Presence and Presents

In the beginning was the word, and the word was ‘present’, but now the word is ‘gift’, fair enough the noun, but the verb too?  I gift you these presents.  I present you with these gifts.  Pedantry aside, you’ll recently have given and received a fair few.  I hope you got at least one that you a) wanted and b) needed. Otherwise, like me, you may have stared at the pretty bundle and thought, ungraciously: now what?

Dolly guards the Bundle

As well as the pzazz around the gift buying, there is the choreography of opening.  As a child who would have failed the Sanford Marshmallow test I observed this year we have introduced a new obstacle – Champagne toasting – which I had to juggle with cooking, gasping (for a drink) and waiting while the family assembled round the tree.  We then passed round the be-ribboned gifts and plain old presents and performed some kind of synchronised rip.  I think some families all watch as one at a time, the recipient reveals the gift – but there were too many of us, and too many gifts, and of course, the inability to delay gratification is probably genetic. 

It wasn’t the champagne that left a taste in my mouth, it was the excess of it all.  So much stuff.  Oven gloves with Christmas trees.  Can they be used in July with impunity? God knows what Jesus thought.

Pilgrims at the Ganges

In the middle of all this I recalled the retired lawyer from Calcutta and his pal, the headmaster whom I’d met, courtesy of Michael Wood’s Journey to India (do watch the whole clip from 7’ to 12’ or this).  Each had given away their worldly goods and now sat contentedly at the side of the Ganges in Kashi (Benares), free.  “When you have money in your pocket you have worries too.”  These chaps were nearing the end of (this stage) of their spiritual journeys: one was at the 5th level ‘Perception of ultimate truth’ and the other, the 6th, the final state of pure consciousness, before they are reincarnated and begin again.  Quite the gift, but apparently only available in India?  I can confirm, there’s no one in rags at the side of the River Tweed.  Salmon fishing is a very expensive sport and even the wildswimmers emerge in shades of blue into their fleecy robes to sup flavoured hot chocolate in thermal mugs they probably got for Christmas. 

Presence, not presents, is the ultimate gift of course.  We see the effects of the lack of it everywhere, as eyes cast down to devices, we mediate our lives through apps.  I love a forest walk in the company of Podcasters, greedy for their information, trying to memorise chunks to tell other people, who listen to their own podcasts.  To be fair, if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have come across the poet Ross Gay, and thereafter, his particularly touching poem about the wanted and unwanted gifts of the ancient Fig Tree.

Sharing gives you more.  Possibly why the wonderful folks at the Scottish Poetry Library don’t need to display ‘You Have to be Mad to Work Here’ or ‘Our staff will not tolerate abuse in any form’ posters.  Poetry, freely given, with generous time to read and return.  How enlightened.  This gift from Liz Lochhead, Scotland’s former Makar, to celebrate the sacred and the secular, that sweet spot in which poetry oft resides.

Spoken Song

These are the shortened days

And the endless nights.

Carol Ann Duffy, from Mean Time (1993)

Gloomy December.

The doldrum days of the dead of winter.

These are the shortest days

and the endless nights.

So wish for the moon

and long for the light.

Chill winds.  Relentless rain.

Dark to go to work in, darkness home again.

But, given just one fine day of sun and sharp,

clean frost,

our lost, maybe long lost

Faith – if for nothing more than the year’s

turning –

comes back like the light comes back.

A promise in our bleak midwinter yearning

once in a rare and clear blue noon

if we wish for the moon.

Till then, the light’s soul and spirit

Is locked in its absence

and our longing for it.

Whether you believe, with the Magi, in their

miracle –

Three Kings bow down low before the Child of

Light –

or whether we think them Wise Men on a

fool’s errand,

their gifts useless, magnificent, precious,

who came following one star and its faltering

gleaming

till they came to the place,

it was a brave as well as a cold coming.

Yes.

And whether it was a refugee waif

or the Saviour that was born,

whether some shepherds on the night-shift

saw angels, or a meteor storm..

Believe in the light’s soul and spirit

that’s in its absence

and our longing for it

by Liz Lochhead