Category Archives: gratitude

Crossed Wires, Loose Ends and Short Fuses!

27 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by in gratitude, slowness, Uncategorized

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How little I knew about the timeliness of this topic when the thought occurred to me! I have noticed that so many of our “systems” that we depend on seem to be running on the rims of their wheels, or even falling off their tracks–the post office, the businesses that have closed, the happenings that are not happening, and the short tempers and frustration that is right at the service of nearly everyone!

This week I lived into this confusion, as in one hospital stay for my husband, we experienced orders that failed to be given, wrong instruments prepared for surgery, hence a 2 hour delay, and flowers undelivered! Meanwhile, the world continues to unravel–politically, rhetorically, hopelessly! I feel so often that there are so few things I can do about any of it, so how do I live in the mega-chaos, the mini-derailments and the in-betweens of not knowing?

Two things have emerged for me in my musings. First, I need to accept that the warp speed with which I am familiar, for myself and for the world, is no-operative these days: Everything is Slower Now! Nothing goes as quickly as it once did, save for the spread of the pandemic and natural disasters! I must continue to learn to re-calibrate my expectations for the speed at which I can do things, and the speed at which the systems I inhabit are able to respond and function. Slowly, slowly, slowly! Lente, lente, lente! Slow me down, O Holy One! Let the words of Ecclesiastes sink into my bones as well as my mind and heart: For everything there is a season…And what a season this is! A time to heal? a time to weep? a time to search? a time to throw away? Teach me how to discern what time it is at such a snail’s pace.

It Is Six Weeks Later:

See, things move much more slowly! And things do come undone, fall apart, and take more time than I expected! And maybe what my learning here is that I need to change my expectations of what a day, and hour need to look like! This is the day that the Holy has made. I WILL rejoice and be glad in it! Not glad for it necessarily, but in it. Tonight we celebrated Thanksgiving according to Plan D: no spatchcock barbecued turkey at the correct social distance in my daughter’s back yard; no drive through the In’N’Out; no home-cooked small meal for the two of us, but a lovely takeout dinner from a local restaurant less than a mile away. And beloved ones who are very ill or recuperating, and other dear ones facing surgery this week, and the Cods-19 virus still spiking, and businesses that I have loved or counted on going out of business. And so we were Grateful for what was; Brother David Steindl-Rast says that we need to “Bless what is for being!” And that is where my expectations need to be focused: on being grateful for the place and condition in which I find myself–no denying that there are crossed wires and loose ends, but finding how Grace appears, or even, as my grandson so aptly says, the silver linings, in what is!

Dear Lord, Help me to live right now in this moment of time You have given me. (from Marian Wright Edelman)

A Wider Deeper Gratitude!

12 Saturday Sep 2020

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All your works shall give thanks to you, O God!

Since nearly the beginning of the pandemic, I have been faithfully keeping a new gratitude journal, keeping it close at hand all day, recording the things for which I am thankful. The epigraph on the front reads: “Grateful for the sun & the earth & the memories of what it is to love everything Life has brought me.” (Brian Andreas). It has been an anchor in these many days of not knowing–what is coming next, what to expect, what is lost, how to proceed. However, in reviewing it this week into the sixth month of sheltering in place, I find that my focus has been very narrow, for the most part checking out my own bubble in the world, not noticing where grace, peace and mercy are flowing in the wider world.

I am challenged this week to lift my eyes and open my ears to the Good News and Actions around me in the world, among faithful people, in what I know and have experienced in the way the Holy works in the world.

  • I am thankful for truth tellers, and for the truth that is incontrovertible, if not uncontroversial.
  • I am grateful for those who are honorable. who do the right thing with respect and mercy for others and themselves.
  • I give thanks when justice is served by people with agency and vision.
  • I am thankful for those who are pure in heart, and, therefore, whose response and actions are purely loving and gracious, even if some would call them naive.
  • I rejoice and give thanks for the things that are pleasing–beauty, grace. laughter, music, color, art, good food and drink, sweet aromas, soft textures and open skies.
  • I am thankful for the ones who are commendable, who go above and beyond what anyone expects, who show up, standup, put up, shut up when the situation calls for it, despite the prevailing mood and chatter.
  • I savor with gratitude those who continue to pursue and savor excellence in their appointed rounds, whether it is in the fine arts, folk art, outsider art, pop art or the arts of silence, making a home, crafting a piece of furniture, or raising a child who loves and lives fully in this world.

I am learning to stop in my daily commentary to notice and to say: “Listen to that graceful reply!” “Look at that open acceptance!” “How full of mercy that response was!” “Look at that generous giving of time and energy!” Thank you, thank you thank you!

