GRATITUDE–IN DETAIL

16 Thursday Nov 2023

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In everything…GIVE THANKS!

I read and hear a great deal about the practice of Gratitude in my living and working these days, and I am glad for that. Brene Brown asserts that gratitude is the gateway to Joy. Surely Joy is greatly to be desired in these shaky days that we are living! But sometimes it feels like a reach…to be either thankful or joyful!

I confess that early on in my life, I had great resistance to pursuing either one of those practices–being thankful, taking the joy! In my milieu it felt like those behaviors contributed to what we are now labeling “toxic positivity,” a la Pollyanna and her Glad Game. I see now that I refused to be grateful, joyful, when it meant denial of the pain and grief I was experiencing, pretending I believed it would all get better in the sweet by-and-by. I wanted to take my suffering seriously, not smooth it over with maxims and “futuring” blithely. It has taken time for me to realize deep in myself that Joy and Gratitude can and do co-exist with the suffering and grief in the life of the world, my world, and that the naming and sensing each of the one does not deny or erase the other.

It was freedom then when I learned that I could honor all my painful feelings of sorrow and loss, resentment and anger, fear and dread, yet still with integrity “count my blessings,” naming them one by one. And thus I became an active practitioner of keeping a gratitude journal, daily, the contents of which range from extraordinary gifts of largesse in the world, such as sunsets and ocean billows, to tiny turns of the day–a word, a gesture, a discovery, an amusement, things that bring Light, were I to notice them. That practice has not only made me more grateful all around; it has made me more attentive, more observant, more conscious.

My attention is drawn this season to the way I express that gratitude. I appreciate a generic thanks: thank you for being you, thanks for all you do, thanks for the contribution. However, I love even more the thanks that are particular, specific and discrete.

Recently I received a message that a connection I made 20 years ago or more, one which I no longer remember, made a significant difference to a mother of a baby when she was in distress. I was given a compliment on the way I carried myself, despite my walking stick, which pleased me no end. I was thanked for a small expression of presence, in an ordinary time. It prodded me to pay more particular attention to the small, discrete, but possibly extraordinary things that I am given to receive and to do each day: a cup of coffee in the flavor I like, a refill of my water glass, a postcard out of the blue, the news of a conflict resolution for which I have been praying. Furthermore, I am challenged to make my own thank yous more individual. more granular.

So this Thanksgiving season these are the things for which I am giving thanks:

  • for my neighbor who regularly plies me with interesting fact and reviews of the artistic happenings, served with a glass of wine.
  • for my long time friend who remembers serious and funny occurrences from our teen years that have slipped out of my memory.
  • for pastors who know my name and honor my ministries of the past.
  • for social media friends who enjoy my posts, invite my prayers, and widen my world.
  • for former students whose growing and thriving I am allowed to witness and celebrate.
  • for grandchildren who are in touch with me by text or Instagram almost every week–one with hearts. one with sweet words, one with funny memes, one with puns.
  • for children who pay attention to things I might like to see or have.
  • for a husband of many decades who still like to plan, anticipate and actualize larks that we can take, even when the circumference and duration are shortening

It is no accident , I think, that the Psalms are so full of details–musical instruments, seasonal beauty, historical memory, details of daily life. James tell us that “Every good gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is not variation or shadow of turning.” I am grateful for that perspective–for all things, great and small…in particular.

Unveiled Faces

31 Tuesday Oct 2023

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who are you? who can see you? who can you see?

Several times in the last weeks I have encountered some folk whom I had only seen with a mask on because of the pandemic protocols. At first glance I didn’t recognize them! There was so much more information and affect to them than I had known before. I wondered if they recognized me, although there are any other aspects of myself that are mainly visible–size, coloring, tone of voice (though muffled!), familiar motions and gestures. It was clear that my encounters had been partial up till then, and now I could see much more of the entire human being with whom I was interesting. It was a gift of surprise, of welcome, of joy!

I became aware that the masks had hidden me too–just part of my upper visage, my expressions, the colors in my face, but not my reactions, only what was visible above and below the mask. I have mused of what that meant–physically and metaphorically. What am I able and willing to reveal about myself to others? Are there parts of my soul and spirit that can and need to be appropriately revealed to those with whom I am in community?

