Gifts

Comments on: ""Accept the Gift" by Jane Hirshfield: In the poem, she discusses dealing with receiving a Bull "from the gods" as a gift. What do you do with it? How do you behave? Although the Bull is frightening, you will come to love it and to understand it as you nurture and take care of it. And when the time comes, you will be able to give it back to the gods freely.

While the subject may give you thought, the message is simple: accept it, take care of it, give it back when asked.

Housden comments: " ... life is a series of present moments rather than a linear progression from past to future, that our one true life can only really take place here where we are, and now .... Each moment comes bearing a gift - or is it a curse? - from the gods .... Someone somewhere will always be the recipient of it."

It can be dangerous and frightening or loving and comforting. The latter is easy to accept. The former arrives when something storms into your life and your "comfortable, protecting circle is suddenly broken."

Hirshfield suggests in her poem that it be accepted as a gift, not a curse, even though it may be a sudden illness or loss, a crisis, a storm or any kind. It is a gift because it is the moment you are in and the only one you have.

Obviously, grief, illness, or loss will be heavy and will bring sadness and tears. But in the long term how you welcome it will influence how you come out the other side. Anything that is bigger than the ego's drive to shape experience the way it wants to see it had to be a positive experience.

Acceptance of the moment as a gift is in essence a reminder that "everything in this world is only on loan to us." This awareness helps us to live each moment as well as we can, not miss it. Even though the moment can be taken away from us, "the essence of it can never be taken away from us, the love that has burst open our heart and ushered in a deeper, more vital way of living will always continue."

An additional awareness is that everyone, most likely invisibly to us, is involved in and dealing with their own moments.