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From Issue: 585 [Read full issue]

Gifts

In our attraction to problems, deficiencies, disabilities, and needs, the missing community conversation is about gifts. The only cultural practices that focus on gifts are retirement parties and funerals. We only express gratitude for your gifts when you are on your way out or gone. If we really want to know what gifts others see in us, we have to wait for our own eulogy, and even then, as the story goes, we will miss it by a few days.

In community building, rather than focusing on our deficiencies and weaknesses, which will most likely not go away, we gain more leverage when we focus on the gifts we bring and seek ways to capitalize on them. Instead of problematizing people and work, the conversation that searches for the mystery of our gifts brings the greatest change and results.

The focus on gifts confronts people with their essential core, that which has the potential to make the difference between work and life. Who we are at work is our life. Who we are in life is our work. The leadership task - indeed the task of every citizen - is to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the centre. This applies to each of us as an individual, for our life work is to bring our gifts into the world. This is a core quality of a hospitable community, whose work is to bring into play the gifts of all its members, especially strangers.

Compiled From:
"Community: The Structure of Belonging" - Peter Block, p. 139

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