So Halloween is here, and to the delight of many, costumes and masks are worn. I remember years when Holly Hobbies, Draculas, Caspars and werewolves abounded in my neighborhood. Nowadays on my block, we don’t get any trick-or-treaters any more, and I miss the surprises in opening the door to a tiny Alice in Wonderland or a huge Mickey Mouse. And I do wonder where and what do masks play part in my world? I still, out of caution, wear one when I go out for errands or in a crowd. I am deeply mindful and careful of those for whom a disease, any of those germs floating around this liminal time, can put them at great risk to body and spirit.

Yet more and more I want to have a face that is “unveiled,” open to sky and sun, uncovered to those I meet and greet, free to breathe deeply the freshness and flavor of the created world. In the main I aspire to have an “unveiled face” with people I meet and greet, longtime friends and new acquaintances. and beyond that to have my face open and unhidden to the Spirit who lives in and around me–to be honest, to be candid, to be trusting, to be unafraid. Hebrew scripture recounts how Moses’ face was set aglow when he encountered the Holy One, even as he came close to HolY Presence. And in Paul’s affirmation “all of us with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” This comes from the Spirit! That sounds so liberating, so organic, so whole in relationships–human and divine!

I am left with my day to day, hour to hour discernment–where am I allowing myself to be seen? and when do I hide? who can see me and how genuine is what can be seen? And does my “unveiled face” allow me full range of compassion and grace when I encounter someone, made in the image of the Holy, trusting that the transformation continuing in me by the Spirit is meant for the good of my own heart, the faithful people that gather near me? And in my journey of Spirit, which continues to need transformation, no matter how old I get, am I learning to be more transparent, more trusting and more compassionate?

Bless the little masked faces as they wander forth tonight, and while they delight in taking on a masked identity for the fun, may they know that no matter who they are, veiled or unveiled, they are loved and cared for just the way they are, by the Holy One who created and loves them, always!

Celebration!

09 Wednesday Aug 2023

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Quilt by the late Betsy Caprio!

The season of celebrations has concluded for this academic year and for my family. Between March and June we celebrated 9 special occasions in my family circle, each one unique, worthy of attention and joy, each one remembered and honored in a style befitting the honoree. Then in the USA we celebrated the Fourth of July in honor of the founding our country. My awareness this year has been sharpened to notice all the sensory ways in which we celebrate by encountering the book Life in Five Senses by Gretchen Rubin, a gift from a sensory conscious friend. Now these unseasonably hot days of summer, I am bring invited to another kind of celebration–the memorial celebrations of so many loved ones, almost one a week all summer long. Once again I am acutely attentive to me senses, which are reminders, evokers and blessings for this who have enriched my life

As we celebrate each person in a particular time and place, there is so much to see and reminder: colors of every hue, shapes of every size and kind, motions and gestures of delight, pride, of grief and nostalgia! I can see, sometimes only in my minds eye, the peonies beloved by one, the bright and bold hues always worn by another, the shape of the silhouette the one being celebrated with gesture and expressions, the aroma and taste of that chocolate dessert, the gentle warmth of that hug after a long absence.

I am learning that these are holy prompts, reminders of how the Mystery we call God fills the sensory world with Presence. With my sight I see perfectly shaped eyes and mouth of a grandchild made in the image of God. With my ears I hear the intricate harmonies of vocal ensembles who use the genius of Bach to sing “To God be the glory!” With my mouth I taste, not only fresh grown peaches and cherries, but at gatherings of remembrance, I taste the love put into the baked, tossed and simmered culinary offerings that fill the tables of connecting, reminding me that so often bread and wine shared is the moment in which we see the Holy. After the neighborhood gardeners have swept down the street each week, the air is redolent with the scent of cut leaves and grass; I am nudged to let my prayers be that kind of incense as they rise to the Creator. And I know without question that the touch of my beloved ones–husband, children, friends, even the brief shaking of a hand of someone new, all are sacramental, visible expressions of invisible Grace!

