From
Britain Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice. This spoke to me today.
If we are getting older it will be harder to acknowledge that we have not been called to spectacular service, that we are unlikely now to make a stir in the world, that our former dreams of doing some great healing work had a great deal of personal ambition in them.
A great many men and women have had to learn this unpalatable lesson -- and then have discovered that magnificent opportunities lay all around them. We need not go to the ends of the earth to find them, we need not be young, clever, fit, beautiful, talented, trained, eloquent, or very wise. We shall find them among our neighbors as well as among strangers, in our own families as well as in unfamiliar circles -- magnificent opportunities to be kind and patient and understanding.
This is a vocation just as truly as some more obviously seen as such -- the vocation of ordinary men and women called to continual unspectacular acts of loving kindness in the ordinary setting of every day. They need no special medical boards before they embark on their service, need no inoculation against anything but indifference and lethargy and perhaps a self-indulgent shyness. How simple it sounds; how difficult it often is; how possible it might become by the grace of god.
-- Clifford Haigh, 1962
5 comments:
Yes, I recently realized that I'd never be a professional baseball player.
But seriously, I like this passage and it speaks to me, too. Thanks for sharing it.
And I will never be Joni Mitchell.
I like this passage a lot too. It is discouraging to live in a society that singles out a few individuals as "making a difference," when in fact there are so many of us doing that very thing. I go through long stretches of being content with who I am and what I am doing, then I become seized with this intense longing for my "good deeds" to be acknowledged by the world. This feeling often comes after reading an alumni newsletter from high school or college. Awards and honors are such a bizarre social construct--they can discourage as easily as encourage good actions. Another example of why Alfie Kohn says we are punished by rewards.
A lot of back and forth on Facebook tonight about the child who was chosen to lead the "Plague of Lesions" at Obama's speech today, because he is a child who is often singled out for honors, comes from a "middle class" home where he has many opportunities to shine. I have come to really hate awards and honors. Well said, Ms. Radiccio!
Post a Comment