With the ash-filled, polluted air all up and down this coast, with the Covid-19 virus still very much alive and well, with the vitriol that spills over the airways and through cyberspace, I find some days, that I have to dig deep and wide for objects of gratitude. However, this week, as I have lifted my eyes, broadened my gaze, deepened my trust, I have discovered again so much goodness of God, so much love of Life, so much breeze and energy of the Spirit, “How can I keep from singing?”

Blessings Unseen!

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in b, blessing, gratitude, Uncategorized

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Morning by morning!

The season of gratitude is upon us, not that it shouldn’t be my practice, daily, hourly, and moment by moment! I love seeing the lists that people are sharing, of the people, places and events that fill them with gratitude! But my call this year is to pay attention to immaterial abundance that surrounds me. I am so aware that I can easily fill up a list of the tangible things that are mine due to privilege and location. But this year I am wanting to celebrate the “things unseen,” that are really just gifts of Grace.

Our local coffee shop, in anticipation for the high volume holiday season, began several weeks ago to serve their orders with cardboard sleeves that said: “GRATEFUL for _______.” Since getting a morning shot of caffeine (decaf) is part of our morning ritual, I began filling them out, day by day. The shop has since replaces the sleeves with more festive cups of color and variety, but the manager gave me the extra sleeves, which I have been filling out day by day, sometimes more than once!

Here are some of the things that have prompted my Spirit so far

  • air to breathe
  • baby noises
  • human and animal connections
  • access to water
  • poetry
  • ministry of many kinds
  • affirmations from anyone, far and wide
  • neighbors–many races, many temperaments, many histories
  • music of all sorts
  • words, fitly written and spoken
  • healing over time, or in the moment
  • long-time friends and acquaintances
  • humor and laughter
  • memory AND forgetfulness
  • sweetness
  • forgiveness
  • spiritual spark between people
  • Grace
  • Hope
  • Prayer

I could go on and on, I think, and will do so in my prayerful heart through the season.

I will confess that I have to stop, wait and ponder on some days for “things unseen.” It is much easier for me to look around at what is immediate and palpable and to offer thanks for that. However, especially in the night seasons, I am most aware that the goodness that surrounds me is much deeper than just those tangible things. I believe in the Presence of the Holy One that is intricately involved in all of Life. I believe in the Spirit of Christ that hovers over creation, all that is in it, that is at work in all of the events of human endeavor, whether or not I can apprehend it easily. I believe that the Darkness, whether incarnate evil or just the Great Grayness, cannot extinguish the Light. And so for these Blessings, Unseen, I am grateful today, for this season, and all the days left to me in my life!

Beautiful!

19 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in beauty, grace, gratitude, Spirit, Uncategorized

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BeautifulCambriaWe heard the word Ugliness and have been seeing it demonstrated over and over in the last weeks on the national political scene. Even the most experienced and enlightened are nonplussed at best, and most are horrified at the behavior and language choices on display in what is supposed to be the center of reasonable and moral leadership in our country. It is hard to overcome Ugliness–visually and aurally and emotionally–once we have encountered it. But I believe that Beauty is one way we can resist, defy and countermand that ugliness we meet.

Older versions of Hebrew Scripture tell us that God made everything Beautiful in its own time (Eccl. 3:11). So, I am seeking ways, in this time where so much Ugliness abounds, to see Beauty, to celebrate it and to share it. In this week of Thanksgiving I am cataloging Beauty as I find it:

  • the music of Bach sung last night by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, “The Magnificat”
  • the stalks of 12 white bearded iris that greeted me when arrived home from my trip last week
  • the complete absorption in singing “Count You Blessings” by the little girl at the end of the row in the Children’s Choir
  • the elegant and startling prose of Gretel Ehrlich as she invites me into a part of our country that is unfamiliar to me
  • each step of newly minted personhood that each grandchild is taking he and she become who they are meant to be
  • the sunset on Cayucos Beach, as I am wrapped up in sweatshirt and blanket
  • the outpouring of generosity and caring and love that neighbors, friends and strangers are proffering to those devastated by fire and disaster
  • the memories of a high school friend who left us this week–her joie de vivre, her persistence, her luminous laughter
  • the faces of those with whom I sit weekly who are intently listening and looking for Spirit presence in their life
  • the dignity and grace with which some participants in political striving carry out their calling, despite so much opposition

As I write I feel that the list is endless!!! Thanks be to God!