So many other distractions can clutter my senses, yet I am choosing to Celebrate that Presence of the Holy One, who to my body’s senses reminds me that Holy Love never lets me go! That’s a great reason to cheer and laugh!Thanks be to God!

Eastertide

14 Friday Apr 2023

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Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed!

The culmination of the explosion of colors–Eastertide, six weeks of celebration! And Matisse expresses the melange of hues and tints in such varied ways. And so it is with Easter Day when we read in the gospels that the attending. loving followers of Jesus, left the tomb “afraid yet filled with joy.” (Matthew-NIV)

According to the SALT reflection guide for the holy season, Matisse wasn’t explicitly religious, but his commentary was full of spiritual reflection: In my own way I have always sung the glory of God and creation, he says. He writes from a life filled with promise and hardship both, the joy and the sorrow, the success and the defeat, the gift and the loss. And that is the life we re-enter this Easter season–paradoxical, uncharted, light and dark. Like the women leaving the tomb, I am also “afraid yet filled wih joy.”

So many things seem frightening in the world around me, Even a cursory scanning of the daily news can send my blood pressure soaring. I continue to lose people, old touchstones and familiar ways of doing things. I can become anxious, as Wendell Berry notes, in fear of what my life my children’s life might be. Certainly the beloved ones of the risen Christ had no idea what would lie before them in the days ahead. So Easter doesn’t mean an erasure of everything scary, evil or problematic.

However, Easter is a celebration that alongside and above the fear, I can be filled with joy! Anne Sexton writes, There is joy is all! and it is true! She names the small but essential components of ordinary life, and its joy emanating from them, and lead her into a great prayer of thanksgiving. It is my practice to do this daily: the iris, the rose, the dog, the coffee, the phone call, the note in the mail, the text from my granddaughter, tha care that my spouse gives me daily, the new idea popping up. But Easter joy goes beyond that. I have learned from wise teachers that Easter tells us as humans that there are no final defeats. Death is not the last word. As I age this reality is more and more comforting: my living and loving will not be for nothing. There is joy in being a human, in living a life, in loving another, in walking with the Mystery we call God!

These next weeks of Eastertide I am rejoicing, with as many colors as I can perceive, right alongside the fear, the horror of the real in political spheres, the unknown that still looms. Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed.

Holy Week: Red

04 Tuesday Apr 2023

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from the SALT Lenten project: God of gladness and hope against hope, give us the strength to celebrate and the courage to look ahead with joyful anticipation

The color designated from the panoply of Matisse’s palette for Holy Week is Red! The meditation guide assigns both excitement and suffering to this color. As I live into this week, I am sensing even more emotions on this roller coaster of a week. Yesterday there was a Palm Sunday parade in church all over the world. Children of all sizes waved palm branches and sang. And then this morning a long time friend died, expected, but still leaving a gaping hole in the fabric of the lives that loved her.

The saga of Holy Week has so much emotional energy that fluctuates and careens around our bodies and spirit that it can leave us reeling. Anxiety and deep fear blanketed the atmosphere in old Jerusalem, and does so there today, as well as here in our country right now, as we wait to see what blows might fall, what riots could break out, what fresh new hell is unleashed. There is anger and discontent everywhere. Yet there are moments of sweet connection and intimacy, sharing hearts, ideas and points of view, bring closeness and affirmation. We continue there lament and grief of Lent, as we see so much cruelty, injustice and callowness poured out on those with no protection, no resources and no recourse. And we mourn the deep losses of those who have died with the gaping holes they leave in our lives.

There is a part of me that wished that I could ignore all the drama, hibernate or sail away until there is calm and quiet once again. Yet I know that this drama, and what it means, is the Truth about the human life on this earth and the way the Holy enters into it. My tradition affirms in its Confessions that “In life and in death we belong to God.”

