UNCOMMON THOUGHTS ON GIFTS AND GIVING

UNCOMMON THOUGHTS ON GIFTS AND GIVING

We can talk theologically about what the Magi’s gold, frankencense and myrrh represent, but let’s us just talk gifts and giving now.  For one, what IS the “ideal” gift for a certain person?  What gift will help lead a person further along on this journey called life, encouraging them to come into their own, somehow?  That, I propose, is the question.

You know what Santa Claus brought my kid a few years ago?  A pull-up bar, which is a great gift for Asher because my monkey boy goes stir crazy all the long Winter without any trees to climb.  And now, thanks to the irrespressible urge to leap up and grab it, he’s been know to do up to 8 pull-ups, plus hanging, turning upside down, taking a tumble—all that good stuff.  More recently, he leaps at the thing from a distance, grabs it with one arm and does a flying, one-armed pull-up.  Good call by the Jolly Old Elf, but then he himself fond of climbing up and down chimneys, isn’t he?

M. Scott Peck, may he rest in peace with a pack of Marlbloros under his carefully embalmed and folded hands, insisted that love is doing (or giving, I would add here) anything that helps someone grow spiritually.  I would put forth the proposition that Asher, in learning that he can grow stronger through playful action, is growing spiritually.  He is finding his own way to improve at something, or rather refining an internal way that already has existed, which is better.  Find your loved ones’ “growing edge”, and gift accordingly.

I would also have you consider that giving a great gift means being willing to INVESTIGATE the issue.  In so doing, one uses all the tools for coming to any other important answer, like whom you should marry or whether you should move to Seattle and work in a coffee house: think and write and pray about it, meditate on it, talk it over with others, pay attention to your dreams and/or those “limbo” thoughts you have in the morning between sleep and wakefulness, be attentive to synchronicities wherein the Gods are trying to get your attention.  Some would make a visit to the local astrologer, or Madame Romani and her tarot cards.  Whatever: the point is to FOCUS on the Quest For the Wonderful Present, to give it your attention, and your action….OR, you could just buy them all a gift card to somewhere.

What would benefit your loved ones the most?  What are their “immense needs of inner space”?  Remember that they themselves might not want to think about that:  “…To consider our real needs—the essential things we lack in our lives—is often too frightening, opening up an abyss of need that calls our very existence into question.”.  The gift you end up “giving” may not be in a wrapped box, it may be simply your presence, or a party, a nice massage, a change of scenery, a story that you memorize and tell them, an idea whose time has come—the sky really is the limit when the gift is from the best part of the giver to the best part of the receiver.  Ironically, gift giving time is a great one for thinking “out of the box”.

What you are looking for, in deciding on gifts, is an “epiphany”.  I use the term in the wider sense of a sudden, striking insight, in this case a glimpse into the essence of the person to whom you would like to give a gift (as Santa looked into Asher and saw “Monkey!”).  When life is getting my wife down to the point where she can’t get back up, if I am in my right mind I see that she should not even try to get up; she should stay down—and by that I mean lying down with me massaging her.  Since having that epiphany once after many unsuccessful attempts to “cheer her up,”, I know what to do.  Works every time.  I’ve even bought myself (I mean, her) a massage table.

The point is not just knowledge of the right gift.  In undergoing the systematic use of all your personal tools for revelation, you are also uncovering the best part of yourself—which, naturally, is the ideal part to be deciding what gifts to provide to others.  Who isn’t a better person herself after meditating on and actively pursuing the gift that would benefit another person the most?  Especially if my suspicion is true: that the very best gifts involve the element of personal sacrifice on the part of the giver.

One thing that might be happily sacrificed is one’s own limitations, which might well be based on one’s  relatively low opinion of oneself.  It has been said that one can receive only that which one can accept.  If you truly believe that you get what you desereve—and deserve very little, at that, for whatever reason—then it makes sense that subconsciously you will avoid any greater good because, being unworthy, you would be uncomfortable with the having of it.  It’s one thing to be frugal in the interest of humility, or the clarity that comes without the clutter of stuff, or a concern to remain small in ecological footprint; but it’s quite another to be constricted out of a sense of unworthiness.  Here I should amplify the concept of “gifts” that one might receive to include some more internal in nature:  peace, love, faith, the ability to freely express joy and grief, acceptance, determination.  So it may be that someone does not feel they deserve or can afford a nicer house, or it may also be that they do not feel they deserve or can afford peace of mind.

I say all this because I suspect that our own small-mindedness, the result of seeing all through the tightened aperture of a weak self-image or flabby imagination, cannot help but restrict as well the quality of our Quest to find the Perfect Gift for our beloveds.  Remember Parcifal, the naïve knight who, when presented with the whole shabang—the wounded Fisher King, the Grail Castle, and even the Holy Grail itself—made it all disappear even though all he had to do was ask one little question.  He’d failed to ask it because someone  (his mother, I think) had taught him it was rude to ask questions.  I suspect, as well, that the hapless Parcifal didn’t know he was up to the task of breaking a rule, meant for small situations, for the sake of a much greater one.  

By contrast, in the fairy tale “The Devil’s Sooty Brother,” the title character spends seven years without bathing, sweeping the ashes and feeding the fires in hell.  As a result, he looks awful, covered with soot and funk and shunned by others.  Even so, the Devil instructs him to say, if anyone should ask his identity, “I am the devil’s sooty brother, and my king as well!”  He goes on to win the king’s daughter and kingdom.  Parcifal was all decked out in a knight’s armored splendor, but failed thanks to seeing himself as a sort of pawn without the right to speak; the sooty brother saw himself as a king and ended up one rich in “gold” (symbolizing wholeness and connection to the Divine).

So have the epiphany: you are a king, a queen—at the very least master of yourself by divine birthright. January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, can be seen as the world’s having its “sudden, striking insight”:  far from forsaking us, the Divine is among us, even in us.  There’s an epiphany for you.

Here’s an idea whose time has come: take a break from the rat race and make a list of your own needs, and the needs of the people on your X-mas list.  This is one way to mind what Lillie Tomlin said about the rat race: “Even if you win, you’re still a rat.”.  Now, give yourself, and them, one thing from the lists made.  Don’t stop: since Christmas (so sayeth the clergy) should last throughout the year, make this a habit!