Can a Leaf Sail Into the Wind?

. . . No, but a sailboat can.

I was fourteen and earning my first money as camp counselor and sailing instructor at Camp Tockwogh on the Chesapeake Bay. There had been a storm the night before, which left puddles in the rutted road that ran down the bluff to the beach. How to teach the theory of sailing? How to explain what makes a sailboat move with the wind, or head into it? I picked up a curled leaf and placed it gingerly on the puddle’s surface. It began to move with the force of the breeze, which after the storm was still considerable.

"When the wind’s behind you, there’s nothing to it," I said to my students. "The wind will catch whatever you put in its way, and you can’t help but move in its direction. But to move more in the direction of the wind, you’ve got to be very particular about the shape of your sail. No make-shift shape, such as I’ve just shown with the leaf, will do. It took sailors thousands of years to discover just what shape was required, the shape of a bird’s wing, a convex shape that makes the wind move faster over the top than under the bottom. That causes a vacuum to form on the top of the curve. The difference in pressure between the bottom and the top of the curve produces lift. That’s how a bird soars. O.K., now, if you take the bird’s wing and imagine it standing straight up instead of horizontally, so that the most convex part of the wing is next to a boat’s mast, you’ll understand how a sailboat can move into the wind. The wind fills the sail, helping it maintain that wing shape. This creates a vacuum behind the sail’s leading edge right next to the mast. The vacuum moves the boat toward the direction from which the wind is blowing. About forty-five degrees off the wind’s direction is as close as a boat can sail into it. The reason it can’t sail any closer is that the wind begins to destroy the wing shape as you try to steer more directly into it. Then the whole vacuum thing doesn’t work anymore.”

Ben, the waterfront director, was standing behind me, and heard this whole spiel, and saw the leaf demonstration. After the class was over, he took me aside and said something that shaped my life. It’s remarkable, I still remember it, some sixty years later. He said, “Tom, you’re a born teacher.” Ben’s compliment warmed me like sunshine. It wasn’t so much the praise I savored, but Ben’s insight. Wow, me, a born teacher! A born teacher, he had said. Not just a good teacher, but a born one. What a sense of purpose and specialness that one little word gave me. I saw at once that teaching was my gift, my special gift. The phrase “born teacher” said to me: “This is why you’re here, kiddo: to teach! This is you! Live into you.”

As my sons put it, this was “awesome”! I heard Ben’s compliment as a glorious invitation, not the voice of duty. Not: “You must do this! You mustn’t squander your gift.” Instead: “Wake up! Arise! Let your light shine! Thank you, Ben! Thanks for your elder’s insight, which I heard not as an admonition, but a blessing, a blessing that gave me a purpose for living and a course to steer by. I was to become a teacher. I was born to it.

In today’s epistle reading, 1 Corinthians 12: 1-11, we read that every brother and sister in the church receives from the Holy Spirit at least one gift (maybe more). Although it is often true that we do derive enormous satisfaction from exercising our spiritual gifts, the Spirit doesn’t give them to us to enrich us individually; but rather, as Paul notes, to promote the common good. Another way to put this is that the ultimate purpose of spiritual gifts is the enhancement of community. Teaching does fulfill me. No question about that. But the purpose of this gift of mine is not to fulfill me as teacher. Rather, the purpose of my gift is to educate others so that they might make better use of their own gifts, in order that together, we as a community might thrive.

I said it’s usually true that exercising our spiritual gifts gratifies us as individuals. That’s not always so. Whistle blowers and social critics possess the spiritual gift of discernment, and the gift of courage to speak out about what they discern. Exercising such critical gifts sometimes brings disapproval and even persecution.

Paul writes to the Corinthians: “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” I emphasize the word, “every.” The Spirit doesn’t overlook anyone. In the fellowship of Jesus every person is honored. Every person receives a gift to share with others. Even people who seem helpless, or feckless, or people who are so down on themselves that they think they’re good for nothing, even such people whom the world regards as no-counts and whom the church may regard as “poor in spirit” are in fact blessed by the Spirit, for as Jesus taught, “theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” It is precisely such “poor souls” who must depend upon God rather than their own devices, who show us all the way of humility.

In my small North Miami Beach congregation there was a man, Bobbie, whose mental abilities were irreparably damaged by an oxygen deficit as he was being born. He couldn’t read or write, he couldn’t add or subtract, but he could remember names like nobody’s business. If you were introduced to Bobbie once, you were his friend forever, and he never forgot your name. Bobbie got around by walking all over North Miami Beach, and wherever he went he said hello to people, strangers, or people he had met just once, and they would say hello back. Bobbie’s circle of friends got bigger and bigger. I suppose no one would have called Bobbie a talented person, but he sure was gifted. He had the gifts of comradery and simplicity which shone a spotlight of good cheer wherever he roamed. If ever I get to feeling poor in spirit, —and that happens to us all, I suppose, from time to time— I remember Bobbie, and Paul’s declaration that “there are varieties of working. . . but to each [person] is given a manifestation of Spirit for the common good.” Then, I realize, of course! Do not despair! God loves you and has given you at least one gift. Search for it! Use it! Share it!

This brings me back to old Ben’s gift to me, a gift of teaching. I was a teenager. Trying to figure out who I was, what I was good at, what might give my life meaning and purpose. Ben was at the right place at the right time to help me identify one of my spiritual gifts, the one that has meant the most to me throughout my life, and I hope, to others. Ben wasn’t trained in the craft of mentoring, as we train people for that work here in Wilmington today. He was just a kind, observant adult. But that one statement, “Tom, you’re a born teacher,” helped me to get my bearings. And what a wonderful gift that was! There are lots of young people out there on the street who are desperate to get their bearings. Some have been tossed about and abused. Some have internalized that abuse, so that they think they’re no good. Can you imagine what a gift it is to such a young person for someone to get to know them well enough to do for them what Ben did for me? I don’t mean by just throwing out a superficial compliment that may not really fit. No, I mean, really getting to know that young person, so that when you speak a kind word it is also taken as a true one, a note of genuine praise that can really make a difference. What a gift it is to help someone take stock of his or her spiritual gifts. To be able to take stock, to recognize the gifts one has been given by God, marks the beginning of an examined life and a worthwhile one, for in sharing our spiritual gifts with others we find that happiness which otherwise eludes us when we grasp for it. I suppose that’s what Jesus meant when he said that one who loses his life for his sake will find it.