The Real Value of Simple Gifts

The Real Value of Simple Gifts
Mon 12 Jan 2009 11:21pm
As I write, I have the details of seven services coming in the next 13 days swirling around in my head. Festive ones, a deep, meditative one, one to honor a life well-lived and today’s Village Worship to consider the real value of simple gifts.

I love our Simple Gift Swap which follows the Village Worship service. By now, it has become an annual tradition here at First Parish thanks to Geneviève Dionne whose gift was the idea itself. I love its messages: things don’t have to be big or expensive to be special; beautiful, useful, fanciful gifts, used again, are gifts to the people we love and to our earth, too. I love watching the children “shop” and the shenanigans that go on to suggest that you might like to receive a particular gift! (You see, it’s all free, but there is one rule: you must choose something to give to someone else, not for yourself.) It is such fun to watch folks leave with their (recycled) shopping bags, filled with new and nearly new gifts festively wrapped in (recycled) paper and (recycled) ribbon. It is a blessing to know that all that fun didn’t cost anyone a dime.

I am reminded of a story I heard on the radio years ago. It was told by Carmen Deedy, a professional storyteller who had gone to a very small town in the hills of Kentucky in early December to share the gift of story. She went to the schools and met with the children. She told stories and got them telling stories. Here’s how I remember it.

After nearly a week, she had become quite fond of the children and they of her: one young boy in particular. He was very poor. All the children were. But he had such a bright spirit. When she told her stories, he lit up. And when he told his, she lit up.

The day before she was to leave this little Kentucky town, the boy – we’ll call him Joey – came to Carmen Deedy holding something behind his back. “Carmen Deedy, Carmen Deedy,” he said excitedly. [She pointed out that all the children called her Carmen Deedy, not Carmen or Miss Deedy, but Carmen Deedy.] “Carmen Deedy,” he said again, almost hopping with excitement, “I brought you a gift.

Carmen Deedy looked at the child. He had no shoes (and it was cold). He was scruffy and scrawny and looked as if he needed both a hot meal and a hot bath. His clothes were neat, but patched and worn. If it hadn’t been for those exceptionally bright eyes, Joey looked like almost all the other children she’d met.

She knelt to receive his gift. He shoved a smooth stone – about the size of her palm – into her hand. “Why Joey,” Carmen Deedy said sincerely, “this is beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I know,” he said, “I walked all the way to the boulders to get it for you.”

“Oh Joey,” she said, knowing the walk was dangerous and at least a mile and a half one-way, “you didn’t have to do that! You didn’t have to walk all that way. A simple ‘Merry Christmas’ would do!”

“But Carmen Deedy,” he shot back, “Don’t you know? The walk was part of the gift!”

As you plan your season with its swirling demands punctuated by meditative and festive, consider what simple gifts you may have to offer: to yourself, to the precious ones on your personal list, and – maybe most important of all – to the ones in the world who need to give and receive a gift more than anything.

And while you’re considering what those gifts may be – please remember to make the walk part of the gift.

Katie Lee

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