A Poem By Ann Ree Colton - My Gift

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)