Every person on this earth comes here with what I call birthright gifts. Using those gifts gives us purpose and meaning in life. This world suffers when even one person is denied the opportunity to use their gifts to make a difference.
What are your birthright gifts? What is the nature and personality you came to earth with? What gifts were bestowed upon you at birth? What impact are your gifts having on those around you? Do we help each other listen to the inner light, the inner teacher?
Here’s a story I told my kids from Parker Palmer’s book, Let Your Life Speak. My 14 year old daughter was particularly intrigued and wanted to know more about the book, like she was considering reading it! (bold and italics mine)
“If you doubt that we all arrive in this world with gifts and as a gift, pay attention to an infant or a very young child. A few years ago, my daughter and her new born baby came to live with me for a while. Watching my granddaughter from her earliest days on earth, I was able, in my early fifties, to see something that had eluded me as a twenty-something parent: my granddaughter arrived in the world as this kind of person rather than that, or that, or that.
“She did not show up as raw material to be shaped into whatever image the world might want her to take. She arrived with her own gifted form, with the shape of her own sacred soul. Biblical faith calls it the image of God in which we are all created. Thomas Merton calls it true self. Quakers call it the inner light, or ‘that of God’ in every person. The humanist tradition calls it identity andintegrity. No matter what you call it, it is a pearl of great price.
“In those early days of my granddaughter’s life, I began observing the inclinations and proclivities that were planted in her at birth. I noticed, and I still notice, what she likes and dislikes, what she is drawn toward and repelled by, how she moves, what she does, what she says.
“I am gathering my observations in a letter. When my granddaughter reaches her late teens or early twenties, I will make sure that my letter finds its way to her, with a preface something like this: ‘Here is a sketch of who you were from your earliest days in this world. It is not a definitive picture — only you can draw that. But it was sketched by a person who loves you very much. Perhaps these notes will help you do sooner something your grandfather did only later: remember who you were when you first arrived and reclaim the gift of true self.
“We arrive in this world with birthright gifts — then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, work places, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.
“We are disabused of original giftedness in the first half of our lives. Then — if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss — we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed.”
“When we lose track of true self, how can we pick up the trail? One way is to seek clues in stories from our younger years, years when we lived closer to our birthright gifts.” (Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, pp. 11–13)
captainquaker
November 29, 2010
I’ve been feeling as though I’m battling to understand my “true self” and be able to live as that self in the world. It’s strange, because so many outward forces such as work, family, and friends push against that desire to live out what we are created to be. Thanks for the reminder.