Help
Sign In
gifts
November 2006 
THE GIFT MUST ALWAYS MOVE
Posted on Nov 28th, 2006
by 
Jana
Jana
This essay was originally given as a sermon at the Unitarian Fellowship in my town. I repeat it here because I am thinking about the holidays and our roles as givers, and receivers. The title comes from an article I read many, many years ago in a magazine called the Whole Earth Review, a treatise on the anthropology of gift giving in various cultures. That's not what this essay is about, but the title resonated, stuck with me, .
What is a gift? By definition, it is an offering, and it implies a flow in direction of something of value. It can be asked for, but in the end it must be offered, not taken. It must be useful. Sometimes its use isn’t immediately apparent. But to be a gift, it has to be of use.
Barbara Rhode wrote: “Any experience or event when it nourishes or spirit, delights us, brings us energy or vision or direction or courage is a gift.”
A gift encourages. It brings courage.
Rhodes goes on to say that our task about gifts is to remember three things: “Gifts that are not received die; gifts that we try to hoard die; gifts that we cannot or do not try to use or hand to another die.”
The gift must always move. We are all blessed with many gifts, bestowed upon us by nature, by providence, by God, if you will. Free will, reason, the power to move and to change, gives us the possibility to change the world.
Do we receive the world for ourselves?” ask Daniel Singer and Marcella Wiener their book “The Sacred, Portable Now.” Yes. Only for ourselves? No. Receiving sunlight and water, having access to the earth, fields of potato plants thrive. The farmer makes a living, and a community is fed. The gift has moved. As we move through our lives, the authors say, we are designed to interact, to receive from and contribute to, the sacred network in which we exist. It’s our task as individuals to sustain and further life with as much commitment as we can muster. By listening to this call, we reconnect to the spirit in life. Our essence is services, through giving; and our method is kindness and compassion.
There’s another story that illustrates this: A woman who has led a selfish life dies and finds her spirit floating away, then joined by an angelic presence. She is surprised to find herself in a lavish banquet room, full of long tables groaning with every imaginable sort of food. “I must be in heaven”, she thinks. Yet the inhabitants are starving, and she covers her ears against their moans. She notices each holds a four foot fork, and is frantically but fruitlessly trying to use it to bring the food to their mouth. “Is this hell?”, she asks her guide. “Yes.” Well, then what is heaven like?” “Really, no different”, says the angel—“except there, everybody uses their tools to feed each other.”
The path of giving—the responsibility of it—feeds us.
The person who treats the gift correctly becomes a channel for it rather than a dam, and moves it along, being nourished in the process.
There it is. The Gift. The Dream. The Responsibility.
Bradford Keeney, a family therapist who recently reconnected to his own spiritual path, writes: “The path of spirit always follows the heart. When dreams are used to feed the heart, they bring us closer to spirit.”
Dreams are our uniquely human gift for seeing what is, and at the same time visioning what can be. They are our ability to envision limitless possibilities. Unitarians are great dreamers: for justice, and social change. But here is a reason that being called a “just a dreamer” is pejorative. It is the capacity for dreaming that brings us to spiritual service. That’s where responsibility comes in. When we bring the dream to action, we are being morally responsible beings. We are moving the gift. We see our spiritual, our moral obligation and give it energy and life.
This holiday season, take a spiritual inventory. What gifts have you been ignoring, hoarding, forgetting you have? How can you free them into the world? Even something as simple as a smile and a bit of patience to a harried hourly worker can start a chain reaction of kindness—and kindness is truly a gift that can keep on giving.
What is a gift? By definition, it is an offering, and it implies a flow in direction of something of value. It can be asked for, but in the end it must be offered, not taken. It must be useful. Sometimes its use isn’t immediately apparent. But to be a gift, it has to be of use.
Barbara Rhode wrote: “Any experience or event when it nourishes or spirit, delights us, brings us energy or vision or direction or courage is a gift.”
A gift encourages. It brings courage.
Rhodes goes on to say that our task about gifts is to remember three things: “Gifts that are not received die; gifts that we try to hoard die; gifts that we cannot or do not try to use or hand to another die.”
The gift must always move. We are all blessed with many gifts, bestowed upon us by nature, by providence, by God, if you will. Free will, reason, the power to move and to change, gives us the possibility to change the world.
Do we receive the world for ourselves?” ask Daniel Singer and Marcella Wiener their book “The Sacred, Portable Now.” Yes. Only for ourselves? No. Receiving sunlight and water, having access to the earth, fields of potato plants thrive. The farmer makes a living, and a community is fed. The gift has moved. As we move through our lives, the authors say, we are designed to interact, to receive from and contribute to, the sacred network in which we exist. It’s our task as individuals to sustain and further life with as much commitment as we can muster. By listening to this call, we reconnect to the spirit in life. Our essence is services, through giving; and our method is kindness and compassion.
There’s another story that illustrates this: A woman who has led a selfish life dies and finds her spirit floating away, then joined by an angelic presence. She is surprised to find herself in a lavish banquet room, full of long tables groaning with every imaginable sort of food. “I must be in heaven”, she thinks. Yet the inhabitants are starving, and she covers her ears against their moans. She notices each holds a four foot fork, and is frantically but fruitlessly trying to use it to bring the food to their mouth. “Is this hell?”, she asks her guide. “Yes.” Well, then what is heaven like?” “Really, no different”, says the angel—“except there, everybody uses their tools to feed each other.”
The path of giving—the responsibility of it—feeds us.
The person who treats the gift correctly becomes a channel for it rather than a dam, and moves it along, being nourished in the process.
There it is. The Gift. The Dream. The Responsibility.
Bradford Keeney, a family therapist who recently reconnected to his own spiritual path, writes: “The path of spirit always follows the heart. When dreams are used to feed the heart, they bring us closer to spirit.”
Dreams are our uniquely human gift for seeing what is, and at the same time visioning what can be. They are our ability to envision limitless possibilities. Unitarians are great dreamers: for justice, and social change. But here is a reason that being called a “just a dreamer” is pejorative. It is the capacity for dreaming that brings us to spiritual service. That’s where responsibility comes in. When we bring the dream to action, we are being morally responsible beings. We are moving the gift. We see our spiritual, our moral obligation and give it energy and life.
This holiday season, take a spiritual inventory. What gifts have you been ignoring, hoarding, forgetting you have? How can you free them into the world? Even something as simple as a smile and a bit of patience to a harried hourly worker can start a chain reaction of kindness—and kindness is truly a gift that can keep on giving.
Access: Public
