Giving Gifts

Gold is currency – top-end currency at that – and currency is simply codified influence. The first gift that I can give to you is to recognise, to acknowledge, that you have influence.

Everyone has influence, from the moment of birth – indeed, from before our birth. We can use our influence to exploit others (usually explicitly), to manipulate others (usually implicitly), to compete with others, to nurture others, or to cooperate with others – to take a stance upon, over, against, for, or with others. But I can only take a stance for and/or with you when I am willing to value your influence.

For whom, and with whom, will you exert influence in 2016?

Incense rising is the articulation of hopes and dreams in the form of prayer. The second gift that I can give to you is to recognise, to acknowledge, that you have hopes and dreams.

Everyone has hopes and dreams, by definition beyond our reach, even if we are content to let the present be enough for now, and however we choose to exert our influence to try to turn vapour into substance, or base mineral into gold. I cannot be your alchemist but, again, I can take a stance for and/or with you only when I am willing to value your hopes and dreams.

How will you (name and) nurture your hopes and dreams in 2016? Who else’s hopes and dreams will you nurture? With whom will you cooperate, finding overlapping common ground, in hope of a future more expansive than either party could have imagined?

Myrrh is balm, for the body of the dead and – more so – for the soul of the living. It represents the healing, in time, of our memories: wounds becoming scars; and scars, markings; stories, or landmarks, to navigate by. The third gift that I can give to you is to recognise, to acknowledge, that you have sorrow.

Everyone has sorrow. In time, we reach a tipping-point, after which we can never return: the discovery that life is bitter-sweet, as opposed to unrelentingly bitter (as we had imagined it must be, after our first unbearable loss). I can only take a stance for and/or with you when I am willing to value your sorrow.

How will the past you must leave behind equip you – and others – to step with confidence into the future?