Showing Up
What is it that we each uniquely bring to the world? And before you say that you don’t have something, let me simply tell you...you do. For a long time I felt that I didn’t have anything unique to offer but I have grown to see some of the unique things that I bring and I am so grateful for that. I hope you have found that for yourself and I’d be happy to help you find it if you are still looking. But this poem by Carrie Newcomer speaks to this so beautifully. It is called “Showing Up” and comes from her collection “A Permeable Life”.
You
Are holy
And sacred
And utterly unique.
There are gifts you were born to give.
Songs you were born to sing
Stories you were born to tell.
And if you do not give it,
The world will simply lose it.
It is yours alone to offer,
No one can give it for you.
And dearest,
Listen, because this is important,
This wounded world
Needs all the songs we can pull from the air,
Every story that helps us to remember.
It needs every single gift,
Large and small.
And yes,
Dearest,
This grateful world does rejoice
Every courageous time
We are true to ourselves and to our gifts.
And so it is,
Dear heart,
We embrace the song
And the story
And all our gifts
Because the world has such great need
And because the world exceedingly rejoices
And because there is no sadder thing
Than to leave this world
Having never really shown up.By Carrie Newcomer from A Permeable Life, 2013, Available Light Publishing
One of the things that I have grown to learn is that one of my gifts is to see and share beauty. I believe that the me of 10+ years ago might have been surprised to hear this but that’s what I have come to experience over the last decade. In life that is often so filled with tedium, pain, struggles, and challenges and when it is so tempting to just keep pushing to the next commitment and to never slow down, I believe this is one of the ways that God has gifted me to speak. So in that spirit, I simply want to share some of the beauty that I was able to receive the last week or so.