So I wear Red to remind me his week that nothing can separate me from the love of God–not the deaths of those I love or do not know, not the new lives emerging all around me, not the angels who can bring holy presence to places I can’t reach, not the demons that plague hearts and minds, (especially mine!), not the quotidian minutes in which I live, nor the unknown future that frightens me, not any venal powers that seem to be in control for the moment, nor the wildest ecstatic joy, nor the Slough of Despond; nothing in the circumference of my life or the life of the world can take me away from Holy Presence, seen so clearly in the life of Jesus. I can be present to each intense emotion and energy, my own and that of others, and I can stay centered and grounded in the Love that will not let me go. It is the blessing of Holy Week for me.

Lent 5: Purple

27 Monday Mar 2023

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“God of seeing and resurrection, give us the us the strength to mourn and the courage to hope.” (SALT Lenten Project)

On this penultimate week of Lent, the SALT reflection emphasizes, from Matisse, the color purple, a more familiar color that the Church has connected to Lent. In liturgical settings the color is a reminder of penitence, sorrow, loss and darkness. Surely those emotions and locations are part and parcel of our human experience, which I attend to mindfully during my Lenten journey.

I am aware of how some of my Lenten palette needs to include the sad and grieving, the losses that are never-ending, the state of the world–both relationally and systemically. I am leaving space this week to lament the painful, frail and broken pieces of the worlds in which I live.

  • I grieve for the created world–its choked oceans, its volatile air currents, its vanishing species.
  • I grieve for the peoples of this world who suffer–in war, in natural disaster, in oppression, in tyranny.
  • I grieve for my native land so torn apart by hostility, mistrust, misinformation, hatred and cruelty.
  • I grieve for the fragility of communities of faith who are in states of liminality after the advent of COVID-19, wondering how to reimagine who and how they are to be Church.
  • My heart aches for the suffering ones I know personally–the mourning ones, the hurting ones, the frustrated ones, the lonely ones, the ones who have fallen into the Slough of Despond that has crept insistently into our collective life.
  • And I mourn the ways in which I have and done that which is not loving, not helpful, not kind, not compassionate–missed opportunities, ignored signals and neglected openings.

The Light that shine in this important season of Lament is that, grieving is not the last word. Sacred text tells us that “we may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (T hess. 4:13.), The theologian Walter Brueggemann has written that the sacred practice of Lament prepares us for the Hope that is to come; for this in the Christian community, the promise of Resurrection, Life after death. It is a clearing out, a cleansing, a truth telling, that paves the way to be surprised by Joy. I am walking gently, gingerly, honestly through this darkness, trusting that there is Light to come on the other side.

Lent 4: Yellow

22 Wednesday Mar 2023

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“Open our eyes to the vision of color“

In this week of Lent the SALT reflection, following Matisse as a mentor, chooses yellow, a color of Light, as the color of reflection, pointing to the spaces where the Light gets in.

In my heart, that joins this past Sunday which was Rejoicing, or Laetare Sunday, and the first day of Spring, a day when despite the pouring rain in our area, we changed our seasonal plate hanging on the wall, watched our yellow fledgling hummingbirds fly from their nest at last, and in preparation, had Irish coffee to remember St. Patrick and St. Gertrude. It has prompted me to look for points of Light as a spiritual practice, even in the cracks in the dark.

Yesterday in a hiatus in the rain came a rainbow in the east, arcing across a dark neighborhood. In the early morning came two texts from two separate grandchildren sharing love and hoping I was fine. In the newspaper I was heartened to notice that in spite of the civic turmoil of a strike, someone who had the power remembered that students and families still needed to eat, and is providing breakfast and lunch for those who want them. Into my Inbox came a Word from two different preachers, women who at one time would have had no access to pulpits, each with a Word both prophetic and inspiring, bringing hope.

As the day progressed I realized that in neither of the two rooms where we have glass doors to the outside world had I opened the drapes to let the Light in. When I did, Light of various hues came pouring in, even in the varying weather. I could see more clearly, the textures, the tones, the intensity of the shades of the color wheel inside and outside–including the yellows that were illuminated: the stripes in the blankets in the den, the beeswax candles that we keep at the ready for worship and company, the yarrow keeping watch over the front yard. I want to keep looking for the Light wherever it is to be found, reminding me that Holy Light can never be extinguished.

