Guerrilla Giving

 It Started With a Question. 

What to do with an extra 2 ½ hours a day? 

After a fantastic year of playing stay-at-home dad, my schedule was forecasted to open like a break in the rain.  Our youngest was off to kindergarten in the fall.  

Do I get back on the old career trajectory?  Crank up the bit of freelance work I’m doing?  Complete the home renovations I’ve promised? 

I ruminated over these questions at the Kitsilano swimming pool, keeping a watchful eye on my son as he frolicked like a baby seal.  Struck by his joyful abandon, I wondered what it is that animates my life.  What do I love?  What is my passion?  What brings me joy?  Of course, kids never think this way.  I asked our five-year-old—“Why do you love swimming so much?”  “It’s fun!” came the quick answer to such a silly question.

Well, that criteria (enjoyment) didn’t satisfy (at first).  Finding and following one’s bliss is serious business isn’t it?  So I did what I always do when facing big career questions.  I consulted my personality inventory—a well thumbed file that reads like a bio from a new-age workshop:

Myers Briggs (INFP), Enneagram (4), Temperament (Melancholic), Horoscope (Taurus), Life Path (1), Birth Number (28/10), Fingerprints (both thumb dominant), Soul Type (Earth), Ice Cream Analysis (Tiger Stripe).  

Argh!  I thought I’d puke.  I was sick of myself.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Because it was precisely at that point I lifted my sights beyond myself and received “the call.”   From God knows where, a line from U2’s War album blew in off of English Bay and landed square on my heart—“if you can’t help yourself,” Bono sang, “take a look around you, when others need your time.” 

It got the wheels spinning, and it answered my earlier questions.  Here’s the truth—the thing I love more than anything is helping other people, brightening their day, inspiring them, surprising them with grace—in other words, giving.   

We’ve always tried to give.  But what if we did it every day, freely, from our time and our possessions, without any expectations?  What if we gave in a more intentional way?  What if we gave to mostly random people, trusting that the right person would receive our gifts at the right time for the right reason?  What if we trusted that this “call” was indeed from a higher power and served a higher purpose, possibly greater and beyond anything we’d ever understand?

It all seemed so crazy, counter-intuitive, reckless.   I really vacillated back and forth on this one before taking the next step.

That step was obvious—share the call with my wife.  She is, after-all, the one who brings home the most bacon (Faux bacon—we’re vegetarians!).  I wrestled with how to suggest the idea to her—“You make the money honey, and I’ll give it away.  Are you game?” 

Knowing my wife, who has a heart seven times the size of my own, I shouldn’t have sat on the question for a month.  But I did.  When I finally did ask for her two cents, I realized once again that the greatest gift ever given to me was the love of this woman and my love for her.  We are two breaths of the same soul.  Like most things, we’re on the same page with this idea. She was thrilled to get started.  And so began this strange, exciting, and meaningful adventure called Guerrilla Giving.  

More to come.  In Part Two, we’ll share where the conversation went from there and the 3 basic assumptions/beliefs we have that form the foundation of this project.