“You Give, and You Are Given”
A Reflection for Thanksgiving Sunday
Jan K. Nielsen
It is good to be together
on this day of celebration and gratitude.
Today we celebrate the ministry of Rev. Jean,
and offer her our gratitude.
Rev. Jean, our Minister Emerita,
again, we thank you.
Today we celebrate, too, the season of thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is not just a time to give thanks
for whatever blessings life has given us,
but a time to give thanks for the gift of life itself –
the chance to breathe, and to live, and to love for another day.
It is good to be here, alive, and together on this day
as we celebrate the gift of life.
There is perhaps no better way to celebrate the gift of life
than by sharing stories.
Today we’ve heard stories
of life-giving, even life-saving generosity.
I still remember that October Sunday
Ken stopped me after the service
to tell me about his family’s morning –
the rush to get out the door on time,
Ken and Amy, Braden, Caleb and Gavin on their way here;
as they drove,
Amy spotted smoke coming from the steps of a house,
and then, despite their hurry,
they stopped, turned around, and came back to help.
We all heard Ken tell of
pounding on the window,
filling a trash can with water,
pouring it on the fire.
Can’t we imagine the woman’s face?
We can see her shock,
her relief, her gratitude.
Her life had been saved.
When I first heard Ken tell it,
I knew that the Distel family’s story
was one I wanted us all to hear, together,
on this day of celebration and gratitude.
On that trip to church, Ken and Amy lived their values:
kindness, care, compassion –
and Braden, Caleb and Gavin
got to watch.
Ken and Amy’s actions that day
are a picture of what Jesus meant
when he taught: “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
I hope this becomes one of those family stories
that is told again and again
and passed down to the boys’ children, and to their children.
Thanks, Ken and Amy, for sharing your story with all of us.
Stories like yours can remind us
what we already know deep down inside:
that none of us can get by, for long, on our own,
and that, on the journey we call life,
we’re all in this together.
Thanksgiving is a time to remember
that all of us are here, together, on life’s journey,
not just to receive life’s blessings,
but also to give something away.
Ken and Amy gave away some of their time and attention and love.
Mary Oliver tells the story
of giving something away
in a short poem she calls “Philip’s Birthday.”
We can imagine that Philip is a young boy,
maybe 10 years old, who received a gift.
Listen to the poet’s story:
I gave,
to a friend that I care for deeply,
something that I loved.
It was only a small
extremely shaped bone
that came from the ear
of a whale.
It hurt a little
to give it away.
The next morning
I went out, as usual,
at sunrise,
and there, in the harbor,
was a swan.
I don’t know
what he or she was doing there,
but the beauty of it
was gift.
Do you see what I mean?
You give, and you are given.
“You give, and you are given,”
the poet reminds us,
and this is a Thanksgiving message.
This week, I hope to remember my blessings -
among them, a loving family, a strong body, work I love –
just as I hope you will remember yours.
But in this season of Thanksgiving,
I want to ask myself, not just what I have,
but also:
What am I giving?
What, while I am here, and living, am I giving away?
These are Thanksgiving questions,
for when we give away
some of what we have or part of who we are,
we become more fully alive,
and we celebrate life.
Giving, though, sometimes can be hard.
It can sometimes hurt to give,
as the wise poet so honestly confesses.
It hurt, a little, she tells us,
to give away her treasured whale bone.
Why does it sometimes hurt to give?
It can hurt, in part, because somewhere inside,
we fear that there isn’t enough to give.
Our culture, as the Buddhist writer Sharon Salzberg tells us,
teaches us “to believe that we are not enough,
we do not have enough,
and we must accumulate and acquire
experiences and people and objects to feel okay,
or at least better.”
Our culture encourages a sense of scarcity –
the sense that there isn’t enough to go around,
not enough things, not enough money,
not enough time, not enough love.
We can, though, choose to look at our lives, and ourselves,
in a different way.
“Abundance,” Sharon Salzberg says,
“is an inner sense.”
Wealthier people, she says, can have a hard time giving
and poorer people can feel that,
though they don’t have much,
there’s always enough to share.
Krishna Das could give away his jacket
because, as he said, “the world is full of jackets.”
Remember the Taoist wisdom from
the Tao De Ching:
“One who knows that enough is enough
will always have enough.”
It comes down to believing
that we are enough
and that, whatever life brings,
there will be enough, always enough.
When I use the word “enough”
I am not just talking about enough jackets
or enough things or enough money.
I mean that and something more.
Sometimes we can be slow to give of ourselves.
We don’t always meet one another in this life
with an open heart, ready to give of our time and care,
ready to help,
open to love.
What can hold us back is a sense of scarcity.
On the outside,
we may give the appearance
of being strong, independent, confident,
but on the inside,
we can sometimes fear that, somehow, we are not enough,
not worthy enough,
not quite loveable enough.
And so we hold back, and hold onto our love.
We meet life, and others, with a sense of scarcity,
with a list of complaints and criticisms,
as if giving some care and kindness away
would leave us with less for ourselves.
The truth is: giving away love brings us more.
“The one thing that can never be taken from us,
even by death,”
wrote the late Forrest Church,
“is the love we give away before we go.”
You may know that Forrest
had served for the past 30 years
as minister to our All Souls congregation in Manhattan
before his death in September.
In his book, Love & Death,
he writes:
“Our indifference, cynicism, and hard feelings
will leave little mark.
The world quickly sloughs off our complaints against it –
but love it and someone, somewhere will remember. . . .
Love,” he says, “is the one thing death cannot kill.”
Remember that line from the poet,
“You give, and you are given.”
In this season of Thanksgiving,
celebrate the gift of life by giving.
Give thanks not just for what you have
but for all you can give way.
Know that you are enough,
that there is plenty enough to share.
Remember that what matters most
while we are gathered together
here on this earth
is the love we give away before we go.
The Universalist Church
West Hartford, Connecticut
November 22, 2009