In an unexpected synergy of friendship and celebration, I was able to see the musical “Beautiful,” telling the story of songwriter and singer Carole King through her music. The title anthem has become my marching song in this season of celebration, deep grieving, of resistance, of call to be Light in the world:

You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile in your face,

and show the world all the love in your heart.

Then people gonna treat you better; you’re gonna find (yes, you will)

that you’re beautiful as you feel.

As the Beauty of the Holy One fills me with this invitation, I can be an increasingly potent antidote to the  ugliness that seeps through the waves of of communication and discourse in our world. May I be given the Grace to be Beautiful in this season..and always!

 

 

 

 

May Gray

01 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in beauty, darkness, gratitude, Light, paying attention, shadow, Spirit, Uncategorized

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GreatGrayness

We are accustomed to June gloom in Southern California, but this year we also have had May Gray! The skies are overcast from the time we wake up until midday or beyond. We get an inkling of the intimations of mood that those who live in more northern climes experience, and how it can affect their dispositions with seasonal affective disorder syndrome. It seems symbolic of the times in which we are living as well.

The news is full of doom for the vulnerable and gloom for the faithful who are wounded by the insensitivity and cruelty of others. Headlines are made daily about the disappearance of of familiar places and institutions, and the imagined replacements with something more new and shiny. Lovely, friendly people are stricken with accidents and ailments that are game changers in their daily sojourn. The outlook is not rosy.

One of my favorite children’s books is by Arnold Lobel called The Great Blueness. A wizard lives in a town in which all is gray, covered with the Great Grayness. He is sure that this is a sign that something is wrong, so he descends to his gray cellar to see if he can concoct something that will remedy this. By mixing, probing and experimenting with what he already knows and has, he discovers first blue, then yellow, the red, one at a time, all of which he shares with the town to their amazement and delight. They discover shade and hue, brightness, passion and energy with the diversity of colors. They even find that they can take the colors to mix and discover new colors and shades and tints, bringing variety and contrast. all parts of life that they can experience.

That story has prompted me to dig and delve in my own cellar of provenance, words and images which have been life-saving to me in the past–from sacred texts, from mentors and companions, from practices which I have put aside for awhile. What can I recover and put to use in the Grayness that surrounds me and our world? What mixture of resources can i call on to give me imagination, energy and love to brighten the Grayness in others? I am dusting off my gratitude journal to begin with, prompting me to pay attention every day to the gifts that surround me. I am perusing the Psalms yet another time, finding both voices that articulate the Grayness and voices that bring color to the  Hope that in in process of coming true.

And I learn from the wizard in that Gray Town that color is not mine to hoard and keep for myself alone, but it is to be shared with others, so that they can find their own combination of colors that lightens their Grayness and keeps them going when the gloom seems to be winning. I am so grateful to live in the ages of rapid connection through phone, internet, social media, that allows me to respond to and share with those given to me the colors that have brightness and glory and beauty.

Today turned to June, and I expect we can see some June Gloom on some days. But I feel more hopeful that I can wend my way thought that gloom and the other days with the colorful practices that keep me tethered to the Holy One and keep me energized by the Spirit to share hope and love with others. The Grayness cannot overcome the light ultimately! Thanks be to God!

 

 

 

 

Change and Decay

19 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in change, darkness, gratitude, grief, Hope, Uncategorized

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-I go to my appointment, and the pipe shop that has been on the opposite corner for as long as I can remember is boarded up and fenced in.

-The sandwich place next to the coffee shop has gone out of business, and the department store I counted on has moved to another mall.

Much worse then all of these are the images of destruction by mudslides of parts of  the sacred retreat center where I have gone so many years on pilgrimage. I grieve for what was, what was dear and holy.

And since the festival season, there have been so many losses: death of a colleague, a neighbor, the spouse of a college friend, a former parishoner.

And the world, the nation! How hard to fathom what they seem to have come to!

Changes, changes changes! it’s been said that we as humans experience all change as loss. And I am feeling it this January! With each medical appointment, I feel the loss of what I used to be. With each encounter in the faith community, I am aware that we are in  liminal place with unclear agendas and sensibilities. With each report on the news, I see time-held axioms of thought and behavior disappear, some for the worse, and irreparable loss of public lands, public generosity and public civility.

So I am pressed to know how to navigate each day when there are so many variables before me. I find that I need to fall back on some organic principles of Spirit with more attention and intention in these days:

–Give my grief all of its due, but only its due. Etty Hillesum challenges us to remember that it is a “spiritual bypass” to go straight to counting blessings when we have not grieved the loss. I mourn the loss of people and places that gave me life and love. I remember wistfully the ways and means of comfort and compassion I have experienced. I lament the destruction that lays waste our planet and that thoughtlessly removes the beautiful and the good. I cling to the Word that my tears are precious to the Holy One.

