Gifts

What is it about a visit to a place like Sturgeon Bay’s Sunshine House that’s so refreshing? So . . . enriching? Perhaps it’s that, for once, I’m able to see a glimpse of a world without cleverness and all the competitive guile that’s carried with it.

I go to visit this workshop, prepared to feel sorry for the people who are “otherwise abled,” the people who are not “gifted.” What I find is a group that is happy to be together, individuals who are proud to be working and who have genuine joy for their accomplishments and those of their co-workers.

I begin to wonder what it means to be gifted and I can’t help but think of the old Shaker hymn – “’Tis a gift to be simple . . .” – and it echoes in my mind for a while. I’ve always struggled to find the meaning of that phrase, assuming it spoke of simple needs and desires. What if the truly gifted are the simpleminded, and that term is not at all demeaning?

And what of the next line – “’Tis a gift to be free . . .”? Maybe freedom is a perception? Maybe true freedom comes from accepting barriers? Is acceptance the gift that sets us free?

And the third is the most mysterious: “’Tis a gift to come down where you ought to be . . .”

I look again at these workers, and I see people that are happy to have come down where they are. Gifted in ways I hadn’t expected; able in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

It is time to leave and I come out into the world of the fully capable, but often unwilling; the world of the clever, but often unloving; the world of can-do, but won’t.

What will I make of my discoveries? How will I share my gifts?