{"id":1578,"date":"2009-12-17T14:14:17","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T18:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.wordpress.com\/?p=1578"},"modified":"2009-12-17T14:14:17","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T18:14:17","slug":"secret-giving-as-a-spiritual-practice-courtesy-of-santa-claus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/secret-giving-as-a-spiritual-practice-courtesy-of-santa-claus\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Giving as a Spiritual Practice, courtesy of Santa Claus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1580\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1580\" style=\"width: 135px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/12\/images.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1580\" title=\"stnicholasstatue\" src=\"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/12\/images.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"135\" height=\"101\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1580\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bishop St. Nicholas of Myra<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Giving in secret is a valuable spiritual practice. Why? Because it gives us the benefit of showing charity, love, and kindness without a public benefit, or selfish personal advantage. Giving in secret allows us to give graciously for the sake of\u00a0generosity\u00a0alone; and exercising this activity can help us realize that giving\u2013even as a <em>private<\/em> practice\u2013is a gift in itself for everyone involved. It is a practice and modeling of grace.<\/p>\n<p>The tradition of giving in secret, especially to the needy, spread worldwide among Christians becasue of the influence St. Nicholas. That is,\u00a0<strong>Nicholas of Myra,\u00a0<\/strong>a saint, and\u00a0<a title=\"Bishop\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bishop\">Bishop<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0<a title=\"Myra\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Myra\">Myra<\/a>(Demre, in\u00a0<a title=\"Lycia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lycia\">Lycia<\/a>, part of modern-day\u00a0<a title=\"Turkey\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Turkey\">Turkey<\/a>). c. 270 AD-December 6, 347 AD.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/7GpAYj\">video<\/a> was created and sent as a Christmas greeting from a business associate, Ed Redding (of <a href=\"http:\/\/rndcom.com\">R&amp;D Communications<\/a>) and I just had to share it with you. It&#8217;s a wonderful 5 minute video that makes Santa Claus, and the spirit of Christmas come alive, for people of all ages. Please pass it along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The spiritual practical of secret giving, and the tradition inspired by St. Nicholas, Nicholas of Myra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[621,686,1080,1462,1524,35,41,2077,2198,2326,2350,2602,2628,2962,3003,75,6539,3219,3521,91],"class_list":["post-1578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","tag-charity","tag-christmas","tag-ed-redding","tag-giving","tag-grace","tag-holidays","tag-jesus","tag-love","tag-mercy","tag-needy","tag-nicholas-of-myra","tag-poor","tag-poverty","tag-santa-claus","tag-secret-giving","tag-spiritual-practices","tag-spirituality","tag-st-nicholas","tag-turkey","tag-worship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}