Gifting Ourselves: A Reflection by Killian Noe

This time of year, I always notice a pre-occupation in our larger culture with gift giving. Many feel deep sadness and shame this time of year because they can’t afford to buy gifts for those they love. Those with resources to spend often feel stressed over finding the perfect gifts for those they love. Some go into deep debt buying gifts during the holiday season. Some wait in long lines the day after Christmas to return gifts they don’t like or need. 

I would like to reflect with you on another kind of gift giving: the giving of our lives for a purpose greater than ourselves. I’d like to share four observations on that kind of giving. 

The Gift of Loving Presence

First, the most valuable and challenging gift any of us can give is the gift of loving presence. We can practice showing up with loving presence to every life that is touched by ours. We can practice giving the gift of loving presence to our children, our grandchildren, our friends, our work colleagues, an elderly neighbor or the cashier at the grocery store as we check out. Loving presence is a gift that is needed by every person we meet and is rarely returned for a refund.

Notice I said we can “practice” giving this gift because none of us do this perfectly. We are too distracted by too many things–like our digital devices–to show up with loving presence 100% of the time, or even 50% of the time. But make no mistake, this is the most valuable and most needed gift we can give to literally every life that is touched by ours. 

Giving the gift of loving presence requires at least two things of us; it requires consciously connecting with divine love in ourselves and consciously connecting with divine love in others (Recovery Cafe’s first Guiding Principle.) Prayer, meditation, breathing deeply, putting our phones away for periods of time, time in nature, creative expression, etc. all help us connect with the love-force at our core and help us see, connect with, and call forth that love-force in others.

The Gift of Community

Another desperately needed gift we can give is the gift of community. All of us, in our own way, can practice community building. Community building may be as simple as inviting someone to join your table to drink their coffee or initiating conversations among other parents at the playground. We know from studies that loneliness does more damage to our health than smoking cigarettes and that 50% of Americans report being lonely. Thirty-nine percent of Americans report they feel close to no one. We all need witnesses to our lives, those who care about our struggles and our joys.

One morning when David Coffey arrived at one of our Seattle Cafés, he noticed a member pressing her hands against the brick exterior of our building. He asked, “Are you OK?” She responded, “Yes, I am just trying to connect with the love I feel when I am inside this place.”

Many of you reading this reflection piece are seeking to build an intentional, authentic community of healing and belonging. As you know, building intentional community comes with unique challenges.  

I’ll name just one of those challenges. 

We live in a divided nation and world. There is an us versus them mentality surging through the larger culture that threatens to tear down expressions of community. Allowing oneself to be deeply known and loved is essential in building authentic community, but the predominant ethos in the surrounding culture today is one of distrust and contempt. The world needs to see our Guiding Principles embodied. The world needs to see what it looks like when a group of committed people live like we belong to each other; like there is no us and them. That is the desperately needed gift we can give to our world.

The Gift of Forgiveness

Which brings me to a third gift that we all can give ourselves and others this holiday season and every day: the gift of forgiveness.

Nothing will make room for more joy as we move into the New Year like forgiving ourselves and others. Gordon Cosby put it this way:

“People, especially those close to us, have the power to deplete and hurt us. We are all clumsy at loving and in our clumsiness we hurt each other. We give others the power to drain our joy unless we can allow all persons, and all groups to be who they are, which includes their clumsiest, most hurtful behaviors. We may need to choose a different kind of connection with people whose abusive behavior hurts us profoundly, but we still must choose to forgive them for their behavior if we want to live in the joy that is our birthright.”

The Gift of Vulnerability

Finally, a gift we can all give that is desperately needed is the gift of our own vulnerability, our own woundedness. There is so much emphasis on developing and offering the gifts of intellect, creativity, humor, critical thinking, expertise in science, technology, engineering and math. Our culture especially celebrates those with athletic prowess and musical talent.  

But what if the most needed gift we could offer another is the gift of our own woundedness, our own vulnerability? What if we give others a gift by inviting them into the messiness, confusion and imperfections of our lives? We tend to be ashamed of our imperfections and wounds and so we try to hide them. But the truth is, it is our imperfections, and vulnerabilities, not our places of polished perfection, that connect us most deeply with others. It is from vulnerability that the deepest compassion is born. In short, the world desperately needs the compassion of “wounded healers.” 

I began this letter writing about purpose and I’d like to close it with these words from Nikki Banas about purpose:

“Like a beautiful star shining in the night sky, your purpose is not to compare your light or brightness to any other star. Your purpose is not to wish you were a moon or a planet, or to wish you were somewhere else. Your purpose is not to change who you are or what you are made of. Your purpose is to shine your light as brightly and beautifully as only you can. Your purpose is to celebrate the light of others while celebrating your own light, too. Because it is only when we are all shining our own unique lights that we can light up the entire sky.”

Let’s light up the entire sky in 2025.

With love,

Killian

Killian Noe cofounded Recovery Café in Seattle in 2004. The Recovery Café Network was established in 2016 to support those who felt called to establish Recovery Cafés in their own communities. There are now more than 75 Cafés across the country and in Canada. Read the full story, and be inspired, by Killian’s book Descent into Love: How Recovery Café Came to Be.