Giving...

It is easy to go about our daily lives working, studying and spending time with our family and friends.  It is easy to find ways to spend our money, our time, and our energy pursuing those things, subjects and experiences that bring us joy and deepen our purpose.  It is easy to become absorbed in our work, our spells, our offerings, our rituals and practice.

It is easy and it is human.  But it is also an easy thing to look up from our altars, from our books, from our work.  To look up from our supper and our household chores.  To look up from our beloved pets and the faces of our children, and to see.

We don’t have to look far; we don’t have to seek for long.  Because the family next door needs help feeding their children and the old lady across the street needs help shoveling the sidewalk so she can walk to the drugstore, and the animal shelter down the street has cats to feed, and cat food costs money (and so does the heat and the lights).  And the stray only needs a bit of food and some water every day and a box with a blanket to get out of the wind.

It’s easy to think I don’t have enough. To look at the bank balance and know that I need to save more but, I can shovel the sidewalk for my landlady, simply because I am healthy and at 88 years old, she shouldn’t have to. 

I can put aside a few cans of food from my pantry or from the grocery shopping, and drop it at the local food bank.  I can donate a bag of cat food, or even a Saturday afternoon to work cleaning the place, and help out the shelter a little bit (a small gift considering how great a gift my Pwca is to my life). 

I can give blood to the Red Cross, I can pitch-in at the river cleanup day, I can donate the clothes that I no longer wear to the thrift-shop that supports my local woman’s shelter (because yes, there are women in my community who need a safe place for themselves and their children).   I can give the books I have already read to my local library.  I can dedicate my massage table to one of the Goddesses who has blessed my life, by giving the money I earn with it to my Tradition’s New Alexandrian Library Project.

I have been blessed with a beautiful life and a wonder-filled path and I can give a lot, if I simply look up and notice.  It will not mean less for me or those I love, not really.  I can share what I have without harming my life.  And if I can give nothing else, I can go to the park and sing for the Fae because it will make my world a better place.

Giving is a practice in gratitude for the life I have and an act of magick.  It shows the universe that abundance is well invested in my life…I share.