentalism) has historically been associated 
with the upper-middle class and intellectuals. “The rich would seem to 
sense that the more you feel the spirit move in the physical body on 
Sunday the harder it will be to trade in cash on Monday.”  Many people 
have asked me, over the years why UU’s weren’t more lively on Sunday 
mornings - and this is an answer I’ve never heard before.  Many people 
have asked why UU’s aren’t more diverse racially and economically, and 
perhaps the answer lies somewhere in here too.  The form of worship 
rubs up against that deep fear which since the dawn of individualism 
has rested in our bosom, and this form either comforts it, connecting 
us, or it discomforts us.  

I want to end by asking you some questions.  Who is your tribe or 
tribes--where you are gifted by their strength to connect with the 
deepest parts of you?  And who do you share your gifts with - 
strengthening and helping them with connections?  What connects you to 
the unifying part of yourself, society and the universe?  Knowing or 
contemplating these answers is surely to give yourself a gift. 

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Closing Words 
From an e-mail message entitled "Things I've Learned .  . ."
"I've learned you can't go around with 2 catchers mitts on - you need a 
hand free to throw as well."

Copyright 1999, by Eva Hochgraf
All rights reserved.
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