| Gifts (8/28/11) |
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Tonight I watched a movie called "Sympathy for Delicious". The main character was not an actor I was familiar with, Christopher Thornton, who also wrote the story. It was the directorial debut of Mark Ruffalo, who starred in the movie along with Juliette Lewis, Laura Linney and Orlando Bloom. The story centered around a homeless, paralyzed man living out of his car right beside a homeless shelter. He goes to a revival and ends up coming away with the ability to heal by laying his hands on the sick. This is not a gift he is comfortable with, so uncomfortable with it that he tries to keep it a secret. The priest, played by Mark Ruffalo, finds out about it and decides to recruit him to heal all the sick that frequent the shelter and hang out in the neighborhood.
I am not going to say a whole lot more about the movie because this isn't really about a movie review but about the feelings it stirred within me. I thought about the obvious gifts that people are blessed with. We have musicians who share with us with the gift of music, artists who share the gift of their art, writers the gift of their ability to tell a story. You have teachers who's gift is the ability to teach, doctors the gift of helping the sick get better, caretakers the gift of caretaking, and the list goes on. These gifts are shared never hoarded.
Yet what about the hidden gifts we all carry within us? What about the gift of a smile, the gift of a hug, the gift of listening, the gift of kind words or kind gestures? I know that there have been times when I was so wrapped up in my life that I was unable to notice when someone needed one of these gifts. I was thinking only of myself. Whatever the excuse; bad day, self pity day, I chose to lock them away, keep them hidden. Maybe I thought that by giving them away, I ran the risk of running out of them yet the thing about these gifts is that by giving them away, we are not less for it but more. We can never run out of them no matter how much we give away.
I have not always been aware of when I was hoarding these gifts, most of the time it has been unintentional yet there have been times when I knew all I needed to say was a kind word, all I needed to do was give a hug to someone who was hurting and I chose not to. Being made aware of that tonight has caused me some "hmmm" thinking - the kind of thinking that comes when I get an "ah ha" moment. I can choose to be sad about my past behavior, or worse, beat myself up about it but I am choosing a different path. I am choosing to bring those gifts out of their hiding place, to let the light shine on them so that it won't be so easy to cover them back up. I am giving them permission to call me out on my selfishness. So be prepared when next we meet - I come bearing gifts!
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