Now that you've listened, I won't worry about spoiling the ending for you. Because I want to talk about the gift. On first glance (or hearing), the gift is the little bird the girl brought to the manger on Christmas Eve. Garth can make you see the trembling fingers of the sweet one who desires to honor the Christ, but who is intimidated by the offerings of the wealthy. Garth can make you cry (if you are a weeper like me and Jude Law in the Holiday) as he reveals the pure, sweet power of willingness.
Willingness is the loud-striking sound in this soft-hearted song. Because none of us can ever experience the fulfillment of our own gifts without the courage to lay them out there. To open the door where they are kept, confined by the cage of our own device; to lay them next to the riches of other offerings.
Willingness comes with a cost. We have to risk rejection, risk failure, risk everything really. Because the kind of willingness I'm talking about leaves no pretense, no walls of pride to hide behind.
What gifts have we been given that can make life easier, if only for one other person we may never meet? Sometimes artistic gifts are the ones people think of first. But they are only one kind. There are researchers, engineers, honest and dedicated people in every field who put their souls into the offering of their gifts.
There is a secret hidden in this song, The Gift. For me, in my own mind, I hear the promise of reward for willingness. Not rewards as we may think of them. Not everyone who is willing to give their gifts becomes wealthy or renowned. They don't use the phrase "starving artist" for nothing. And we know even The Bard died penniless. But how much richer is the world for his gifts to us?
If we are the collective-if all creation pulls together in one intertwined river that flows to the sea, then every person who uses their strengths, who is willing to put them out there for the world to see, draws us all forward, upward into the rafters of the ancient church to sing as nightingales. Okay, I'm mixing metaphors all over the place. That's okay. I'm risking it. Hoping you'll listen with open hearts.
My mother first read me these verses by Robert Frost when I was a child. I had no idea at the time what a complex, difficult world this is. I only knew that the cadence, the rhymes, the quiet beauty of the poem spoke to me.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
After I was grown, I learned that Robert Frost was desperate to find Christmas gifts for his family,
and could not afford them. The sorrow of that now informs the verses for me. I wish he had been paid
for the beauty he gave to the world, and to me.
I wish the world always rewarded good, always recognized sacrifice, always understood true value.
But even if the world does not, we can.
Half of the value of a gift is in the giving itself. In the willingness to open the door. And half of the
value is all we will know as the giver. But it is enough. More than enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment