Your Gift 2016

Shoutout to Tom Craddock who, after reading my post on Trump's Value-free Presidency, offered up this spot-on quote from C.S. Lewis, "Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."

And with the holidays upon us, and particularly given the events of the past year, I offer this little piece of reflection.  Cheers.

Your Gift

We arrive in this world by circumstance and spend much of our life trying to reconcile the gift.  We endure our struggles and ascribe our lot with the certainty of burden.  Between the jubilation, pain and occasional humility we scrape a path that is ours, alone.  In the seam of these struggles life offers brilliance: the warmth of late summer’s sun quenching our shoulders as we gaze across a horizon of promise; the magical touch of a child’s hand who clasps ours for comfort; the flash of a smile from a heart who loves ours, too.  We are placed here to express a life all our own.  Tear away the wrapping; therein lies the gift.

Our choices are many, perhaps too many.  Some wring their hands over pearlized ivory or satin cream, over the eight-place setting or twelve.  Some pay others to tell them how to dress, behave, and raise their children.  Some find decision making an unbearable burden, fearful of those who may judge their choices as wrong.  Still others among us are addled by success; frozen by a world we herald as great. Those who understand their gift grant short shrift to such contrivances and lean forward into tomorrow.

Every morning offers beauty.  Every day arrives as a clean slate, if we look past the indelible erasures.  When the sky is dark, the wind unyielding and the news dire, there is reason to smile.  We each possess the promise of greatness: to thrust our spirit into the light where our gift can shine.  The choice is ours, in this moment and every moment that follows.  Look at that person who stares back at you in the morning mirror and accept your gift.  Draw those near who nourish your soul.  Let others pass.

This season, take a morning walk in the silence of new-fallen snow; lift a child upon your knee and tell them a story about your grandfather; sit outside at night until the sky throws a star your way.

Listen.

Love.

Laugh.

            Embrace your gift.