Generosity

The Generosity That Holds Us (for Kerani Marie).

I’ve come to believe that generosity isn’t something we do. It’s something we live inside of.

It arrives unannounced, like light falling through leaves. It shows up in birthday cards and casseroles, in deep listening and uncomfortable truths. Sometimes it’s as small as someone remembering the name of your dog, and sometimes it’s as large as a friend sitting silently beside you while you grieve the end of a marriage. But always, it is holy.

Hand painted photography by B. Littleton, 2020

I used to think generosity was an action—a hand reaching out, a check written, a favor granted. But now I think it’s more like breath. It's given and received in every exchange, conscious or unconscious. It’s the life-force we move through and are moved by.

When my life cracked open—through loss, through disappointment, through reinvention—I didn’t always recognize the help at first. The call that came out of nowhere. The person who took my silence as a cue to stay. The one who asked the hard question I didn’t want to hear, but needed. Those, too, were forms of generosity. Not the sugary kind, but the fierce kind. The kind that believes in who you are becoming.

David Whyte writes, “The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self. The ultimate touchstone is witness—the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another.” Generosity lives there—in that brave and quiet seeing.

I think about my grandmother’s hands, always giving. Meals. Money. Time. But also questions, stories, prayers. She lived as if generosity was the air itself—never scarce, always enough to go around. “What you give will find its way back,” she used to say, and I believed her.

The planet teaches this endlessly. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness, John Muir wrote. Jane Goodall reminds us that compassion for even the smallest creature reflects our generosity of spirit. And Terry Tempest Williams teaches that "the eyes of the future are looking back at us." The Earth, in all its resilience and reciprocity, gives—oxygen, soil, fruit, sky, the color of a monarch’s wings. It is the most generous teacher we have, and still we forget.

Generosity is how the cosmos was made. Carl Sagan reminded us we are made of star-stuff—carbon, nitrogen, oxygen gifted from ancient stellar explosions. Brian Greene and Wolfgang Pauli gave us metaphors that sound like poetry: vibrating strings, infinite fields of possibility. The entire universe, it seems, is generous by design.

What if your very presence here is a gift? What if your journey—unique, unrepeatable, and luminous—is a form of cosmic generosity? The path you forge with your breath and attention might be the thing that changes someone else's life in a way you’ll never know.

Generosity isn’t always bright and obvious. Sometimes it’s hidden in a critique, a challenge, or a refusal. Sometimes it’s someone calling you out of a comfort zone you’ve mistaken for safety. The soul often speaks through discomfort, Michael Meade says. Those nudges, those mirrors—they stretch us into the better parts of ourselves. They are generous, even if they sting.

I’ve learned that community is built on these unspoken gestures. Someone showing up at your reading. A neighbor lending their tools. A former student sending a note years later to say your words mattered. A stranger holding the door when your hands are full. These are the scaffolds that hold us. Not grand, not always remembered—but foundational.

And then there is the generosity we offer ourselves.

The breath you take in the middle of a panic attack.

The choice to rest when your mind screams "push."

The poem you write that no one may ever read—but you needed to write anyway.

The moment you stop saying "should" and start saying "want."

Can you name the last generous thing you did for yourself? Did you recognize it? Did you pause long enough to receive it?

Rilke once wrote, “I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.” To me, that is the image of generosity: a widening circle. A radiance that expands not because it must, but because it can.

And the question I keep returning to is this:

How do we live more like the cosmos, more like the Earth, more like a trusted friend who stays?

How do we move through our days as if every breath is a form of generosity?

Joy Harjo says, “To pray you open your whole self / To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon...” What if that is the invitation? To open ourselves—to give and receive with the same sacred willingness?

Let’s hold generosity as more than currency. Let’s treat it as oxygen.

Let it guide the way we grieve. The way we celebrate. The way we sit with each other in silence. The way we create.

Because in the end, generosity is the language of belonging. And it’s spoken best in the quiet acts that say: “I see you. I’m with you. I care.”

Even now, even here—especially here.

by Brenda Littleton, from "Awaken the Waiting Life Within."

hand painted photography by B. Littleton, 2020.