I spent a long time last night working in our Art Booth at First Thursday. First Thursday is this Austin, market/ street festival thing that happens on South Congress every first Thursday of the month. Our faith community, The Well, has a booth. We sell art that was created by our members or family of our members. We also get to meet people, really interesting people. people with dogs, birds, skunks; people on stilts, people in cow costumes, people dressed as super heroes, people who are totally hip, people who think they are but should invest in a mirror, all kinds of wonderfully diverse people. I like it a lot. Jack the Artist played his guitar and sang and I talked to some of my friends and met some new ones.

In the course of the evening I had a conversation with a sweet friend of mine who has had a difficult time. We were talking about gifts, or what the world would call talents. I believe that all of us are gifted at something. That is, that God has given us something that if we learn to use it, we can do anything, it is our path to success. The trick is to find the one or two things (that’s relative) at which you can be great.

We spend most of our lives, if we are a seeker, peeling off the layers of who we aren’t, who we’ve pretended to be and who other people have told us that we are. If we have faith in Jesus, we believe that He holds our true identity in His hands. In any case, we search for truth, not just the Truth, meaning objective truth, but the truth of who we are. When we learn what our main gifts are, or gift is, then we can concentrate on that gift. My friend Cass the Jazz Singer called it ‘committing to excellence’ in an email she sent me the other day. So we commit ourselves to excellence in the areas in which we can touch the sublime.

The West, particularly America, is awash in mediocrity. We’ve lost our passions and our creativity. Sad, without passion and creativity, we are completely disconnected with the personality of God.In any case, what if we could live in the understanding that everyone, including ourselves, is gifted at something? We would respect ourselves, we would respect others, and we would be that much closer to God.

God bless you, live in strength.