On further reflection...

I wrote yesterday's post about the need to create a memory every day at the very end of my day. After I shut down my computer, my head kept spinning in different directions about the topic.  

I've fallen off the daily gratitude journaling in recent weeks (months?) but I had the thought that gratitude journaling has a common purpose.  By taking time to reflect at the end of the day to identify things for which I am grateful, I also allow myself to remember each of those occurrences.  The remembering has the impact of creating a memory.  Actually, it has the impact of creating several memories--exactly however many things about which I journal.  Then I don't have to worry any longer about wasted days.  Abundantly grace-filled days flow naturally, every day.

At the same moment, I recollected that when I was writing posts for this blog daily, I was also creating memories--ones particularly valuable to me.  The purpose of this blog has been to serve as a shared platform for me to wrestle with the questions that I encounter on the path of my intention to live consciously.  

On tests of motivation, I consistently score highest for learning and growing and making a contribution. (I've never understood being motivated about getting stuff.) On the days that I write in this blog, I am learning and growing, and, for those who receive value from the posts, I am making a contribution.  From my perspective, that is the stuff from which real memories are made.  I am receiving a gift of value and giving one.  

Last night I restarted recording gratitude in my journal again.  I was sure to include that I wrote in my blog, and I learned something about myself.  Furthermore, I had an entry for the side of the journal in which I record gifts that I've given.

Beauty Many Places

Twenty years ago when I first left Oregon to move to North Carolina, the first thing my friends would ask on my monthly business trips back to the West Coast was "When are you moving back?"  I'd laugh, and, to their incredulity, I'd say "Never." They just couldn't imagine I could move from such a beautiful place as Oregon. There certainly were many beautiful places in Oregon. AND...North Carolina also had many beautiful spots.

When I left the Midwest for Oregon in my twenties, friends there also questioned my sanity when I left "God's Country," the name many Hoosiers call Indiana. There were many beautiful places in Indiana and Ohio, where I'd lived during two college years.

I've driven across the United States several times and on each trip I've discovered beauty in almost every state. In trips abroad I've found beauty in many spots there as well. Despite what my friends in Indiana might believe, if God created special places of beauty, he/she was most generous with them.

I am writing most of this post in Wilmington, Delaware, where I've just spent a lovely day. The gem in the crown of this city is certainly the riverfront, and as I think of beautiful places I've visited, they've often had focal points of water.

Wilmington's Riverfront includes several aspects of others in one setting. It is beautifully landscaped along a wide brick and concrete path, which is actively used by runners, walkers, and cyclists. Yesterday I took the water taxi from one end of the city to the other and back again. Like San Antonio, Wilmington's riverfront hosts several restaurants which were packed and bubbled forth with music and laughter...and cheers for World Cup goals from one. Crewers rowed their skulls along the river.

Wilmington also hosts some bits of human history. Harriett Tubman had led over 700 slaves to freedom using her Underground Railroad which ended in Wilmington.  During World War II, Wilmington fostered freedom in a different way: it was the largest producer of US Navy ships in the country.  What had once been shipyards now hosts the Riverfront path I have walked several times since arriving.

One of the unique characteristics here, though is the "urban wildlife preserve." Behind meticulously tended landscapes are wilder sanctuaries throughout, culminating in several hundred acres of preserved marshland at the end of development.

As I've reflected on this and lots of other places of beauty, I started to use the word "extraordinary," but "extraordinary" implies out of the ordinary.  Beautiful places so abound in our world that they are not out of the ordinary. Perhaps that is a problem. We've become so accustomed to the beauty around us that it has become ordinary, when it should quite rightly be remarkable. The brooks and streams, wild flowers, trees, and every other creation ought to take our breath away...daily, even hourly.  Sadly, most of the time it passes unnoticed.

If we would just notice what is working, we might also notice people cooperating and collaborating.  Ever notice when someone is attempting to open a door with their hands full (and sometimes when they aren't) that another person often opens the door.  Or, ask for directions in a public place, and several people within earshot will add pieces.  Comedian Jon Stewart once described that we know how to cooperate by explaining that cars making their way onto a freeway alternate methodically without direction.  The way that we cooperate and collaborate is a thing of beauty, which we seem to ignore until it stops working.