I was given a gift of a prism, created for an infant but so apt as a reminder of this part of my Lenten journey, It is affixed to my sliding door, and when I open the drapes, the colors of the rainbow begin to dance and ricochet around my room, pointing me to the other lights, shades and tints that are present to me, even when the sky is gray. The SALT reflection states that “Jesus says, ‘I am the light of the world.’ and ‘You are the light of the world” I am pondering this week how to open the curtains of my heart to let the Light in, and then how to be the Light to those whom I given to meet and greet! I want to let the Light shine!

Lent 3: Basic Black

16 Thursday Mar 2023

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“God of simplicity and grace, help us get back to basics…”

The SALT project’s Lenten reflection on Matisse this week focuses on basic black, the color that the artist uses to outline the simplest shapes, with clarity. It pairs the color with the gospel story of the Woman at the Well, providing, across many boundary lines, some basic simple needs, with clarity.

This has prompted me to reflect this Lent on what are my basic spiritual practices every day in this season, things without which my sacred journey will be impoverished:

I start my day with my intention to care for those I love, feeding my dog early in the morning when we both awaken. Neither my spirit. nor Max’s, is disembodied. My body provides the platform for the way the Spirit will meet me, and from which I can be of use. Jesus needed water, the woman needed a face to face encounter. The Spirit journey is lodged in the body.

I connect in prayer and love with my wider world through social media and checking in with hopes to affirm, comfort, celebrate and weep with those given to me to love. I practice being a member of community.

I take up various quotidian tasks in front of me in kitchen, bathroom and living area, mindful that these are offerings of caring, of grace. of love.

I read widely–both the sketches of the news of the day, but also sacred text and writers who challenge and teach me, push me more toward the Presence of the Holy One. This is a practice I share with my husband, and we marvel, roll our eyes, shake our heads and celebrate with the discoveries that we make about the people and places of the world, creation, the way that differences give us a new perspectives on a reality much wider than we have ever known for all our years of education and wisdom.

I aspire each day to stretch, either physically or socially, to make sure that I am using my being to move, touch, interact with a bigger purpose. So I have at the ready my piano, my labyrinth, my stationary bike, my phone, my computer, my checkbook, hoping to use what I have to connect what I am called to be and to do.

I keep a journal of gratefulness, reminding myself of the goodness of the Holy One and the world in which I live.

At the end of the day I make the transition to sleep with a mindfulness exercise that helps me attend to breathing and coming into the rest God has promised.

The fashion industry has long told us that we need to have basic black dress in our wardrobes, the fundamental need for every occasion. So I need the basic charcoal black practices for my life of Spirit, represented in my black dog and the simple straight forward practices of each day, the basics I need.

Lent 2: Blue and White

07 Tuesday Mar 2023

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Lent continues! The guide I am following from SALT which uses the art of Matisse has assigned this week to the colors Blue and White– Jesus is transforming our hearts…where do you feel the ‘blues’ of sorrow? the dazzling white of transfiguration? This underlines for me that my spiritual journey contains both joy and sorrow, peace and panic, order and chaos, and that the Holy One is present in all and through all.

A hymn I have come to know in recent years lets me know of the paradoxical nature of the Holy–“peacemaker and sword bringer,…both gift and cost…” and “You the everlasting instant; you who are our pilgrim guide.” It is easy when my mood swings or spanners appear in the works or it seems that the world as gone off its axis in yet another dimension, that the Holy disappears. After a week glorious connection and truth telling and warmth comes a week of pouring rains, even snow here in Southern California, and missed appointments, broken appliances and rugs flying out from underneath. Where is the Holy then? My Lenten practice is to ground myself in the truth that even there, then, now the Holy is present in me, to me, for me.

All of that variety, change, unpredictability is at work in my transformation–the “blues” of conflict, brokenness and grief, and the dazzle of reconciliation, healing and consolation. Therefore, I need to put myself in the places of Grace, where I know I can be met, fed, comforted and made steady, as I have so many times before. Today as I go out meet the sun, to breath freshly washed air, to stretch my halting steps, to listen to the birds and breathe in the scents of the budding spring, I will remember that in the Blue and the White, God is there, and will never let me go.