–Give thanks for what is blossoming and healing. My border of white irises has not ceased to be in bloom, one plant after another, since early November. There is a new one every morning. And God’s mercies are new every morning, if I am paying attention. Random  and intentional acts of kindness still abound. Fred Rogers has reminded us that in times of catastrophe, we are to look for the helpers to see the presence of the Holy One. They are everywhere–the ones who welcome the displaced, the ones who give rides, the ones who provide food, the ones who go more than one extra mile, but tens and hundreds of extra steps to care for others, those who give generously over and over for the healing and preservation of the world and its fragile ones.

–Give room for the Light to shine in. If I focus only on the reports of doom and gloom, of murder and mayhem, my own heart gets clouded, or “rubbled over”, as Jurgen Moltmann says. So I need to keep practice looking for the “cracks when the Light gets in” and make them a little wider. I celebrate the one who sat by the bedside of the dying one, so she could go in peace. I delight in the one who has learned to turn away anger with a soft answer. I rejoice in those who at great cost give themselves to generosity and thoughtfulness. And I cheer for those who are willing to speak truth to power, to affirm the good and call out the evil when it appears.

Things will change, they always have. In this world many institutions, places I hold sacred, precious relationships will fade and decay. However, as long as I have life and breath, I need to remain one who hopes, who engenders hope in others, and celebrates the reality that with the Holy One there are no final defeats.

Change and decay in all around I see/ O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

 

 

 

Traveling with Saints

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in gratitude, Light, open heart, saints, Uncategorized

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I am getting ready to honor All Saints Day this coming week, and I usually begin with a litany of saints who have gone before me into the unseen vistas of eternity–family members, teachers. pastors, friends and soul mates, heroines and heroes. But this year I am aware of all the saints with whom I come in contact daily, weekly and episodically. My definition this year of a saint is someone who brings Light (to borrow from Leonard Cohen) though the cracks in everything, cracks of grief, abuse, venality, hopelessness. And there are many!

A few keep popping up:

  • the soloist who gave embodiment to the human grief as she sang “Lacrymosa” from a contemporary Requiem
  • the newly widowed faithful partners as they navigate their way into a new normal with gravity and grace
  • the caregivers who show up to comfort, clean up and be present to those whom they are called to love
  • the neighborhood conscience who keeps us from tripping on sidewalks and losing our mail
  • those who arrive on the doorstep with flowers or coffee bread or just a “hi” when days are bleak
  • the one who always at the drop of a hat says, “Come on in!”
  • the place holder in the pew where she as always sat for years, through pastoral changes, political wrangling and waning societal interest in “religion”
  • the poet who sees, then articulates, the beauty of the created world and calls us to celebrate
  • the persistent one who tenaciously refuses to collapse into despair, even with diminishing strength and agility
  • each one who stands up to bullying, whether it occurs around a dinner table, a private office, or a public arena
  • the writers for hope and justice–in blog, book and op-ed pieces, who keep calling me to Live Into Hope
  • the preacher who faithfully speaks the truth in love–transparently, courageously, in spite of slings and arrows of cranks and critics
  • the children who remain delighted with Halloween, bugs and dogs and soccer games, no matter the weather–political or meteorological
  • and, after Mr. Rogers, the helpers, the ones who see what needs doing and do it, after calamity, after tragedy, in ordinary time.

I am so grateful to be aware of the saints who course around me like a stream of mercy never ceasing, even as I am grateful for the saints who have gone on ahead–who saw in me things I could not see, then allowed me to become all I was meant to be. I am grateful for the saints who always allowed the Light in, no matter the cracks in everything that I could see, without “spiritual bypass,” without rigidity and judgmentalism, without giving up. I intend to be one too!

 

Christmas Joy!

25 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in beauty, Christmas, earth, gratitude, joy, Light

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Anne Sexton proclaims that there is Joy in all! What more evidence can there be than the blossoming of five irises, with at least five to come amid the long-desired rainfall that appeared in these last days of Advent! Christmas comes replete with tidings of comfort and Joy in the arrival of the Baby Jesus, who at this celebrated moment is only a hope, a possibility and a dream! And I have done all that I can, both to make my beloved ones comfortable and Joyful, and to enter into the Joy myself, sometimes with mixed success. Yet the signs of Hope throughout Advent have kept pushing me to stay awake to the places and ways which, in the words of C, S. Lewis, “…cheerfulness keeps breaking in!”

