At our Norwich Teachers’ Writing group this week we wrote about gifts. And we wrote gifts of words. For me, meeting with this group - and with other writing groups – is a gift.
Each time I sit down with teachers to write, I am overwhelmed with the pleasure of it. How good it has been, over the last year of isolations and zooming and lockdowns and remote learning, to sit by a screen and write alongside others on the screen, writing, by their screens.
Of course it is not the same as being side by side - and this year we’ve missed handing round the stollen - but there has been a calm; and an affirmation of our lives, alone and together.
It so happened that our group met this week on the first day of Hanukkah. The Chief Rabbi spoke on Thought for the Day that morning. (You can find it on the Today programme, BBC Radio 4, December 10th 2020, at 7.50am) He spoke about the seven words for ‘gift’ that exist in Hebrew. Each provides us with a different way of thinking about the nature of gifts and giving. A gift can be a blessing, a good wish; it can be an act of appreciative joy, given in the moment, in the present; another word denotes the gift for special occasions, a thoughtful gift; and the fourth word denotes a gift given to a good cause; the fifth is a similar gift, but unsolicited, another example of giving in the moment. Finally, Rabbi Mirvis spoke of a gift that takes time, effort and talent in the making. It draws people together. It is for a greater good. One such gift, this year, he said, has been the development of vaccines designed to prevent the spread of Covid 19.
We thought about John May’s ‘Six Things for Christmas’:
I wish to be given beautiful things this Christmas,
Beautiful but impossible.
It’s a poem that Jill Pirrie mentions in On Common Ground (1987) London: Hodder & Stoughton. She asks us to think of memories so dear to us that they occupy a special place. These can be given, as gifts to those who might share those memories. This year, when we will be sharing festivities with far fewer people, and when some people we know may well be alone, it may be that the words you send them could be the loveliest gift.