First off, what is a gift?  It’s an open-ended interaction where:

1) The recipient, and not the giver, determines the ‘price’ (the return gift)
2) The return gift is chosen after the initial gift has been received, not before.

So why am I gifting it?

Firstly, how can you know the value of something if you’ve never used it?  It will be a waste of time for some, and life-changing for others.

Perhaps once you’ve been reflecting cyclically in this way for a bit, the value may become clear and you can gift me something in return!

Secondly, our debt-based financial system is a Ponzi scheme that is slowly and naturally collapsing.  We need to transform how we exchange our gifts and services, how we use money and what it incentivises us to do.

The Journal has always been a labour of love.  So much of what I value and know to be worthwhile can never be bought.

Thirdly, I’ve already received so much ~ in part because Nature is abundant: there’s air to breathe whenever I need it, but also because my Western culture has already extracted so much from many lands and cultures.  This is a tiny thing I can offer back, especially to those from whom so much has been taken.

Finally, because What I Do Unto You, I Do Unto Myself
In other words, what is of benefit to you is of benefit to me too, because we are related, connected and interwoven!

So, I offer the Journal as a gift, as a way to Re-Member that there is an abundance, and trusting in the generosity of CWJ users to support me in sustaining and developing this work.

* I am indebted to Charles Eisenstein’s explorations and languaging of the possibilities of Living in the Gift in his book Sacred Economics.