The charity receipt spoke with numbers of what numbers can never convey. What she had given from a depth of love, from empathy and a sense of goodness that is so human, would take either volumes of speech to communicate or one loving glance. Perhaps Amanda had gone some of the way toward repurchasing her soul in a world that goads each of us to sell it for such cheap thrills.
If I were to make receipts for every good thing you had ever given me, there would be not a tree left standing on earth, nor oil in the ground from which to make ink.
The receipt lay dirty and crumpled upon the litter-strewn sidewalk. It tallied her cheap food to the penny, but not the nutrition nor the quality. It took no account of the nurture to her soul or the need for loving connections at meal times. It simply had gone the easiest route with gravity and had surrendered to the whim of an early winter storm.
The receipt was cheap ink on a paper strip. Whatever did it mean? Did it mean that I had paid for the bowl? Yet what does it mean to pay? Can I pay for the bowl with a moment of my work and for another it takes an hour or more? What does it mean for the one who made it? Does it mean they have food and a home? Or was it made in some polluting factory that made Mother Earth pay? Then whom pays for the pollution and in what way? So what does it mean "to pay"? And is money as the nexus between one human and another silencing these questions and making our thoughts such cheap ink? Because when love is the nexus between each member of humanity, we ask for no receipts yet thank the giver and take honest care in their welfare, as they do in ours.
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