Giving and Receiving with Joy

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

Homemade kumquat and Meyer lemon marmelade, elderberry juice from our tree, and a raspberry liqueur from the earth’s gifts last summer, along with local raw honey.

Christmas is tomorrow. As a child, we celebrated both Christmas Eve and Christmas. Neither religious nor pagan, we opened gifts (often practical ones, like shoes) and feasted on cream cheese and onion clam dip with clams we’d dug from the mudflats of Humboldt Bay. Though cash poor, our family received much nourishment from our relationship with the Earth.

This morning is Christmas Eve. With a fire in the wood stove behind me, I am deeply grateful for what I give and receive. Toasty warm, I rise to answer the call of Crow who has spied me at my desk writing and wonders if there are peanuts for her. Alighting on my garden path, she swings over on stilted legs to pick at the nuts I’ve tossed. My heart swells. Her receiving is a gift to me.

I uploaded a Gratitude meditation at midnight, inspired by you all who have kindled with me the fire of joy. If you receive and read these newsletters and/or meet with me weekly for class on Wednesdays, then this first publicly released meditation is meant as a gift for you with my best wishes. The ocean sings back up; I recorded her waves on a beautiful afternoon at a remote beach in the Pacific Northwest with family.

Do you see how the giving and receiving are intertwined? And Dana, the first to let me know this meditation was received, I thank you for sharing that you heard my intentions sing out. I am so grateful for the one or two folks who let me know how they receive what I give in Newsletters, blogs, or YouTubes. Truly, thank you. Sweet giving can also be vulnerable.

And finally, I’m stretching as well to receive what does not at first appear to be a gift. My phone broke 2 days ago. Gift. A quieter holiday, an upgraded phone (with camera!) on the way. Yes, at first I made some faces and said some words. I’m (mostly) over it now. Where I place my attention and how I open my heart to the experience is all.

How do you give and receive in December? Are you feeling blessed? Do the lines of giver and receiver blur, and does your love expand?