I know that
these blog posts are strewn with entries about gratitude. Even those that are
not in the “thanks giving” month of November have been layered and painted,
woven and collaged, dotted with and enwrapped in images and words about
gratefulness.
It is not lost
on me that the inner and outer landscapes of my life, and the lives of those
around me, are totally and unabashedly blessed. I am fully aware that those
blessings are falling out of my mouth, oozing out my skin, worn on the wide fat
smile of my face, bouncing in my lighthearted steps across yesterday’s dusty
golden hillside, and finding their worthy wordsome way into all of my writing,
not least – these blogs. And why would I want to apologize for, or worse yet
stifle, this predominating theme in my days?
So, it is that
month again – the time devoted to gratitude, marked by the beginning of the
holiday season, colored with the foliage that brilliantly gleams in this
morning sunlight. I wondered during my quiet time in the predawn stillness if I
could manage a month of consecutive weekly blog posts on the topic of
gratitude. My journaling indicates I can.
Gratitude,
gratefulness, requires a presence in the moment, a presence in the right-now of
our lives. Gratitude is about these words coming onto the page, and the
heater’s clicks and whirrs, and the sounds of a sigh from the other room, and the
coffee slightly cooled in the cup next to me, and the early morning sunshine
just touching the corner of my desk at which I sit now typing.
Hope speaks in
the now, but it lives in the future; it is the wish for something. The memory of
gratitude is in the photo I took of shimmering golden leaves overhead as I
walked home yesterday. But that is not gratitude; it is remembering that I was
– then - grateful.
Gratitude speaks in the now, is immediate, is present. Gratitude is like meditation; it grounds us in the soil of
this moment. It makes me aware of the small exhale of breath and how that feels
in the center of my stomach. Gratitude roots itself in noticing right now how
the sunlight has shifted on the wooden corner of my desk, how silent the house
is now that everybody has left or settled into midmorning naps, what shape the
stain of coffee grounds takes in the bottom of my cup.
Gratitude.
Thanks. Gratefulness. Appreciative acknowledgment. How wholly holy is the
sacred practice of noticing right now, with our lips in the shape of a grin,
and saying “I am grateful!”
