day 23: for gratitude

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

‘Thank You’

Ross Gay

I try to begin every day by writing ‘Grace Notes’, which is my version of a gratitude practice.  Each day I begin by noting at least three things for which I am thankful.  It might be for being well enough to paint the previous day, or how the sun is falling toward the house through the trees, or that I had a nice phone conversation with a friend.  What this does is to remind me, before I begin my day, that all and everything is gift.  That all and everything is gift received from the God-Who-Gives.  That stops my internal braggart from claiming she is brilliant all by her self.  It stops my internal poor widow from moaning about the lack of everything.  It stops all my internal parts whipping themselves into a frenzy of anxiety that I have not got enough, that I have not done enough, that I am not enough.

In The Gifts of Imperfection sociologist Brené Brown cites Lynne Twist about the myth of scarcity. Twist writes,

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. … We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course, we don’t have enough money – ever.

We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever. Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of lack. … What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.

Letting go of this mindset of scarcity, and undoing its pernicious logic can only be done by a reset that has gratitude at its heart.  If I allow gratitude to do its daily work,

we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything.  Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough. …. It is a consciousness, an attention, an intentional choosing of the way we think about our circumstances. (109-10)

As a Christian contemplative, paying attention to changing my mindset, and setting of a daily intention to help me do that, reveals a deep longing in me to make that gratitude personal.  I thank the I AM, the God-Who-Is.  Such a simple prayer takes me into the heart of God.  It’s like a compulsion, a reflex.  You, the God-Who-Gives are all; and because You come, are made manifest in matter over and over, I not just exist, not just subsist, but I am. 

In You I live and have my being, as the old prayer goes.  All of me thanks the All of You.

When I can no longer say thank you
for this new day and the waking into it,
for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair
and the ticking of the space heater glowing
orange as it warms the floor near my feet,
I know it is because I’ve been fooled again
by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me
and believes he deserves only safety
and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,
and watch the streetlights outside winking
off one by one like old men closing their
cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors
slamming car doors hard against the morning
and see the steaming coffee in their mugs
kissing their chapped lips as they sip and
exhale each of their worries white into
the icy air around their faces—then I can
remember this one life is a gift each of us
was handed and told to open: Untie the bow
and tear off the paper, look inside
and be grateful for whatever you find
even if it is only the scent of a tangerine
that lingers on the fingers long after
you’ve finished eating it.

‘Winter Morning’

James Crews

Listen to James read his poem here.

just this (how colour arranges itself) (iPhone photo)