25 Days of Advent

I came across this blog post on Raptitude and really loved it. In many ways, it's a critique on traditional gift-giving, but I also see it as a challenge to give meaningful gifts. I never want to receive a gift that I won't use and I never want to give a gift that won't be used. Sometimes that's inevitable. But sustainable gift-giving is nice to think about and an ideal to aspire to.

http://www.raptitude.com/2013/12/what-to-get-everyone-for-christmas/

Thinking about gift-giving, I've really had it on my heart to do try to give back to my community this season. I don't go to church regularly (still searching for a congregation 'home' that I would feel comfortable in), but I still want to be intentional about using this season to reflect on how incredibly blessed I am and how, out of this blessing, I can give back to others.

I decided that I would try to do one thing a day that was reaching out to other people or giving back to the community. (I also asked Mike to participate with me so that we could try to remind each other to be mindful during the month.) I'm not going to share all that I've done so far because a lot of it is personal (reaching out to friends or family members who I haven't talked to in a while), but I will try to share the things that are community-based. 

Here are some things I want to do:

Donating food: My gym is doing a food drive so I'm going to get together some canned goods for that.
Donating clothing: ?
Donating books: ?
Donating coats: This weekend a cub scout group is doing an outerwear drive near Eastern Market so I'm going to take some clothes to that.
Donating time: Trying to fit some volunteer shifts for various organizations in my schedule.
Sponsor a child or family's Christmas gifts or Christmas dinner.

Here are some more general ideas for random acts of kindness:

• Give someone a nice compliment they wouldn’t normally expect.
• Buy lunch/coffee for someone.
• Go out of your way to “help” someone in need.
• Clean a mess that you didn’t make.
• Write a thank you note to someone who has helped you recently.
• Spend technology-free time with someone.
• Apologize to someone.
• Volunteer at an animal shelter or donate to an animal shelter.
• Do a chore around the house that no one has asked you to do, but that needs to be done!
• Call one of your grandparents on the phone.
• Tell someone you love one reason why you love them.
• Research a charity you can either donate money to or support through a future event (like a “fun run” or soup kitchen). Put it on the calendar and commit to it.
• Reach out to someone you haven't talked to in a while.

I like the C.S. Lewis quote below about giving. It reminds me that, even with all of the overwhelming Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing messages that tell us to BUYBUYBUY, giving and sharing are so much more fulfilling.

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”

― C.S. Lewis