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For Eckhart we are not really alive until we have borne the gift back into the Godhead. Whatever has proceeded from God comes to life, or receives its being, only at that moment when it “gazes back” toward Him. The circuit must be completed. “Man ought to be flowing out into whatever can receive him.” As in the other stories we have read, we come alive when we give away what has been received. In Eckhart the passage is purely spiritual. He tells us not to pray to God for things, because things are nothing; we should simply pray to be closer to the Godhead. The final fruit of gratitude toward God is to be drowned in Him.

In the abstract Godhead there is no activity: the soul is not perfectly beatified until she casts herself into the desolate Deity where neither act nor form exists and there, merged in the void, loses herself: as self she perishes, and has no more to do with things than she had when she was not. Now, dead to self, she is alive in God …

The labor of gratitude accomplishes the transformation that a gift promises. And the end of gratitude is similarity with the gift or with its donor. The gifted become one with their gifts. For Eckhart, the child born in the soul is itself a god: whoever gratefully returns all that God has bestowed will, by that act of donation, enter the Godhead.

* Separation often involves a “cutting” ceremony rather than a gift (see Van Gennep’s remarks on divorce, for example). Going-away presents are given at the time of separation, but as the Scottish tale well illustrated, such farewells attempt to overcome the physical departure, rather than facilitate it. “My spirit goes with you,” they say. Going-away presents are gifts of spiritual incorporation.

* Those who write on gift exchange usually mention at this point that the German word Gift means “poison.” The connection is more accidental than significant, however. The French etymologist Benveniste writes: “There is a … medical usage in which [the Greek word] dósis denotes the act of giving, whence develops the sense of the amount of medicine given, a ‘dose’ … This sense passed by loan translation into German, where Gift, like Gr.-Lat., was used as a substitute for , ‘poison’ …”

* Few modern therapies present their teachings as gifts the way AA does. You can pay almost any amount for spiritual advice, psychotherapy, or “self-help” lessons. Despite my obvious bias, I don’t maintain that fees for such services are inappropriate. Therapists, meditation instructors, and so forth work at what they do, and they deserve to earn their keep. A lot depends on the spirit of the exchange, too; gifts will sometimes circulate above the cash.

The AA example indicates, however, that the fee is not always a necessary part of the transaction as it is often made out to be. Further, the size of the fee is sometimes the clearest indication that the proffered teaching may not in fact lead to transformation, as when the minimum initial “donation” to the Church of Scientology is $2,700 for a 12!/i-hour “intensive.”

* That the helpers are in a sort of bondage is clearer in other tales with the same motif. Several examples are cited in the notes at the end of the book.

* As those who must worry about the livelihood of artists are fond of saying, “You cannot play ‘The Minute Waltz’ in less than a minute.” Worse (or perhaps better) you cannot write “The Minute Waltz” in less than … what? A day, a week, a year?—however long it takes. There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Bond

It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, while the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection. I go into a hardware store, pay the man for a hacksaw blade and walk out. I may never see him again.