the gift [4]: blind gratitude

thanks everyone for the comments on the previous gift posts... 1 | 2 | 3

there are two really good ideas in the first chapter. the first is on motion. the gift must always move. whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again or something else should move on.

the second is related. the simplest gift exchange is reciprocal giving. but gift exchange gets more interesting when it moves in a circle. when a gift moves in a circle no one receives from the person they give to. hyde says this about it

it's as if the gift goes around a corner before it comes back. i have to give blindly. and i will feel a sort of blind gratitude as well. the smaller a circle is - and particularly if it involves two people - the more a man can keep his eye on things and the more likely it is that he will start to think like a salesman. but so long as the gift passes out of sight it cannot be manipulated.

i love this idea. how it applies i don't know exactly. but it would be wonderful to live in a community that applied these two notions. when you have been gifted or given to pass it on, or pass on something equivalent or better - keep it moving, bless someone else, be generous. and even better pass it out of sight so that it goes round the corner so that the community gets surprised and experiences blind gratitude.

Comments

[Kester]

Oyster (pre-pay) travelcards have destroyed the possibility of getting on a bus and paying for the next 5 people - used to be a great way to set off a little wave of generosity.

The Home Office have actually done studies into this... and it works. You let someone pull out at a junction, they hold a door open for someone, that person makes a coffee for everyone... And so the gift moves on. And you'll never know when that small act of letting someone into a traffic line comes back to you. But you can keep looking out for it ;-)

[emma]

I love that thought, of it going round the corner, out of sight. So true that if the gift is still in sight, we may be tempted to still hold onto in partially. I guess it reminds me of 1 Chron 29, a sort of continuous to-ing and fro-ing of gifts.

[Matybigfro]

I think its great and i think its something that when at its best the church does this really well well.

i remember when i was young and a slighty older member of my congregation would give me some lessons on playing the drums after services, now i both am involved in mentoring some local christian musician but also teach music ata youth club.

recently a freind of my wifes offered her their old sofa, we are well excited cos the ones we have have been in the house through 3 years of gap year volunteers and are falling apart. Anyway we would love them but couldn't collect them ourselves. Anyway sent a message round our church asking if anyone could offfer help and stuff. this mourning at church about 4-5 different people offered vechiles or help.

i think the only shame is it often take provocation to release the latent gift potention within so many awesome lovely christians. but i think that is a side product of our very individualist western lifestyle where its so easy to get sucked into your own life world circles and needs and not see those of others not very far from us rather than a product of christianity.

[Jan]

I love this concept and came across it in the form of passing on books. The idea is that you give away your books with a label on them and a reference number so that you can see where they've gone, just out of interest, (but not get them back). So you could leave a book in a public place and hope that the person who picks it up will look on the web site www.bookcrossing.com and register that they've found the book and then they too can pass it on. It's called releasing it into the wild!