day twenty-seven: 27 days of gratitude

Today, what I am most grateful for is that the challenge to post about my gratitude has come to an end. As with all things, the exercise came at a time when I most needed to adjust my thinking and at a time when it was most difficult to do so. In the last six weeks, I said a final farewell to a hoped-for relationship, spent the holidays without family, children or the hope of them (and feeling a bit self-pitying about it), found out painful health related news from my dear beloved friend, witnessed and experienced the ongoing grief that accompanies the death of my coworkers beautiful child and kicked my own emotional ass with uncommon veracity.

In the end, I am grateful for the unknowable, uncertainty of life because fighting it or trying to explain it away is simply not effective and causes unimaginable pain for myself and others. Through this 27 day journey I learned that perhaps gratitude is not the word I have been searching for, but appreciation.

Let's face it, it's difficult to be grateful in the face of suffering, it feels a little forced. BUT I can appreciate. I can appreciate the kindness of a stranger holding my wayward trunk open as I fill it with groceries. I can appreciate the sunrise over a cold day. I can appreciate my sweet soul-sister's courage in the face of so much uncertainty. I can appreciate my past because I am wiser and a more empathetic parent and human because of it. I can appreciate the intensity of grief surrounding a loss because it reminds me just how much my heart is capable of caring and loving. I can appreciate my beautiful home and my two amazing children. I can stop whatever busy-nonsense I am engaged in and truly listen to them when they share the details of their day. I can appreciate the strong seed of hope that looks out on life with clear eyes, joyfully anticipating the next horizon. I can appreciate so much of my life and it is a 24 hour, 365 day-a-year practice.

It's natural. I breathe. I can appreciate the air filling my lungs. I eat. I can appreciate all the life forms from which that food came. Appreciation is an attitude of thanks. It is a choice. Life is uncertain. It is unknowable. I can appreciate it even if I don't always like it, even if existential questions rise up demanding WHY and perhaps, with a little appreciation, I can befriend the questions themselves and as Rilke wrote: “... Perhaps then, someday far in the future, [I] will gradually, without even noticing it, live [my] way into the answer.”

Comments

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much. It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall. The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep. But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy. I am a woman who loves the spring. I nearly live for it. When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis. I gorge. This year has been hard. Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally. The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment. It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float. It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within. It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being. It takes courage.

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...

angelbirdflies

Search This Blog