The Gift: in Action

Thank you, Joan P. Ball. This is my definition of "gift" and "mentor."


Photo of Sonia and Sara at the Sea, by L.L. Barkat.

Finding Mine in Yours

Art engenders art. Or it can... if it has been deep and true... opened itself, invited, "take me."

Says Lewis Hyde in his chapter on Whitman, "A work of art that enters us to feed the soul offers to initiate in us the process of the gifted self which some antecedent gift initiated in the poet. Reading the work, we feel gifted for a while, and to the degree that we are able, we respond by creating a new work (not art perhaps, but with the artist's work at hand we suddenly find we can make sense of our own experience). The greatest art offers us images by which to imagine our lives."

That is what Ann's art did for me. "Come in," her words invited. I went inside, put my hands against the walls, lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Quieted there, I remembered my own discoveries, made while writing God in the Yard...

I stand as a bridge between perceived gaps. I learned this as a young child of divorce, watching dad throw a mop across the kitchen floor, shout at mom and leave... and she fuming... and me standing by, wide-eyed, shaking. Hold on, I learned. Hold on tight. See what happened when you fell asleep? The world as you knew it crumbled. Child, do not sleep. Stand. Stand as a bridge. Hold the world together, even if it breaks you.

This discovery reemerged while I lay there, motionless, in Ann's words. She had said, "this is the reason why you never leave home." And her words worked themselves into a poem, as I sat beside the pool watching my girls. Art engendered art...


"Girl"

Why do we not
leave home?
Is it really for fear
of what lies
beyond, or rather
for fear that the
roof will abscond
with the doors
and the shutters
we've always known.
And who would they
blame if it happened
just so? If the whole
curtained place simply
picked up its stakes,
disappeared on the wind
in our absence. What
are we really afraid
of? Why do we not
leave home?

I think this is a fitting ending for my house poems. You'll be writing about the closet this week, and I look forward to your offerings. I look forward to finding myself in you.

Girl at the Door photo, by L.L. Barkat. Hyde quote is from Chapter 9.

RELATED POST:
High Calling Blogs The Gift: Surprise

POETRY FRIDAY:
Beauty is Way to Play, Not Compete at High Calling Blogs
Divide Wisdom, MT by Dave
Quick Clips from the Slippery Issue of Geez magazine
I Am [color] series at Love Notes to Yahweh
I do in sickness by Fred Sprinkle
The other girl by Fred Sprinkle
On nights like this by Milton Brasher-Cunningham
Psalm 66: Black Water and Crimson by Richard j
Justice Exposed by Cindy Hanson
Magical Realms by Cindy Hanson
Skeletons in the Closet by Laura
Creative Writing Challenge Justice Edition at Bible Dude
Renewed by Nancy Kourmoulis
t h e . c l o s e t by nancy
spring cleaning by kelly
something less than purple by bkmackenzie
routine is good by redorgray
Closet by Yvette Massey
Testimony (in the closet) by Glynn Young
I am a rag doll by Claire
Fragrance by Monica Sharman
Comfort in the Rough by Monica Sharman
A short review of Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach by Byron Borger
Eve’s Second Garden by Marcus Goodyear
Superman by John Poch
Thanks for waiting by Jim Schmotzer
Teachable Moments by James C. Schaap
Back Porch Refuge and Basement Closet Pirates by deb

Turning Down Christianity Today

It is tempting to commercialize one's art, since the need for a paycheck and reputation-development are real.

But if the most beautiful, powerful things we produce are indeed a gift, as Lewis Hyde notes in The Gift, then we may need to occasionally turn down an opportunity to sell, if it means debasement of the work.

Which brings us to our story. Almost two years ago I got a very exciting email from an awesome editor at Christianity Today. "We want the article," it said. "Can you cut the piece to 1300 words?" I'm not a prima donna (much) about my writing, but I knew that to say yes to this request would mean killing the spirit of the article, excising its most beautiful parts.

Indeed, when the editor sent back a potential draft to show me how we could make it work, the beauty was gone. This was not about the editor's skill; it was about the size of the box. The beauty had to go.

