About Smilegiving

Give to Others What You Would Receive

Smilegiving is the life’s work of poet Rob Chavez: a gathering of poems and writings built around one simple law — that what we give to one another is what we are given in return. The project began in the early 1990s and has grown, over three decades, into a single ongoing conversation about love, giving, and the near and forgiving light already within us.

The poems draw from many wells — Walt Whitman and the Beats, New Thought spirituality and A Course in Miracles, the wide syncretic wisdom of many traditions — but they ask only one thing of the reader: turn to the next face, and smile first.

The Credo

Give to others what you would receive. It is hardly a doctrine. It’s no wall at all. You take what you’re given — this love without seam — and you hand it straight on. That’s the whole of the scheme.

The Work

The collection now holds more than thirty poems, ordered into five movements — The Doorway, The Honest Dark, The Widening, The Quiet Center, and The Turn Toward You — along with a handful of earlier pieces gathered as From the Vault. Some were written long ago and newly tuned; others are recent. You can read them in any order. Browse the full collection →

Smilegiving is a publishing and educational initiative of Smilegiving Creative Holdings LLC. The poems are the original work of Rob Chavez; AI tools were used in an assistive capacity during composition, tuning, and production. All works © Rob Chavez, all rights reserved.