Perennial Meditations
Perennial Meditations is a podcast by the Perennial Leader Project. Each episode delivers a short guided contemplation inspired by the writings of Stoics, saints, and sages. One quote. One meditation. One practice to carry into your day.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
St. Francis on the Wisdom of Giving
This is Perennial Meditations. A daily practice.
“It is in giving that we receive.”
— St. Francis of Assisi
This sounds like a pleasantry, but it is actually a provocation.
Most of us are wired to assume that receiving comes first, that we give from surplus, and that generosity is what happens after our own needs have been sufficiently met. Put plainly, we will be more generous when we have more.
We will give more time when we have more of it.
We will open our hands when we feel secure enough to let go.
St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century Italian friar who gave away everything he owned, including the clothes on his back, lived as though this logic were exactly backward. He did not give because he had enough. He gave because giving was the only way to discover what enough actually meant.
The open hand, he found, receives differently than the closed one. Not necessarily more, but more freely.
But this is not a lesson in charity.
It is a lesson about the nature of abundance itself. The person who hoards time finds it shrinking. The person who gives attention freely finds themselves more present, not less. The person who withholds love to protect themselves finds the protected space growing smaller and colder over time.
St. Francis understood something the philosophers had argued but rarely lived—that the self expands through giving and contracts through keeping. He also understood that a life organized around accumulation, however reasonable it seems, is quietly working against itself.
He didn’t argue this. He demonstrated it.
Daily Practice
Give something today that costs you something—time, attention, or a kind word you might have withheld. Notice what happens in the giving. Not what you receive in return. What happens inside the act itself.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
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Thank you for reading/listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. If you found today’s meditation helpful, consider sharing it with a friend!
As always JW a potent life lesson to consider & most importantly act on