Let me tell you, it was not easy to say, "I can't sell it." I needed that sale, or so it seemed. My book was about to come out. It was the first time CT had offered to buy from me. I couldn't see into the future and know there would be another CT opportunity (there was, just a few months later).

At present, the piece has made it through several approval rounds at another magazine. Who knows if they will buy it. Or the next magazine, or the next. It can take time to find a home for beauty. And if we never do, at least it is still beauty and has found a home in us.

Commercial Times Square photo by L.L. Barkat. Post is for Chapter 8 of Hyde's The Gift.

RELATED POSTS:
High Calling Blogs The Gift: Work as Art
Laura's Priceless

Nothing in Return

I was going to write about the scintillating topic of usury, which, simply defined, is about asking for a return on one's money or gifts.

Then I got distracted and went for a walk. It was end-of-day. Mist hung thick after rain. Sweet smells of earth, water, and lilies drifted. My littlest child held a closed black umbrella, and was twirling it by its faux maple handle. "See what I can do?" she asked. Twirling, twirling.

Up ahead, my oldest girl leaned into her daddy's side. Long dark braids swinging, she looked the child she barely is any more. Sky ached pale yellow, pushing back pearl-grey. Pink clouds puffed, moved slow. We passed by the white pines. Needles trembled into our path, sprung with crystals upon crystals capturing day's last light.

I noted the ferns growing through rocks... life, ever tenacious. And us, walking after rain. Walking through fragrance and mist, pines and pale yellow light.

There we were. And there the miracles... gift after gift, strewn in our path, floating overhead. Asking nothing in return.

---
This post is to welcome InCourage. Note too, High Calling Blogs will end their discussion of The Gift with this week's post; however, for those interested, I think I'm going to keep on. So you can come here for further discussion if you like.

Rain on Leaf photo, by L.L. Barkat.

RELATED POSTS:
Laura's Bleeding Heart
High Calling Blogs The Gift: Strings Attached

OTHER LL POSTS TO WELCOME InCourage:
Baby, You Made My Decade, at Green Inventions
Coming into Wild Roses, at Love Notes to Yahweh

I'm Going, Wanna Come?

Life is a gift. That's what Lewis Hyde concludes when looking at traditions around the world, where women are "given in marriage" and men are given "as sacrifices." Quite literally. Says Hyde, "The people of Fiji saw the two as equivalent gifts, the woman who is "brought raw" to be married and the "cooked man" who is sacrificed to the godking.

Okay, can we freak out now? Because that's kind of how I felt when I read this chapter. Very distressed.

There was this one moment when I caught my breath though, when he discussed how children eventually go out on their own and "begin to feel the desire to give [themselves] away— in love, in marriage, to...work, to the gods, to politics, to... children." He says that adolescence is marked by "that restless, erotic, disturbing inquisition: Is this person, this nation, this work, worthy of the life I have to give?"

That's when I realized we all become teenagers again at certain junctures. Life opens, a new space, a turning, some kind of longing... and we ask the question afresh... is this person, activity, thing worthy of the life I have to give?

Just the other day, I brushed up my adolescent inquiry skills and asked that question. And decided yes. So I'm going. Wanna come? At least for the view, if not for the journey itself?

Wedding Dress in a Cage art, artist unknown. Photo by L.L. Barkat.

RELATED POSTS:
High Calling Blogs The Gift: I Am Woman?
Laura's Gift Labor

The Gift: Rebel in the Museum

If you don't like to get in trouble, put it on your mental list never to visit an art museum with me. I have this crazy philosophy that art is for our enjoyment and participation. I don't just "ooh" and "aaah" over art; I photograph it (no flash, okay?), get too close for the guard's liking (just looking, not touching), and sometimes talk and laugh loud enough to get a hearty "shhhhhhhh..." in my direction.

Ai.