I've written about gratitude many times in this blog, but today I am wondering what it would be like if we all noticed both the natural beauty around us and the generally cooperative spirit of humanity.  Maybe that is where the gratitude journaling helps: it forces us to sit and remember things of beauty--natural and human--around us.  But, I think real magic might happen if we focused our intention on noticing beauty in the moment...oh, what a beautiful world it could be.


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Gratitude

Gratitude has been on my heart lately.  A friend sent me an article today on gratitude. In the email exchange that followed, I was reminded for the 1000th or 10,000th time that, whenever my life is off kilter, one thing will instantly begin to right the ship: renewing my gratitude practice.

Gratitude practice.  Something I do, over and over again so that I get better at it.  In those off-kilter periods, it is easy to be dragged into what isn't working in my life.  Gratitude turns that all around.  Gratitude implies that I focus on what is working.  Soon I notice that more and more is working.  This is the part I really don't understand: why do I stop?  Or even, when do I stop?  I don't usually realize that I've stopped until things are off-kilter.  Then I have a palm-against-the head "Duh!" moment: I had stopped practicing gratitude.

Almost 20 years ago now, I received an act of pure grace--a gift that we receive (often attributed to God or Higher Power) that we didn't ask for.  It just shows up.  Writer Scott Peck used to say that grace was like grits in the south.  Before the homogenization of food by chains across the country, travelers through the south would receive grits on their plates three meals a day--they were just added to every plate.  I remember receiving my unordered grits as child from the north.  First question: what in the world is that?  Then: I didn't order that!  To which the incredulous waitress in starched yellow and white gingham said, "Everyone gets grits, but we don't charge for them."  That is grace.  A gift that we didn't ask for, just shows up, and doesn't cost anything.

Anyway, about my act of grace.  I'd bumped into a friend in a parking lot.  She told me about a weekend seminar that she'd attended on gratitude.  I was curious.  She reached into her car and pulled out a packaged set of cassette tapes.  (I did say this was 20 years ago.)  She told me to listen to them.  Knowing I was at a transition in my life, she wished for me a breakthrough similar to the one she'd had.

Less than a day later, I was awakened in the most excruciating pain I could imagine.  It was the start of a six-week battle with a raging infection that would eventually cause my neck to break.  I literally couldn't get out of bed.  Throughout the whole six weeks, my small boom box sat on my bed. (Did I say it was 20 years ago?)  I'd pop in a tape, push the start button, and almost as soon as the tape started, I'd doze off until the end of the tape would pop, signaling that is was finished and waking just long enough to start the cycle again.

I have no idea how many times I heard those tapes, but over and again, I'd turn the tape, push start, and fade away.  On a subliminal level though, the messages were sinking in.  There were three keys that the speaker described that, if done for 30 days, promised to transform the listener's life:

1. Don't complain...about anything...for 30 days.  (It's rainy today: a complaint.  It's warm in here: a complaint.  Couldn't that waiter give us better service: a complaint.) NONE for 30 days.  Whew!  That was a big one.
2. Record and count the "gifts" you receive every day.  (Someone lets me in front of them in traffic: a gift.  Someone opens the door: a gift.  The letter carrier hands me my mail before finishing putting other mail in mail slots: a gift.)
3. Finally, record and count the "gifts" that you give every day. (Same as above except in reverse: letting someone in front in traffic, opening a door, leaving the barista a tip, etc.)

Easy as that. Oh, one more thing, if you complain at any point, even Day 29, you have to start the 30 days over again.  I've always had to start over at least once.

So there I lay, in excruciating pain and unable to move out of bed.  But, I wanted to try it.  I pulled out my journal.  How could I get through this pain and communicate with my doctors without complaining?  How could I give gifts when I could hardly move?  I tried, though, and I started over several times. This is the practice that I embark on anew whenever my life is out of sorts.  For years, and several times each year, I practice. An amazing phenomenon occurs every time:  I have never been able to give more gifts than I've received in any day.  Even on days when I set out to do nothing but give gifts, at the end of the day, I'd received more.  Give 10: get 20.  Give 20: get 50...and so on. Never fails!

One creation myth is that God created humans because she/he couldn't be happy without someone to give gifts to.  We were created to receive gifts.  Our reason for being is to receive gifts. Gratitude is the practice of focusing our attention on the gift of receiving.  That's what I know in my heart today!


NOTE: I believe in giving credit where it is due, but I truly don't remember the speaker on the tapes, but if any of you do, please let me know.  I'd love to publish it.