Using Our Gifts

This week's quotation is by Florence Nightingale. In translation, it reads, "If you are born with wings, you should do all you can to use them for flying."

The picture shows a ballet dancer, balancing gracefully on her toes. But ballet is definitely not my gift. Each of us is an unique human being, with our own unique gifts. But how often do we stand in our own light, paralysed by comparing ourselves with others? I know I do.

US President Theodore Roosevelt once said: "Comparison is the thief of joy." I've also heard that quote as "the thief of happiness". And it's so true. We can be feeling great about ourselves, and then compare what we are doing, who we are, with somebody else, and be instantly plunged into gloom. It's a bad trick our heads play on us, to keep us small and not brave. It prevents us from using our wings, from doing what gives us joy.

My particular Achilles' heel of comparison is reading other people's words, then believing that I couldn't ever write so brilliantly, so vividly, so why bother? I have to tell myself quite sternly that they are them and I am me, and that only I can write from my particular perspective. So I pick myself up, dust myself down and take up my pen (or keyboard) again.

Everyone has wings, particular gifts. Let's use them as best we can, to make the world a happier place, and ourselves happier, more fulfilled people.

Love's Gift

This week's quotation, by Rabindranath Tagore, puzzled me somewhat. "Love's gift cannot be given. It waits to be accepted."

Unless we see 'Love' as God.... who cannot storm our hearts by force, but knocks politely, waiting patiently for us to let Him/Her in.

As Paul famously wrote in his first Letter to the Corinthians, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way/ it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

I believe that the best kind of human love shares these attributes. If we truly love someone, we accept them just the way they are. If the person we love behaves badly, we hold on to our love with everything we've got, and hope that our love will eventually be accepted.

And unless we can open our hearts to God, we will never truly experience His/Her Love.

I am not a mystic, but once, I had a vision of the truth, which I can only believe came from God. A few years ago, I bought myself a Celtic-style silver cross. For many years, I had repudiated the symbol of the Christian cross, associating it with death and failure. But my attendance on the Encounter course at the London Centre for Spiritual Direction was opening my heart in ways I had not foreseen.

And one morning, I was applying some moisturiser to my face, using a magnifying mirror for the purpose, when the mirror slipped, canting to a different angle. And I noticed the cross around my neck and realised that instead of a circle at the centre, it had a heart.

This hit me with the force of a revelation. I saw that God was Love at the centre of everything. A belief which has changed my life. For the first time, I was able to accept God's love for me, and to realise that my job in the world was to love others in that same wholehearted way.

Gifts and Blessings

Unitarian Universalist Jay Abernathy wrote: "We are all blessings to this world. Our work of building bridges of connection by finding and naming and affirming those blessings we are is the work of nurturing our spirits and healing our world."

By long tradition, the three Wise Men or Magi brought their gifts to Jesus on the feast of Epiphany, which was last Friday. I wonder what gifts we can give to our loved ones, this chilly January? By "loved ones", I mean all the people with whom we are in relationship - our families, our friends, the people at work, and members of our beloved Unitarian communities.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have all exchanged many gifts with our loved ones - both material, in the form of Christmas presents, and shared Christmas meals and drinks; and non-material.

I, for example, received a new Great Course on reading Biblical Literature, which I'm finding fascinating, the DVD of Game of Thrones Season 6 (also fascinating, but rather more gory!), a beautiful Swarowski Christmas star to add to my collection, and some Amazon gift vouchers. As a result of which, I am a very happy bunny!

But the gifts that meant the most to me could not be bought. My daughter and her boyfriend came down for a few days, and my son was home too. On Christmas Day, after a gorgeous lunch booked to perfection by my beloved, a peaceful afternoon with the Great British Bake Off Christmas Special, we had cheese and biscuits for tea. Then the four of us (the kids and I, my beloved does not do board games) played some hilarious games of Cluedo. Then we all watched Independence Day: Resurgence.

Not a cross word was said, much laughter and hugging happened. I could not have been happier. The gifts of time and attention and love are priceless.

We can also bring gifts to the wider world - to the chance-met stranger, to the people in our town or village or city, to causes we care about. If you believe, as I do, that every human being has a spark of the divine in them, then we should try to respond to every person we meet  as though we are encountering a possible new friend. I wonder how different our world would be, if we tried to bear that in mind in the weeks and months ahead?

Jay Abernathy also wrote: "Each of us has at least one blessing - I believe each of us offers MANY blessings - to this world, in who we are. But sometimes, we and our world might have a difficult time affirming and seeing those blessings.

I invite you to look into yourself and discover again one of your blessings, one of your gifts to the world. Loving, peaceful, generous, compassionate - there are so many traits and blessings. What is yours?

Write that blessing on a piece of paper. Greet yourself in the mirror of your heart with that name.

Share that greeting with another person today."

May 2017 be the year that we discover our gifts, and manage to be a blessing to ourselves, and to the world around us.