In Harmony with the Gifts that Are Already Given

This is the reading that has most spoken to me this far in my online journaling class.

I LOVE the idea of already having the gifts. I tend to approach from a different direction--I have gifts, but I have to improve upon them, and how can I best improve. And always, my inner guidance counselor voice is telling me in how many ways I'm not living up to my full potential. How peaceful it is, this idea that the gifts are already there ready for me to be in harmony with them.

Yesterday morning, I heard one of my favorite episodes of Krista Tippett's On Being, an interview with Rachel Naomi Remen.  She tells a story of how light came into the world, about an accident with the container that held the world, and the breaking of the container is how the light gets scattered everywhere.

And then she reflects on the meaning for us in the present day: "It's a very old story, comes from the 14th century, and it's a different way of looking at our power. And I suspect it has a key for us in our present situation, a very important key. I'm not a person who is a political person in the usual sense of that word, but I think that we all feel that we're not enough to make a difference, that we need to be more somehow, either wealthier or more educated or somehow or other different than the people we are. And according to this story, we are exactly what's needed. And to just wonder about that a little, what if we were exactly what's needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what's needed to heal the world?"

What if God doesn't need me to change? What if God has created me to be exactly what's needed, right here, right now? For me, it's a powerful thought.