Money Matters

[have to set this aside and do a more pressing task.

I am seeing what will happen if I don't set any fixed price for anything I offer. I give all this as a gift to whoever thinks they want it. A gift can be given to or not.

5 December 2000. It's a Saturday.

In the Zoom conversation this afternoon, two women asked the same question: "How can we give you money through your web page?" Both of them expressed how beneficially changed they were as a result of these study groups and wanted to give some gift back. I can only trust that the changes they are experiencing are in their relationship to the world. If that is how it is then I am fully rewarded and money on top would be well employed and deserved.

Now from the other side. Many times I've seen people getting classes for "free;" paid no money and not feeling entailed or committed any little bit. Just out for a stroll. Strolling in and out at leisure then strolling on. There's no netting these butterflies. When there is no cost there is no learning. But boiled down into an aphorism makes this hyperbolic.

Paying forward is a way to keep the books balanced and that is something I cannot legislate or manage. It's none of my business. I have a kind of faith that a satisfactory amount of forward-paying activity is going on. I like to think this is true.

What if I tested things this direction: All of this I offer as a gift. You can toss it right into the bin; you can file it away in a closet with your jar of things you may someday need, into the library of books you'll one day get around to reading; or you can make start putting it to work, getting your money's worth from it now. What you do with the gift is your business.

In the other direction, what most are accustomed to, is that I be more like Caesar and tell you outright what the tax is for the class.

I keep coming back to the biblical aporism of "Render unto Caeasar..."

There is no standard formula for these judgments. What would be a proper amount of money