It's my humble opinion that many art museums have somehow gotten off track by acting too protective. Maybe they've had some bad incidents. Still, Lewis Hyde's words about scientists who horde their ideas seem like a good parallel. He notes, "The ends of science require coordination." And when scientists forget this, they end up isolating themselves. The result? "Seen from the outside, trade secrets... inhibit the advancement and integration of knowledge. Each trade may be its own community, but there will be no 'community of science'; there may be pockets of expertise, but there will be no mechanism whereby a group mind might emerge, nor a body of theory be drawn together." (p.105, The Gift)

This past week, I was fortunate enough to have my twelve-year-old artist daughter respond to an exhibit she'd seen, by creating the dress sculpture at the top of this post (Yup, photos of exhibit to come. Shhhh, don't tell the guards). Anyway, my daughter was generous enough to let me touch and photograph her work in different settings. What began with her vision and touch continued in mine. I hope she'll keep this rebel generosity long into the future; I'll be sure to show up, laughing and talking, marveling and responding.




Dress Sculpture, by Sara. Used with permission. Chiffon & Feathers Cape in the museum. Used. :) Photos by L.L. Barkat.

OTHER BOOK CLUB POSTS:
High Calling Blogs The Gift: All Our Kin
Laura's Gift of Community

The Gift: Can You Compare?

Who is worth more? Her or me? You or him?

These kinds of questions are extremely stressful to consider and virtually impossible to answer says Lewis Hyde in The Gift, because "we tend not to assign comparative values to those things to which we are emotionally connected." It is why things with market value must be "detachable or alienable" so they "can be put on the scale and compared."

This reminds me of a poem I once read, from a mother's point of view, in famine time. She's trying to decide which child to give food to. Should it be Sonya who is weak and small, or the eldest boy who has a fighting chance, and so on. Reading that poem was a pivotal experience for me, causing me to make some permanent alterations in my lifestyle, as I considered the role of global forces in the lives of mothers and fathers around the world.

If a gift economy is what enables us to feel deeply connected to others, so that we find it more difficult to assign greater or lesser value to certain people, what does this mean in a world that increasingly functions at the level of "market exchange" rather than "gift exchange"?

I don't have any great answers to that question. But I do have a giving-poem. And it seems I'm still stuck in the kitchen. Which gives me an idea for our next prompt, or series of prompts: let's begin in the kitchen (since that's where I am) and trace our homes in poetry; next week we can choose a different room.

Simply describe the kitchen, or choose a particular item, the way I chose a broom last week and a cup this week. Post your poem by Thursday July 30, for possible feature and definite links at High Calling Blogs. Leave your link here in my comment box.


"Offering"

I am just
a simple cup
on counter
bare scrubbed
scoured of day’s
too sour lemonade,
catsup fingerprints
hints of cream
loss of dreams
in coffee sipped,
dripped past
crumbs ‘til day
is numb with
stars. Pick me
up, sweep into
me the dregs
of play. That’s
what I’m for
when empty
anyway.


Doll Photo by Sara B. Used with permission.

POETRY FRIDAY:
High Calling Blogs RAP: Emotion's in the Details
LL’s Longing
Sara’s Universe
Jennifer’s Thin Place
Claire’s Boxed Being
Cindy’s In Our Mind’s Eye
Jim’s Hot Summer Night
Milton’s It’s Just the Way My Mind Works
Dave’s The Cold Season
Monica's Leather Bible Cover
Deb's Orange Glow
Lance's Equation

Why Do You Write? (tweet, blog...)

The path meanders upward, embraced in shadow. A red-winged blackbird lights on the underbrush where pearl-orange berries hang. Further on, red berries dangle too, like liquid glass. Poplars and firs give way to bamboo, and through a gap I see fields of roses, pink and wild. The air carries their scent, even as it moves cattails now full with ivory cotton swelling.

A single cardinal punctuates grass, turns his head to the side, just after the pond. Oh, the pond! Brown fish like blunted chopsticks sit motionless, while powder-blue dragonflies whir and dip. A naked branch, dead to the year, becomes a landing dock. Dragonflies, dragonflies, like blue-powdered leaves, clutter the skeleton branch. And here is a cluster of golden brown mushrooms. Or there. Look! Yellow flowers like banana bunches, and lavender too. Banana flowers. That's what we called them as children.

