Meditate on John 1:35-42, in which Jesus gives Simon the new name Peter. Let your imagination take you back to all the stories you can recall about Peter, both before and after Pentecost. Which adjectives describe Simon? What adjectives (or gifts) describe Peter?
Meditate on Isaiah 53:1-3. After asking for the gift of the Holy Spirit, meditate each day on one or two members of your small group. If the person seems "disfigured," try to see behind his appearance the sufferings that he has undergone. Each of us, writes Sam Keen, comes into life "wounded, deformed, and graceless: parents injure their children with prejudice, fear, and carelessness; societies cripple minorities by injustice and hatred; nature brings to birth many of her children with defects and abnormalities.''
Now imagine the person growing up to the full stature of Christ. Ask that you be given eyes to see his gifts. Jot them down on paper as they are revealed to you. If you have no glimmerings of what a person's gifts are, don't make up any. Wait. Continue the search and the prayer of asking.
"She vehemently insists that she is not Dulcinea but Aldonza. In a deeply moving song she tells of having been born in a ditch and of having been used and abused by hundreds of men. Again the Don refuses to see the reality of the situation and declares that he must have a token from the pure and beautiful Dulcinea. The story continues in this vein, contrasting Don Quixote's holy madness with the brutal facts of the real world.
"At the end, the old man is once again back in his bed at home, dying. Now he is in his right mind and no longer believes he is a knight. The most moving scene in the play is enacted when the people he has encountered come to his bedside and beg him not to change. For in a strange and miraculous way, each one has become a new person.
"This is the power that you and I have if we love in the way Jesus Christ has loved us. Our Lord
us to a kind of 'La Mancha madness.' He wants us to go into the world and call people forth, to call them by their true names which may be deeply hidden."
After you have asked for the gift of the Holy Spirit, ask God to give you the name, or names, of those in your group for whom you might be a "patron" of gifts. (At the Church of the Saviour group members report to the group's spiritual director, who makes assignments so that each member is a patron and has a patron.) The duty of a patron is to brood over another's gifts, to care for the person, and to be "co-creator with God" in calling him forth.
Meditate on Galatians 4:19: "I am in travail with you over again until you take the shape of Christ." Choose one person outside your group to whom you will be a patron, without telling him so explicitly.
For one day at least, keep a fast on words. Say only what is essential and in the fewest possible words, but not so as to give away what you are doing. Write down, at the end of the day, your impressions of yourself as a listener.
Meditate on these words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arranged in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and never be really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies." Life Together, pages 87, 88.
Are you listening to hear something that tallies with your own thoughts, or are you listening to find out? If you are listening only to be encouraged in your own thinking it has little meaning. But if you are listening to find out, your mind is free, acute, sharp, alive, inquiring, curious, and therefore capable of discovery.
Meditate on Luke 2:19 and on these words of J. Krishnamurti: "Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? Then you hear everything, don't you? You hear the far-off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, the immediate sounds -- which means, really, that you are listening to everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change which comes without your volition, without your asking; and in that change there is great beauty and great depth of insight." Think on These Things, page 32.
Meditate on Genesis, chapter 37, and in Matthew, chapters 2 and 3, contrast the reactions of Herod and John the Baptist to who Jesus was.
Add a new dimension to your listening. Be watchful to hear in yourself feelings of envy, jealousy, greed, sloth, and any other obstacle which makes it difficult for you to give to others what they need and to receive what you need from them. What do these feelings do to you in regard to your own gifts and the gifts of others? What do you feel is missing in your own life? How do the achievements, possessions, loves, and attention of another make your life poorer?
Only by recognizing these feelings, wrestling with them, and knowing that we cannot by ourselves change them can we be freed to watch the unfolding in another of his gifts. Otherwise we may project onto him the threat we ourselves feel. Likewise, fear of the envy of others can inhibit our own creativity, if we assume that what we do will block others and make them feel less warm and open to us.
This week the exercise is to become more aware of your special talents -- the gifts through which your real self can be expressed, the gifts that will let you know what it is you are to do and become. Our talents are the conveyors of personality.
Ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit and practice for five minutes the withdrawing of your attention from all outward and inward considerations. By will, concentrate your attention deep within yourself. When you have reached a place of quiet, begin to think about your gifts. Pay attention to the images that pass across your mind. Write them down and ponder their meaning.
Fantasize what you would do if you could do anything in the world you choose. Watch yourself doing what you would most love to do and name the talents essential for the fantasy to become real. Then see whether you can discover those talents in yourself.
When you have named your talents or gifts, list the risks that you will have to take in order to actualize them. What will you have to give up? What are the obstacles that you foresee?
Identify the gifts of each person in your group. What do you feel would help each person to actualize his gift? Ponder that question. The answer may lie in considering what will help or hinder you in the actualization of your own gifts.
Commitment, failure, and success go together. Note those areas in which it is important to you to "do a good job," be well thought of by others, or succeed by your own standards. The list will give you clues as to where you fear failure. What does success mean to you? Write out your definition. Does it give you clues as to where you are in actuality committed?
Remember the times when you have experienced failure. How did you respond? Try to re-experience the feelings you had at the time. How have events of failure shaped the course of your life? Do they continue to have an influence? What do you imagine when you contemplate failure? What do you feel is the worst thing that could happen to you? What may seem to be the end of the world may become inconsequential if you can look at it and dialogue with it. We need to demythologize failure. How can we do this?
You are to think now of a work that will exercise your gifts. It may be something you have put off because you thought you lacked the talent, or because you could not do it as well as someone else, or because you feared criticism, or simply because you are a procrastinator. It may be enrolling in an art class, having a dinner party, writing a poem, speaking out at a public meeting, volunteering your time for a cause in which you believe.
Choose a piece of work to do by listening to yourself -- the still, small voice within that speaks to you in images, wishes, dreams and fantasies, your own conversations and the conversations of others.
If you make a mistake and choose the wrong task, you will still learn something about yourself and can take courage and choose again. This is a good place to learn to move forward in the face of fear. If you have no feelings of uncertainty, it is not likely that you are doing too much adventuring into the new, for the unknown always stirs in us some anxiety -- waves of self-doubt.
If you do not immediately discover a special project to work on, while you wait for it to be given to you, practice each day doing one task with a contemplative attitude.
We toil and toil and then one day the cloud begins to part, pieces fit
together, ideas and thoughts pour in from another realm, and we know that
the work of creation has been going on at two levels in us. Finally we
have a piece of sculpture, a story, a building that has something more
in it than all the conscious labor of our days. Of a work like this we
say that it is inspired.