The signs and the blooms of Joy on this day are everywhere–children singing loudly, even on key, the old Christmas carols with open hearts and wide eyes; thoughtful and prophetic pastors who don’t settle for the same old/same old messages and routine; caring friends who acknowledge my limitations this year, and come round in message or person anyway; posts from those who are feeding the hungry, expanding their giving on behalf of the vulnerable, writing and marching for both justice and mercy for the little ones.

Yet, many among my acquaintances want to make sure that I know that there are many for whom Joy is not readily accessible, and I am deeply aware of that. Hospitalizations, freak accidents, sudden losses, fractures of personal connections that can’t seem to heal, all make Joy a slippery commodity. And the “weary world!” Good grief! what can we say to the callousness, the arrogance, the brutality and the self-absorption that makes up the Slough of Despond through which we are muddling these days!

I submit once again the Joy–the Joy that is heralded by the angels–is not connected to the era in which we live, the location we inhabit, our status within or without families, even our body’s frailty. It is a gift from the Holy One, reflecting that above, around and through all we are created by God. The write of the Psalms remind us that in Holy Presence is fullness of Joy (Psalm 16:11). Two themes go throughout sacred testament–1) Joy is gift of God, even as it was when Christ was born, and 2) humans have the capacity to choose it, even when they are in dire straits and unhappy. I cannot choose for anyone else, but  I can make it my aim in my quest to keep the Light shining to choose joy. Karl Barth says, ” Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.”

And so on this Christmas Day I again commit myself to choosing and practicing Joy–in the healing process my body is in, in the disappointment in what people do and don’t do, among the miasma of doomsday prognosticators–Joy because in Holy Presence is fullness of joy, and Christmas comes to tell me that the Christ will never leave or forsake. That belief and ground in Joy is what keeps me centered when I am called to lobby for mercy for the poor, to protest injustice for the displaced, to advocate for those who do not have the privilege I have as a white, heterosexual person with education. .

Joy to the world…God has come and given me power to share and spread that Joy!

 

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The Turn of the Year

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in beauty, body, creation, grace, gratitude, Mindfulness, Mystery, paying attention, presence

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Two years ago as the season turned from summer to fall, I was driving through Colorado and northern New Mexico, and saw the stunning harbingers of the season in the forests of aspens.

plazaresort

Last year as the summer became fall I was on the west coast of Florida to see my children, the beauty of a completely different order, serenity of a different hue and promise.

These summer and fall seasons I have felt sidelined from the turning of the season because of surgery and recovery. I watch as the children go back to school through my front window. I follow the many adventures of my friends and colleagues as they take their sojourns to exciting or exotic locations. I notice that committees and kick-off events are happening without me. Since here in Southern California there are not critical changes in the weather, I look up our current predictions for the day, all usually well within the temperate zone, which tell me that Fall has come.

But my focus is here where I am, with the resources that I have this moment, looking over the place where I have been planted.

backyardlabyrnth

It is a lovely place, a place of stability that I have been given to savor and to share, even as the world turns. It has many moments of deep stillness, a capacity to invite and enjoy host of beloved ones or just one. I have a window to the street and another window to the sunrise. Many birds visit, along with our dog, the squirrels and the occasional unwelcome possum. I live in God’s world, as well as God’s season, God’s time, God’s rhythm. I have been reminded again in this season of relative confinement that it is all Grace, and that the only appropriate response to Grace is gratitude–for bringing me safe this far–in Love, in Beauty, in Joy. So let the season turn–in me, around me!

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A Simple Song

14 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in beauty, blessing, gratitude, listening, presence, singing

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Too much happening to create complex songs. Singing in snatches from the x-ray machine, the waiting room, the middle pew, the far bedroom, the backyard; but the singing must continue! “Sing a simple song,” writes Leonard Bernstein in his Mass.

Simple songs this week:

“Safe am I, in the shelter of God’s love…”

“Bless the beasts and the children…”

“Wait for the Lord..”

“…lost in wonder, love and praise.”

“You have called me by name, and I am yours.”

“Loving God, here I am…”

And so I keep singing–a little off-key, a little shakily, but singing nevertheless.

Bernstein also added the line, “Make it up as you go along…God loves a simple song.” This week my songs will take place inside me with a neighbor, with a visiting friend, with a line-up of doctors and other care-givers, probably with hospital staff, with family and friends far and near by media of various kinds, but the song must go on in me–for my sake, for the sake of those I love, for the world’s sake, and for God’s sake

Singing a simple song:

 

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