My girls go before me, biking through time, past creeks and swamps. They like the tunnels, shady and cool. I hear them up ahead, whistling in the dark.

-----

Why do I write this for you? Tell of my Sabbath biking? I write because I suffer.

Suffer? you say. What have cardinals and red berries got to do with suffering?

Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift has an interesting observation about gratitude. It is, he says, what we 'suffer' between the time we receive a gift and the time we pass it along.

So, yes, I write of girls on a path, of wild roses and dark tunnels... because I have suffered gratitude. For these Sabbath gifts. And now I find relief, in passing the gifts to you.


Fairy Forest Painting, by Sara B. Used with permission.

RELATED POSTS:
High Calling Blogs The Gift: Generous Elves

The Gift: Sometimes You See

Sometimes you give a gift and that's the end of things. Well, the end for you. The gift leaves your hands and you don't know where it travels, what the increase is. But sometimes word gets back... just a small picture of a tiny part of the "increase," and you are heartened. Thank you, Reluctant Homefront, for giving me a glimpse of your experience...

The other day I received a gift in the mail. I had stumbled on a giveaway held on Billy Coffey's blog, and as it turned out, mine was the name picked out of his hat by his children. I was excited to find L.L. Barkat's Stone Crossings in my mailbox only days later, and immediately settled in to read. I'm not sure what I expected when I first cracked the pages, but what I received was certainly beyond my expectations...

read the rest here...

On another note, here's my offering for this week's poetry celebration:

"Gift"

Boxed taped paper
flapped folded fitted
sealed kissed sent felt
burst open
let me
be

RELATED POST:
High Calling Blogs The Gift: Hike With Me

POETRY FRIDAY:
High Calling Blogs RAP: Make Me Human
Lorrie’s Tambourine
Monica’s Wedding Gown
Liz’s Gone
Simple Country Girl’s Wild Daisy
Jim’s Take Jonah, many do
Mom2Six’s Cavern
Laura’s Paint
Joelle's Animals Know Better

Stone Crossings photo by The Reluctant Homefront.

Let Go, Write Strong, Build Readership

You've seen it before. The burdened poem. A heavy-laden sentence. Blog posts that go on and on. Chapters that would have done well if they ended three pages ago.

We all create overstuffed writing sometimes, much to the chagrin (or boredom, frustration, and unhappy surprise) of our readers and editors. We want to hold on to all of our words, each of our sparkling thoughts or stories. But the poems, sentences, chapters, readers and editors of the world wish we'd simply let go.

I understand. I'm not immune. What to do? Here are 5 things I try to remember, to help me let go and write strong:

1. Aim for arresting details, then trim those that don't add extra force to the text. Refrain from being too sad about this (see number 3 below); remember, this practice wins points with readers and editors.

2. Trust the reader. If details are strong, readers can catch the import without a lot of explanation and application talk. I dare say that religious writers are particularly remiss in this area, as they spend too much time overlaying the God-aspect in their stories, poems and posts. We don't need to say, "He redeemed the situation by His powerful hand," if we've made it crystal clear through redemptive details.

3. Save it for later. This is especially hard for the new author/blogger, eager to fill a book/blog post with everything she knows on a subject. Remember, there'll be other chances. For instance, this weekend I was tempted to add a section to my Hospitality chapter, on the sometimes inhospitable ways we practice communion in our churches. But the chapter was already pleased with itself. So I started a file called "God in the Yard Blog Posts" and sketched my idea for a future blog post (once the book comes out and I want to extend ideas through conversation).

4. Give ideas away. Sometimes it's nice to pass things along to other writers, who have a built-in audience for your idea. (This point is also my tiny plug for Lewis Hyde's The Gift. In Chapter 2, he asserts that we keep a gift by giving part of it away. As Hyde says, "...where true, organic increase is at issue, gift exchange preserves that increase" )

5. Print it out, let it sit. I don't print my blog posts (maybe I should!), but I do print my articles and chapters. Then I let them sit for a day or a month. Creating distance between ourselves and a text, as well as seeing it in a different form (paper versus screen) goes a long way towards helping us appreciate the power of deletion.

