Bread

If you give a person a piece of bread, just imagine for once if you were the one receiving this piece of bread. How would the entire event look to you? What would be going on in you? This will help you to have the right attitude, even as a giver. Especially as a giver. For sensitive and understanding must be the giver. Because it is a great burden to receive. So hand over this burden gently. Do not mock them that must receive from you, but remember too to preserve their dignity.

There is a common humanity that we share, and it is this shared oneness that interacts with itself each time we give and receive. And so, many times it is the giver who has actually received even more, often without even being aware of it. Give therefore with gratitude at the opportunity to give, you who receive all the time.

With what may you give? First of all, with understanding. Empathy. The urge and the attempt to truly understand the outer position and inner disposition of another awakens within one something which can be passed on to another.

Sometimes just a smile of encouragement, a look of warning, a question or a suggestion. A small gift. A favour, small to you but big to the recipient. Big to you but bigger still to the recipient. The culture of compassion. Edifier of the human race.

The art of giving and receiving. So fine an art. Giving without giving away our humanity. Receiving without receiving also indignity. Receiving without paying for it with even the subtlest of humiliation. Receiving objectively, careful not to take one-sidedly. Giving objectively, careful not to be one-sided. Giving without expecting in return anything else, anything lower, than the experiencing of a shared humanity. The giver knows gratitude too, a strange happy release of elated normalcy within one’s heart. The perception that one has just done that for which one lives. To give.

And who can give the most? None other than the receiver. Oh, how much, how so much the receiver could give, more than he knows. He can give to the occasion the height of dignity it deserves by receiving with dignity, maturity and freedom. To receive does not mean to be a slave for life – but to receive is to create a kind of temporary internal imbalance which urges towards restitution. And this alone is released in Gratitude. When you receive you must give something back. This is also the law of reciprocal action. You must give back, according to your nature.

Behold this beautiful Creation that issued forth from the Spirit of God. Forever it returns to us the fruits of our thoughts and words, the results of our deeds and even our most intuitive perceptions. We reap what we sow. Pleasure and pain. Joy and sorrow. Growth and limitation. Everything comes back in the Law of Reciprocal Action. Forever we receive. Receive back.

And forever we must give. Give back in the service of Growth. Like the recurrent seasons, so does the urge make itself felt over and over again within us deeply. The urge to give, to give of ourselves. The urge to give to others the honest effort to understand them; to really try to understand others. This is the foundation of all proper Giving. This is the beginning of giving. Understanding is the first step towards Giving. And it lies in our nature.

It does not lie in our nature to return hatred for hatred, darkness for darkness. These are alien to that which makes us fruits of an ever onward evolving Creation of Light. But it lies in our nature, more or less deeply buried, to look into the heart of things and sense what we owe each thing – gentleness or severity, a question or an answer, a gift or a demand, a favour or a waiting upon a something that ought to have come. Or laughter or quiet. Or just plain Gratitude. It lies in our nature to seek for understanding, and then to act, to give, from out of this Understanding. This is the meaning of life.

In that piece of bread you are about to give lies an opportunity to give that which makes us all human. It is the bread of life. Have your bite and pass it on. It will come back to you, richer and fuller. But keep it for yourself, and it will disappear like a thief into the night. You will seek It, but It will remain as elusive as the Holy Grail. But find love within you, and seek to give love to those around you, and It will come to you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije