Scarcity and the Gift

Today’s post-prayer breakfast was a rather tense one, I’m afraid to say. Shortly after E and C sat down to eat, G walked in, handed C a broken watch, and began insisting that C make good on his promised provision of a tire. Whatever details initially surrounded this ostensibly pre-arranged deal are unknown to me, but C’s response to G’s “request” seemed to suggest that one or both parties had either misunderstood or shifted away from the original terms of the bargain. The mildly heated verbal exchange that ensued only escalated when G’s accusations of misconduct modified to include C’s apparently having recently burned the collection of plastic buckets our neighbors on “the hill” use for seats. C replied that his committing the buckets to the communal fire barrel was an emergency; there was no wood left and he and R were desperately cold that evening. G was decidedly unmoved, however, and went on to complain how C’s “emergency” resulted in the barrel’s vent holes having become clogged by the melted plastic, rendering the make-shift furnace unusable. (Of course, the altercation was significantly more colorful and verbally freighted than the above description, resulting in Colin’s and my closely observant but deeply uneasy silence.) The argument only came to a close (at least for the moment) when, after G threatened to “put a knife on [C’s] neck”, Colin jumped in boldly to pronounce, “We don’t talk like that here.” (Well done, by the way, Colin.) G later apologized to Colin but, needless to say, this was not the breakfast we were anticipating when we had earlier concluded Morning Prayer!

Moments before Colin’s timely interruption, however, and seconds after C had angrily stormed from the Parish Hall, G interestingly turned to Colin and I for support in pleading his case against C. Theretofore having sat in a quiet disquietude, now Colin and I were being enlisted to back up G and the “justice” of his cause. And herein lies the reason for my post. It struck me that, for the first time, I was being asked to give something of a strictly limited quantity that two different people both equally and obviously wanted. For even though C never attempted to recruit our assessment of the matter in his defense, it seems simply the nature of such disputes that one always naturally desires the security that comes from having amassed for oneself the majority opinion. Thus, while G explicitly made such an appeal and C did not, both men clearly desired (or would have so) our outside judicial endorsement. And, as I said above, this presented me with a startling and puzzling new dilemma. For most of the time when “the guys” make a request, whether for food or socks or what have you, we are generally in a position of having, or being able to quickly obtain, sufficient supply for the meeting of the present demand. In this case, however, we had only one “yay” or “nay” to give respectively, one vote on a ballot of two competing candidates, and both men sought to have it. Though we ended up choosing to refrain from offering a judgment, it forced me to realize how ill-prepared I was for dealing with such a moment. For if I only have one X and yet said X is begged simultaneously by friends A and B, how do I proceed (justly, charitably, and prudentially) in such a situation? What kind of politics is involved with such a scenario and what kind of power relations are in play? I suppose, on one level, this is a manifestation of the generally perceived (which is not to say false) problem of scarcity. But, on another level, there is an economics involved in which my having anything at all becomes morally problematic in the face of those mutually agonistic ones who have none. What are we to do in such situations? How do we adjudicate these predicaments? To simply refrain from giving appears a dubious way to proceed (though in the above situation I still think it was the wisest move immediately and consciously available) but how then do we negotiate the ostensive lack? And what does this say about our giving as isolated individuals to those who ask versus our giving through the channels of the Church and her infinitely endless resources? Or how does what we offer at St. Joe’s as Colin, JR, and Adam either differ from or embody the provisions made available in/through/by/with the Church local and universal, and how might our answer complicate or amend the politics and supposed existence of such scarcity? As is increasingly common with my posts here, I have no idea what proper answers to the above might look like. I simply pose the questions in hopes that whatever thoughts or discussion may result might leave us better prepared for the inevitable moment when we are confronted with this bothersome quandary again.