So that's it. If we let go, we write strong. (Now let me see, where's that delete button...)


Empty Swing photo, by L.L. Barkat.

OTHER SEEDLINGS POSTS ON 'THE GIFT':
The Gift: Take, Eat, This is My Tweet
When Did You Labor, or will Sabbath help your gift go viral?
Womb, Harlequin, and License Plates: The Gift, 1

OTHER BOOK CLUB POSTS:
Laura's Blowing in the Wind

The Gift: Take, Eat, this is My Tweet-- hospitality on Twitter

'Honey, come and try some viral-marketing broccoli rabe,' says a woman to her boyfriend.

The context? Bill Wasik, author of And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture has just removed the plastic-bag-cooked-veggie from the microwave; he's promoting the bag as part of a word-of-mouth effort he signed up for on-line. This is the world of viral dreams, where businesses capitalize on 'media-consuming individuals' in hopes of creating 'community' that will sell their products.

But corporations are only tapping into a reality that exists for many who move and shake on-line. These are the 'sub-culture [who have] the mind-set of the marketer, drunk on numbers, single-mindedly obsessed with gathering attention, engineering sudden spikes.' They are the 'individual consumers...learning and refining the tricks of manipulation for themselves— where they serve as secret agents inside their own crowds, totaling up mentions and page views, sifting through their troves of data in a scurrilous search for gold.'

In other words, we are a tweeting, blogging, story-churning narcissistic cyberbunch, asserts Wasik, and who knows what effect this will ultimately have on culture?

Wasik's conclusions are only slightly less narcissistic than the cybertrends he observes.* In a kind of secular-spiritual-practice approach, he recommends quiet times, techno-Sabbath, self-reflection, and delaying gratification (by waiting for a topic to die down before reading about it). He asks us to be judicious controllers of what we take in, mostly to preserve our sanity and productivity and possibly to grant reason to our politics and greatness in our art. Any mention of true community and grace-engagement seems absent, as he urges us towards a corrective of partial 'disengagement.'

Enter The Gift, by Lewis Hyde. In speaking of gifts, he considers three levels at which they can function: the ego-of-one (which is self-gratification), the ego-of-two (which is reciprocal and best exemplified by lovers) or a full circle scenario that is unlike many married couples who 'get just so far in the expansion of the self and then close down for a lifetime, opening up for neither children, nor the group, nor the gods.'

In a sense, Wasik's Internet antidotes speak to dealing with the ego-of-one. But can *disengagement* alone move us towards higher levels of gift-giving? Towards reciprocity or full-circle giving? Maybe for that, we need to consider grace-engagement, a kind of cyber-hospitality modeled on tried and true off-line social behaviors.

For simplicity's sake, I thought we might focus on the increasingly popular Twitter world. However, if you tend to move more actively in the blogging or Facebook world, I invite your observations in those arenas. I don't think I've reached an adequate hospitality model quite yet, but here are some questions I've begun to ask myself about the act of tweeting...

1. How often do I tweet? If I spoke that much at an actual party, would I be monopolizing the conversation? Would I be viewed as a self-focused self-promoter?

2. Do my tweets tend to focus on *me*? As a journaling tool, focusing on myself can be positive, but how would such inward-focus be viewed in the average off-line conversation?

3. Do I tweet about the good stuff? Comparing this to off-line, am I just the gossipy tidbit type (sometimes fun and can serve a purpose) or can I also be counted on to move the conversation to refreshingly humorous or profound places?

4. Are my tweets usually monolog? Or do I engage in dialog? At 140 characters per entry, dialog is no simple matter. Still, am I talking AT or WITH other people?

5. Do I celebrate others' successes in my tweets? (And here I must thank Bradley Moore for retweeting my self-focused tweet on how I received an unexpected advance because Stone Crossings is being translated into Korean! Oops, pardon that temporary descent into narcissism :)

6. Do I think twice before tweeting on a bandwagon? As Wasik notes, he has seen the 'day-to-day destructiveness of the Internet churn, of the manufacture of nanostories with little regard for their ultimate truth.'

