The Joy of Getting

Today I'm thinking about the joy of getting.

Which seems strange, since we usually think it's better to give than to receive. And often we think that enjoying getting makes us prone to greed, selfishness, a lust for more, and ultimately an unsatisfying emptiness that can come with a life lived for self-gratification.

In reaction, many people, especially in certain faith traditions have grown up to live lives defined by giving of ourselves to other people.

In my own life, I've begun to notice that I don't just prefer the joy of giving, I have a hard time getting from other people....maybe it's better to say I have a hard time "receiving" from others.

It violates my rigorous independence. It's fine for me to give, because it still allows me to keep on with my illusions of self-sufficiency. Rarely, is there joy for me in receiving, especially when it involves other people having to go out of their way for me.

Now I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this. And the problem is, I think, that in our attempts to avoid greed and selfishness, we've traded for a different kind of spiritual sickness, the kind that makes it hard to receive joyfully from other people.

And imagine the kind of problem this might be at Christmas time, a holiday whose primary spiritual significance is found in receiving the gift of God incarnate - of Jesus coming into our midst.

Sure, it's great to give gifts, but our culture has begun to depict gift giving as the primary ethos of "the holidays". I saw a store with the tagline "give better".  But even if we avoid the cultural norm of giving as an act of self-definition, we might still fall prey to the trap of only allowing ourselves to be joyful in the act of giving, and not also in receiving. And it may not be so important that we allow ourselves to be blessed by proverbial pair of socks from aunt Ethel, but what if we fail to allow ourselves to be joyful in the more important gifts of Christmas? What if our preoccupation with giving prevents us from first receiving God's gifts for us?

Our are hearts clinging to independence, perhaps even clinging to the role of giver (a position of power) at the expense of fully being joyful at this outlandish, extravagance? God has given himself to us. In our struggle to relate to truth on an intellectual level, God moves in among us and allows us to relate to truth in the form of another human. God limits him/herself and offers presence to humans in a way never before imagined.

So this Christmas I'm trying to cultivate a posture in my heart that is open to receiving. Open to the gifts of others (in that they are extensions of God's love for me), and open to this mind-blowing act of love in the incarnation. I fear I may not have been very open to accepting it in the past, and I wonder how my independence and self-sufficiency might have robbed me of the full experience of this gift. I'm going to try to en-joy getting and see what happens.