Passage Thirty-two: The Giver Of Gifts
We do no honor
To our Heavenly Father
In hiding gifts He has given us.
In honoring the gifts
I have been given,
I must risk the appearance
Of thinking much of myself.
I am afraid of that,
But I cannot allow myself
To be governed by fear.
In spite of my fears,
I will not shrink or hide
From the responsibility that is mine
By virtue of the gifts I have been given.
We do not grow
Beyond the limits of our limits.
We grow within them.
We grow in our regard.
We grow in our appreciation.
We grow into loving more and more.
I know what it is like
To shrink and hide.
It is new to me
To know anything else.
It is new to me to speak,
To stand up and to stand forth,
To respect and to honor.
The more you respect
And the more you honor,
The more you find there is
To respect and to honor,
And the more there is to you.
As you come to be more present,
You discover more is present
Than you realized before.
You discover more are present.
We do not need
To quote scripture to each other.
We need to be able
To look each other in the face.
Love is not afraid to look
Because it knows how it looks.
As we look more and more that way,
There is less and less
We are afraid to look upon.
We do not quote scripture to each other,
But we understand, at last,
What the scriptures are about.
You cannot do for others
What they must do for themselves.
You cannot be for others
What they must be themselves.
Nevertheless,
You are moved by compassion,
As all who love life
Are moved by compassion.
And you pray
That you might be of service
And miraculous things happen.
