I sang as a member of The Nashville Choir last night – at an event to benefit the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program. As several popular singers shared their talents with the large crowd I observed how people adore someone to whom “God has given the gift” of singing well.
Then this morning I happened to be reading A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker Palmer and ran across this poem. Read it as an approach to your work this week.
Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand of precious wood. When it was finished, all who saw it were astounded. They said it must be the work of spirits. The prince of Lu said to the master carver: “What is your secret?”
Khing replied: “I am only a workman: I have no secret. There is only this: When I began to think about the work you commanded I guarded my spirit, did not expend it on trifles, that were not to the point. I fasted in order to set my heart at rest.
After three days fasting, I had forgotten praise or criticism. After seven days I had forgotten my body with all its limbs.
“By this time all thought of your Highness and of the court had faded away. All that might distract me from the work had vanished. I was collected in the single thought of the bell stand.
“Then I went to the forest to see the trees in their own natural state. When the right tree appeared before my eyes, the bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt. All I had to do was to put forth my hand and begin.
“If I had not met this particular tree there would have been no bell stand at all.
“What happened? My own collected thought encountered the hidden potential in the wood;
From this live encounter came the work which you ascribe to the spirits.”
If we assume someone with extraordinary talent has a special gift from God, two things are likely to be lurking behind that sentiment:
- We assume it is egotistical to claim any skill as our own.
- It relieves us of doing anything great because “I have no special skills. I am the master of nothing. How could Jimmy Wayne’s story have any bearing on my life? I could never do anything that great.”
However, an authentic spirituality will celebrate our capacity to learn, grow and develop – using the seeds of talent given to each of us by God and then developing them into something useful and inspiring. No baby is born a great writer, artist, scientist, mommy or apostle of peace. Studying, practicing and polishing our creative gift is not a selfish bid for attention and fame. If you don’t do that you grieve our Creator and deprive the world of the gift you were intended to deliver.
When he was 13, Pablo Casals found a tattered copy of Bach’s six cello suites. He spent the next 13 years practicing that entire work every single day before he performed in public for the first time. Then people called him a musical genius – gifted of God. I heard him play in his home town of San Juan, Puerto Rico a couple of years before his death. When asked why he continued to practice three hours, Casals (then age 93) replied “I’m beginning to notice some improvement.”
Talent is God’s gift to us; what we do with that talent is our gift back to Him. Don’t cheat us of your contribution – give us your best!
