This is a week of Thanksgiving and gathering in the United States. And I know that not every person is thrilled or even comfortable with the holidays. Maybe your family is divided on politics. Maybe the holidays bring your grief to the surface. Maybe there is a deep desire to really let yourself live and love and express how you truly feel, but something holds you back.
I woke up early this morning and just laid in the dark – listening to the silence. I sense a “disheartenedness” in me. I feel the tiredness. I watch the wonderings and doubts in me.
And yet I also feel the pulse of Aliveness. I feel the eternal sense of hope that somehow finds its way into the corners of our hearts. And it extends a buoyancy to our heavy hearts and habits that seem to have us in their grips.
And in that wave of Hope, I hear these words from the Beloved,
“Take heart, my dear. There is still yet an abundance of Delight to be had in this beautiful, messy life.”
Again and again I hear this promise from the Beloved that Rumi and Hafiz and the mystics talk of. There is a sacred sense of delight to be discovered and experienced in this very life and is available in this very moment.
How?
I turn again to Brother David Steindl-Rast.
Brother David is a Catholic Benedictine monk. He has devoted his life to the intersection of spirituality and science. He is well known for his sense of gratitude — cultivating and savoring it within his own life, and supporting others to do the same.
Here are some quotes from Brother David:
“You think this is just another day in your life. It’s not just another day. It’s the one day that is given to you today. It’s the only gift that you have right now. And the only appropriate response is gratefulness.”
“Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefullness, and gratefullness is measure of our aliveness.”
“So I wish that you can open your heart to all these blessings, and let them flow through you. Then everyone whom you will meet on this day will be blessed by you. Just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch. Just by your presence. Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you. And then, it will really be, a good day.”
“The practical way to get to gratefulness is to start with wonderment. Our lives & the world are full of surprise.”
“Living in gratefulness takes away fear.”
How can you incorporate gratitude into your everyday life – even in stressful, turbulent times? Here are five Gems for your everyday life:
1. Incorporate a blessing before a meal in your everyday life. Brother David and a Network for Grateful Living offer beautiful Thanksgiving meal blessings. Such a Sacred Pause supports not only a grateful heart but good digestion!
2. When you feel like nit-picking the imperfections in yourself and others, instead instantly see that you are nit-picking because you are suffering in some way. Maybe you are carrying too much, holding too much, taking on too much responsibility, or holding back from really living the life you want to lead. Here is a post to support you in exploring what wounds this person may be bringing up in you and how THIS kind of exploration organically brings about a grateful heart. :
3. Tell someone how grateful you are for them. Too often, we forget how much it means for someone we love to hear how grateful we are for them — just as they are and for who they are. Let them know! Here is one of my beautiful cards on Gratitude that I have on my shop. It’s blank inside for you to write your own words of gratitude to your dear one. It could be a beautiful practice this holiday season to sit down and write a few notes of gratitude to the dear ones in your life.
4. Cultivate a daily practice of gratitude. Brother David talks a lot about how gratitude is a skill to cultivate if we pause, open our eyes and hearts, and have the intention to let life touch us. Try my Attitude of Gratitude meditation. I offer a lovely reflection and lead you through how to see with new eyes as you go through your day. It’s a meditation that you can come back to again and again when you sense the inner need to cultivate gratitude.
Cultivating gratitude opens us to the delights right here in our everyday life.
So this morning, I am pausing, opening my heart to the goodness that is right here, and trusting the Inner Voice that, yes, there truly is delight here here to be lived, embodied, experienced and shared.
May these Gems support you, too, in awakening your sense of gratitude and opening your eyes and heart to the delight all around you in this messy, beautiful life.
Blessings,
Thank you. I am gateful for your posts. As I sit on my patio with a heavy heart, for personal, national and global issues…I also have a deep sense of hope and gratitude. Thank you for your help in recognizing it.
Thank you, dear Lisa. I’m so glad you have this hope and gratitude within you! I’d imagine you are a blessing to those around you. Lisa
Thank you for this reminder to be grateful, Lisa. I spent the past two days with family, and felt enormously grateful. I felt alive for the first time in weeks. I also unplugged from the wider world, to just focus on the immediacy of what was around me in each moment. Then I returned to my computer and continue to feel heavy with sorrow and fear at what is happening in our country, and particularly devastated by the human rights violations of water protectors at Standing Rock. While I am glad for a day to celebrate gratefulness, doing so in the shadow of the hegemonic myths about the holiday itself and the inhuman way we continue to treat first nations people leaves me without words. I don’t want to be ungrateful… I have friends and family, a roof over my head, a wonderful guide dog, all my physical needs are met in this moment. And it is almost impossible to continue feeling blessed when so many are suffering, and there is so much fear surrounding the uncertainty of what might happen to untold numbers of people now and in the future. I’d trade places with someone so they can have what I have… I don’t know what that makes me. I’m doing what I can and it never feels like enough. And I’m scared for my future self, too. I am so grateful, and it is wonderful, and honestly also disturbing… I want to be grateful, and I also feel a deep need to no longer contribute to the messiness, that I have not acknowledged and carried enough of my shared responsibility. Perhaps gratefulness has to transform into a verb to be changing the now, I want to just listen, and listen, and understand, and really listen, and learn, just maybe our empathy, the threads of intertwining that prevent us from being separate, can hold us together. Because being grateful here alone by myself with my individual blessed present moment feels wholly not enough now. And what I realize I am most grateful for, is this opportunity to put it in hopeful terms to adjust so immediately to our need for connection that I forgive everyone, put aside differences, apologize and admit when I am wrong, reach and reach and reach out, forget every assumption and anger, drop the deservedness dialogue and have compassion for myself like I have with other people, no longer close off in fear or turn away from feeling, and heal every division it is in my power to heal, whatever it takes. Because that is the only spiritual solution I could come up with face to face with a thousand sorrows of separateness. Gratitude for that opportunity doesn’t leave me content, at all, the way I feel content and appreciation at my needs being met. It’s a dynamic, changing verb of gratefulness, a challenge to live with a life of its own, it makes no compromises with what gets in the way of shining out, and it is a space to grow in, being held, but it’s a space that never is perfectly still. I did not mean to write such a long comment, but thank you for the hope, it’s like a rope to hold onto when feeling like you’re falling, thank you for your words and for being who you are. Liz / Eilis
I think what you are saying shines the light on the complexity of our human experience – both individually and collectively. What richness and depth. I too love from this space. I am always asking how to respond to the suffering I see – within my own self, within another human being and in our world. I have cherished reading more from Br. David and hearing how (and then experiencing) gratitude in the most simple of things in my own life opens my heart to see the suffering of others and to abide with them. We are so intertwined. I find that when I am suffering I wouldn’t want someone to “not enjoy” their abundance because I am suffering. But rather I would like them to come alongside me and possibly share in that fullness. This is what I strive to do in my own life. I am so grateful for the depth of presence you have, Ellis, and for sharing with me a glimpse into your heart and reality.
Lisa