Gifts of the Spirit
Quaker community works because we each share our selves and our gifts with the community. This is described beautifully in a Faith & Play story* about the gifts God gives to each of us. The story says:
There are the gifts that God gives to each one of us. Our gifts are special parts of who we are. They help us live a whole life, make a whole family, make a whole meeting community. If we pay attention, care for one another we can discover these gifts. We can learn how to use these gifts.
And throughout the story it repeats this refrain:
This Friend has a gift. But this gift is not for a person alone. God gave the gift to them for the whole meeting community. Perhaps you know someone like them.
Overview of the Gifts & Skills Collection
The Gifts Collection is a PYM initiative which captures the breadth of Friends’ gifts that are important to Quaker faith and practice.
PYM Friends are invited to identify their gifts and skills so that we can connect them with information and opportunities relevant to them and with people who have similar interests.
The Gifts & Skills Collection Form
The Gifts Collection invites you to share information about your own gifts so that we can connect you to others in ways that nurture you and our community.
The gifts you choose to share may be long-practiced gifts that are core to who you are, may be new areas of interest, or may be somewhere in-between.
The gifts you identify in the Gifts Collection form are the ones that you want to share with your community. There may be gifts in the form that are descriptive of you that you may choose not to share. For example, sometimes Friends want to share different gifts with their meeting than they use in their daily professional lives. Therapists and accountants and elementary teachers may not want to also serve on pastoral care or finance or religious education committees and therefore would not identify those gifts in this form.