Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST February 11th 2022

4 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session our text was the poem The giver (for Berdis) by James Baldwin, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “The hope of giving is…”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

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Please join us for our next session Monday February 14th at 6pm EST,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

The giver (for Berdis) by James Baldwin


If the hope of giving
is to love the living,
the giver risks madness
in the act of giving.

Some such lesson I seemed to see
in the faces that surrounded me.

Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted,
what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?
          The giver is no less adrift
          than those who are clamouring for the gift.

If they cannot claim it, if it is not there,
if their empty fingers beat the empty air
and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer
knows that all of his giving has been for naught
and that nothing was ever what he thought
and turns in his guilty bed to stare
at the starving multitudes standing there
and rises from bed to curse at heaven,
he must yet understand that to whom much is given
much will be taken, and justly so:
I cannot tell how much I owe.



James Baldwin, "The giver (for Berdis)" from Jimmy’s Blues. 
Copyright © 2014 by The James Baldwin Estate.

4 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST February 11th 2022”

  1. Joannah A Cook

    The hope of giving is…
    that my gifts will be received by the ones I meet who receive me.
    that the gift itself will honor, respect and love the one who opens it,
    for only to the One it points,
    a greater love that won’t disappoint,
    the One who wraps all wounds without sound,
    “Peace,peace” to come around.
    That binding will seal them and hold them fast,
    The final gift given, at last.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  2. michele348

    The hope of giving is~~~

    To give infiltrates the heart with warmth. The act need not be bold and boisterous,
    but simply extending a hand, a sense of love to someone in need.

    The hope of giving is to somehow, in your own small way,
    make a difference in someone’s life.
    To potentially give that person a realization that he is, indeed, important to this world, a unique gift for the world to value.

    We must not assume a reward for our efforts,
    at least not on this earth.
    But, if we can be of benefit to the “least of the flock”, then our reward will indeed come.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. Terry Hourigan, R.N.

    The hope of giving is that I will live to see it passed on.

    The Prophet: “All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that
    the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors’.”

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

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