My Gift given to me through Mother Grace is sacred.
And to my dying breath, I must watch over it, knowing it to be my
lodestone, my guiding star.
In the midst of my heart, I must watch over my Gift.
My Gift has been my sense of direction under God.
My Gift has been the means of my healing thousands
of people.
Through the gift of my Gift, my tongue has been
loosened for God.
Through my Gift, my body has been made strong to do
all of the tasks given for me to do.
My Gift has made me friends and strong enemies.
My Gift has been my honor, my shield, my light, my
candle.
My Gift has been a baggage light with gold, to be
distributed as I go.
My Gift has kept the door open between my heart and
the hearts of suffering.
My Gift has made people to walk, to stand, to work,
to believe, to hope.
My Gift has given me the way to span a continent
with my works.
My Gift has given me many gifts, that I might reach
the minds of men in every part of the earth.
My Gift has crossed rivers, moved on starry
highways.
My Gift has fed bread, given comforts, built
buildings, children and men.
My Gift given to me through the Mother Grace has
given me the comfort of being of worth in the sight of God.
My Gift has kept me in tune with the third musics of
the soul.
My Gift has opened to me vistas and dimensions
beyond the senses, whereby I cross over the thunders of Maya into the
lightnings of Heaven.
My Gift put upon me the yoke of discipline, of hard
ship, of tears mixed with blood.
My Gift put upon my ankles a checkrein.
My Gift loaded me with the burdens of the many.
My Gift gave me insight into terrors, struggles,
sufferings, sorrows, death.
My Gift gave me friends who bore with me my
afflictions, whose forbearance of me gave wings to the use of my Gift. My
Gift gave me hovels to live in, very little bread to eat, and few baubles
of indulgement.
Of all of my Gifts, these were the most important,
for they were the guardians over my Gift, that I sell it not for a mess of
pottage, or trade it for a pearlless pearl.
Now that I am waxed old, my Gift has been burnished
with the acids of my learning. It is shining.
Already my Gift is mirroring the face of the one who
will receive it so that it may be spent in the world and lived in the
living side of things.
For the Gift has been deathless in me, and through
the Gift I have lived as few live in the world.
And that one whose face is mirrored upon the
burnished shield of my Gift comes from the Mother Grace which is now
Passing to the one that it may be worn with honor, with love.
I go now to take on the Gift prepared for me, which
this Gift given to me by Mother Grace I have earned.
That Gift waiting for me shall find its niche, to be
worn, to be used.
I can see plainly my Gift to come. It is filled with
the countless treasures I earned in the Gift I have borne.
I will return with Gifts in another day earned from
this day through the Gift given to me in the Mother Grace.
-Ann Ree Colton (October 24, 1980)