7. Do I tweet-dialog mostly with one other person? As in off-line life, it's good to focus on one or two friends sometimes, but in a social context that can border on the ego-of-two which never widens the circle.

8. Are my tweets always directive, statement oriented? Or do I sometimes ask questions, thus encouraging others to think and respond and add their wisdom or humor to the conversation.

All righty. Take, eat, these are my thoughts on tweeting. Now I'll sit back and wait for the bread and wine you'll bring to the table. And together maybe we can feed a wider world.


And Then There's This, photo by L.L. Barkat. *Overall, I enjoyed Wasik's book; I attribute the nature of his conclusions partly to the stage we're at with this whole 'social media conversation'; others like him, including those in the Christian community, have offered similar antidotes that rely on disengagement. As the conversation continues, I expect we'll eventually see a call for other kinds of solutions that favor what I've termed grace-engagement. For an article that begins the call in this direction, check out Loving Your On-Line Neighbor as Yourself, at Catapult.

OTHER BOOK CLUB POSTS:
High Calling's Laish and the Silo Effect
Thanks to International Arts Movement, for linking to our discussion of The Gift.

OTHER SEEDLINGS POSTS ON 'THE GIFT':
When Did You Labor, or will Sabbath help your gift go viral?
Womb, Harlequin, and License Plates: The Gift, 1

RELATED:
Trust Word of Mouth, at eMarketer
Loving Your On-Line Neighbor as Yourself, at Catapult
The Rise of the Nanostory, at Freedom to Tinker
Nanostory, at Tangzine

TOTALLY OFF TOPIC:
My First Giveaway, at Billy Coffey's.

When Did You Labor? (or, will Sabbath help your gift go viral?)

Sam got stuck in the Intro, and I decided to wait for him in Chapter One— just a little corner of it... just the last sentence... okay, just the intro to the last sentence (see, Sam, I'm working with you)...

The Lord says, 'All that opens the womb is mine...' And this reflects back on the Introduction, which uses the image of laboring... When we are moved by art we are grateful...that [the artist] labored in the service of his gifts.

This supposes that we know what our gifts are, and that we take the time to refine and share them. For those who love the cyberlife, this can become a thorny issue. It's easy to get carried away on the wires for hours on end, while our gifts sit idle. As Vincent Rossmeier notes,

I would say that if there's one thing that's causing the novels of the world from getting written right now, it's surfing the Internet. I do think that a lot of creative people want to be working on their craft, they want to be thinking big about what they should be doing and my belief is that the culture is encouraging them to think small. To me, the challenge is to try to find ways to partially unplug ourselves. To carve out spaces in our lives away from information.

That's one reason I take a weekly technology Sabbath. It helps me carve out thinking and dreaming space. It relieves my heart from all the hype and bad news (I'm talking about the news links that pop up when I open Yahoo). I'm even working on a daily schedule of unplugging and prioritizing, based on some cool suggestions I found in Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life. (This book oversimplifies sometimes, but it's worth a definite checkout at the library.)

So now, if you'll pardon me, I'm off to do a little labor in the service of my gifts.


Gladiator-Flower Broom photo, by L.L. Barkat.

MORE BOOK CLUB POSTS:
High Calling Blogs' Mozart, Tiger Woods and Me: Gift 1 1/2
Liz's Increase and Sacrifice
Laura's The Gift, Forcibly Taken

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to Simplify Your Email in 4 Steps (neatorama.com)
• "Rapt:" sustaining our focus in the age of Twitter (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Womb, Harlequin and License Plates: The Gift 1

Dogs can bark, he said. Demanded civil behavior! she laughed back. My spouse and littlest child were playing the acronym license plate game.

DCB, found on the back of a volkswagen. Remolded into delightful phrases. Brought home in a little story-box. A gift to the family.

