Tis the Season

I am looking out the window of Santa Lucia, past the poinsettia on my red-clothed table, beyond the Christmas tree outside, and through the reflected white lights, to the new Fox Theatre blade sign. The theatre that I went to as a child is slowly being restored to the way it looked when it opened in 1930. I say slowly because it hasn’t been a project some company threw a lot of money at, or that the city or a new owner took out a big bank loan for. No, it’s being done through donations as they are given and a lot of volunteer labor. It’s a gift of love the people of the community are giving themselves for the benefit of all.

 

Friday night the new sign, an exact replica of the original, was lit for the first time. And it is beautiful. After the lighting, the not-entirely inhabitable theatre was sold out for a showing of "Holiday Inn," the 1942 movie with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. It was accompanied by Merrie Melodies’ Bugs and Elmer Fudd and a very long short about buying war bonds. We live in such different times. My mother was just about the age of my daughter when the movie was made, ten years before my birth. It kind of boggles my mind.

I’ve been thinking about gift-giving this week. I gave myself a gift last week, a magical writing retreat on Whidbey Island. My family all participated in the gift by making it possible for me to be away. One of the participants, Joanna, sent this a couple of days ago, “Make time, every single day, to keep the sparks of your soulfire glowing brightly.” I’m not sure how you do that, but I do know it takes intention. Last year in my December 11 blogpost, I quoted Earl Nightingale, “You become what you think about.” Thinking about how you want to be is intention. I want everyday to be a gift I give myself. I want my self to be a gift I give to others. Wanting it doesn’t always make it so. We are human. We have pain. And sometimes we have to just take care of ourselves or we will fall completely apart. That’s when we must make time to rekindle the soulfire.

Of course we all know about giving gifts to another person; the kind wrapped up and tied with a ribbon. That is what we have made this season about. It isn’t always fun. It doesn’t always feel good. We give people what we think they might like, and sometimes guess wrong. We give them something we like, but it isn’t necessarily appreciated by the giftee. We give them something they ask for, but that isn’t much fun. And I really don’t like being asked what I want. World peace? As one interviewee in the People on the Street column in the local paper－a man who volunteers at a food bank－said, "That's the wrong question to ask me." (I do sure hope I get a new camera, though.) I have always best liked to give gifts I craft myself; I like thinking about the person who will receive it the whole time I’m making it. Some people like those gifts, others feel cheated. I don’t really like the whole gift-giving part of Christmas. It feels too much like an obligation. I would be happy to do away with it entirely and give gifts through the year when they aren’t expected and there’s no pressure.

In her book, The Seven Whispers, Christina Baldwin suggests that asking for what we need and offering what we can is a spiritual practice. It is "a two-step exchange of needs and offerings, and the whole village is dancing.... Asking / offering / giving / receiving is one circular motion." If we break the circle, if we skip a step, we block the dance. If we fail to notice what we need and ask for it, the beat is lost and we are thrown off balance. Christina reminds me that the trajectory is not a straight line, it is not tit for tat (though I think that is the expectation on Christmas morning, another reason the custom doesn't resonate with me), but "it's a dance of intersections and connections between myself and other people and the opportunities we create as we cross each other's paths."

So often I hear people say that when they do something for someone else, it feels like a bigger gift to them than it is to the recipient. I think that’s true. But it’s not always true. Another friend reminds me this week that sometimes you give a gift of yourself that is excruciating to the giver, but sends the recipient over the moon with happy. Those are the hardest gifts of all. Those are the biggest gifts of all. When you receive nothing whatsoever in return. Except sometimes, later, maybe much later, you realize it really was an enormous gift to you, too.