"Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never, in fact, come to know anything. We do not want to begin as beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life."
Father Thomas Merton wrote these words in 1969 about prayer. What he said about prayer applies equally well, we believe, to the art of giving. At least the hosts for this conversation - Robert Wood Lynn and D. Susan Wisely - know that "we will never be anything else but beginners." The more we know about the mysteries of giving, the more we come to understand how little we know about it.
Your Hosts
Robert Wood Lynn
A native of Wyoming, Robert Wood Lynn went to Princeton University shortly after serving in World War II. In his first college semester he enrolled in a religion class on something of a lark. That chance encounter shaped his undergraduate studies and led him to enroll in Yale Divinity School and later to pursue a doctoral degree at Union Theological Seminary. In the following years he served a Presbyterian church as a teaching minister, taught on a a seminary faculty, became a seminary dean, then a staff member of a national foundation and later a consultant to foundations. A chance encounter some 20 years ago proved to be another turning point. A colleague at work prompted him to think about why and what he gave. Those questions opened up a new chapter in his life and led him eventually to join D. Susan Wisely in encouraging this conversation.
D. Susan Wisely
Volunteer opportunities were plentiful for a child coming of age in the Midwest in the late fifties. Susan Wisely's first job grew out of years as a teen volunteer at a rehabilitation center's day camp for children. Her service as a camp director during summer recesses from studies at Indiana University gave her an early taste for the satisfactions of service to others. The 1960s proved a hopeful and heady time to pursue a degree in sociology and to explore the possibilities of community service. After completing her master's degree, she felt drawn to the challenges and learned from the chastening lessons of the War on Poverty.
These experiences formed a backdrop for three decades of work with private foundations and numerous conversations about how people judged the value of their gifts. The wary enthusiasm of individuals for conversations about giving that helped them think in imaginative ways and reached beyond fund-raising cliches and present preoccupations encouraged her to believe that a continuing conversation about giving would be useful.
Here are some of the convictions that will inform our work as hosts in this conversation about giving:
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This great human art offers all of us occasions to examine the depth of whatever faith we confess, the reach of our hopes and our capacity to love. It may also reveal what it is that we see or don't see. |
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Sometimes we learn the most from those with whom we differ. John Stuart Mills once suggested an unusual prayer, "Lord, enlighten thou our enemies; sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions...and clearness to their reasoning powers; We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fill us with apprehension, not their strength." Although Mills was not given to prayer, he believed that everyone of a settled persuasion needed the pressure of criticism if they were ever to face up to the weakness and complacency inherent in their own position. |
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So it is with us and so it is - we venture to guess - with those joining in this conversation. Few of us can fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of our own perspectives on giving without encountering others with sharply different views. |
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Our contributions, such as they are, will come mostly in the form of questions and puzzles that strike us as suggestive and evocative of good conversations. In the past the topic of giving has often aroused deeply buried anxiety and therefore the need for certitude and the comfort of knowing that one is right. We hope this conversation will be different. In the words of theologian David Tracy, "A conversation is a rare phenomenon. It is not a confrontation. It is not a debate. It is not an exam. It is questioning itself." |