Switch gears. Families and strangers grieving Flight 447. A briefcase with an airline ticket, orange life vest, elusive black boxes, debris floating on the turbulent sea. What to take from this, what to give in the face of so much loss? I reach into my sorrow and empathy, gather slight visions of what has so far been recovered, and consider...

Black Box

What indestructible secrets does
the black box hold. Besides electrical
failure, did it record his intention
to return her key for good on Monday,

does it hold her regret for being too
easy that night they cut the deal
on the purchase of rubber for ten
factories in the South. Will it tell

how the child lay dreaming of
chocolate gateaux with cherries
and how his mother had just
dabbed whipped cream on his

freckled nose to make him laugh.
Or can it say how— while the
boy was still unwrapping presents,
'midst screams he thought were party

sounds—the woman took him in her
arms one last time, as if for the first
time, and pressed his face against
milk-white silk and breaking breast.

This week at High Calling Blogs we're discussing chapter one of Hyde's The Gift. Like Sam, who wrote the HCB post for us, I find myself riddled with questions. What is a gift? On what does it rely? Assignation or acceptance?

In other words, if I say my poem is a gift to the grieving, is it? What if the sentiments are too hard to accept? What if the recipients don't particularly like poetry? Or if the license-plate story comes home, not meant as a gift per se, but I accept it as such, is it a gift?

Are some gifts greater than others? What if I were a better poet, or a worse one? Does that alter the reality or power of my gift? Hyde notes, for instance, that the formulaic Harlequin Romance series is not a work of art (the parameters have been set by poll results and this is the bottom line: 192 pages in length, gold curlicue design, heroine between ages of 19 and 27, single man but preferably recently widowed, and so on); and because the series is not, in his opinion, a work of art, it lacks the power of true gift.

True gift, says Hyde, makes us 'grateful that the artist lived, grateful that he labored in the service of his gifts.' Such work 'when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.' Furthermore, a gift should shift us from emptiness to plenty as it 'seeks the barren, the arid, the stuck, the poor. The Lord says, All that opens the womb is mine...'

Is this, at last, a definition of gift? If I open some womb in myself to give, maybe it is a gift whether or not it's accepted. If I accept a gift not intended as a gift and let it birth something in me, this too might be gift to my soul.

'Opening in Alhambra Wall' photo, by L.L. Barkat.

BOOK CLUB POSTS:
Laura's Some Food We Could Not Eat
Sam's The Gift: Art, Work and a Ribbon

POETRY FRIDAY & PROMPT:

Our next prompt (please post by June 18) is to begin, middle, or end a poem with "I spied God in (choose a specific object... a chrysalis, your mailbox, the dishwasher, an old teapot; what did God look like, what was God doing, did it surprise you?)

High Calling Blogs' Poetry as Spiritual Practice: 2
Marika's Repair
Yvette's Doors
Milton's Seasons and Nicodemus
Monica's Learning
Sarah’s Strands
Ann’s Soul ADD and Burning Bush
Laura’s Conversation
Simple Country Girl's Book RAP
Marcus's Liturgy of Seasons
Deb's Wrenched
TUC's Fell Down Today
Sarah's Way With Words
Laure's Silences
Liz's Sirens

The Gift

Last week, Ann Voskamp graciously let me tell a story on her blog, about a wrinkled shirt and an unexpected gift... Gifts in Brokenness. I've always been sort of a 'gifts' person, whether you give me a little note of love, a wildflower to put on the counter, or a great book of poetry like Wendell Berry's Given: Poems. (Now there's something to consider... in what sense is a poem 'given'?)

Anyhow, this is partly why I'm excited that High Calling Blogs is doing a book club on The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage), by Lewis Hyde.

I've already read a few chapters and am fascinated by the nature of gifts in peacemaking, relationship building and community nurturing. For the High Calling's invitation to read, check out Sam's Let's Read: The Gift.

And even if you choose not to read, I hope you'll pop in to the discussion to listen or contribute from time to time. Let that be your little gift to me.

GIFTS RIPPLE OUTWARD:
Jennifer's Please Include Me
Ann's Melinda? Expanding Grace

Stones from my Stepmother, photo by L.L. Barkat.