Promises and Gifts

I was lost in conversation this week, wondering about the difference between a promise and a gift. I wondered what the difference between these two would make for my life. Then I wondered how the difference might matter for us all.

In a society like ours, it is very hard not to see every offering, every encounter, as a promise. 

Van Manen reminded me that the secret of  gifts--unlike presents, much less promises--is that “love and friendship make gifts, even the smallest ones, possible.” Unlike presents or promises, which seem to rely on notions of reciprocity and obligation, a gift is that which is given to us, and which can never be reciprocated. There is always a sense in which we are unworthy of the gifts we receive. “Whoever gives a gift, gives him or herself. He or she is the thing.”

My question, then, is this: How do we live in the world so that we see gifts and not promises?

First off, this means, to my mind, cultivating the phenomenological attitude toward life--life’s beauty, and its tragedy.

As we read and discussed the accounts from this past week, I was powerfully reminded of the gifts of life (both small and big), and how much it hurts when a gift is taken from us. We know that gifts are not ours to keep forever--they are not promises!--we are entrusted with them for only a short time. We have to cherish every moment of a gift.

Read this prayer, if you would like, from Oscar Romero. Whether you are religious or not, I hope you will attend to the way in which it rings phenomenologically. 

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

We must offer up our research, our teaching, and our lives as gifts for others, and in humility, cherish those gifts that come our way as well.