A little humor to mark Day 10 – this image was posted by a friend on my Facebook news feed a few months ago:
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image courtesy of www.weknowawesome.com
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When we think about saying grace before a meal – offering gratitude for the everyday, holy miracles like food on our plates and the relative safety and security of our lives – it lends a wider perspective to gratitude. To really reach deep within ourselves for this gratitude practice, we can’t just work with the things that are happy and wonderful in our own lives. We need to draw a wider circle, both within us and outside of ourselves.
The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron says: “Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.” Tonight, or sometime during this day, say grace, aloud or to yourself. Do it intentionally, perhaps at mealtime, or at another time you often find yourself grateful for an everyday miracle. Offer thanks not just for the good you receive, but also for the struggle that may have made it possible. Begin to draw the circle of wholeness within your gratitude practice, and explore what thoughts and feelings come up for you in response.
- Lee
Our family's grace at dinner each night:
ReplyDeleteThank you for this food and then chance to share it together. We pray for and miss the friends who are not here to share it with us. We offer our thanks to those we know and don't know that touch us in ways that we will never see. May we touch others in small ways, too...
Namaste
Today I am "praying" with music again.
ReplyDeleteToday's prayer is Thank You by Led Zeppelin.
http://youtu.be/u1z4vkPWkLQ
It reminds me of the person who has stood by me even in the worst of times when everyone else turned away.
"If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me."
Yes sometimes good things we are grateful for are tinged with a downside. Take the gorgeous lantern image at the end of the video: downside is that all those burnt lantern remnants land somewhere, known to cause problems for farmers and livestock. But then something that seems totally crappy can have an upside, or silver lining if you will: leaving Pittsburgh today I had a flat tire - it took 4hrs and $400 to get me back on the road and my 5hour drive. At first I was in a funk, thinking about the expense and delay, but then I began to think, at least it didn't happen on the turnpike. At least I didn't have a blowout or accident. At least it didn't happen at night (I was by myself). An off duty cop stopped to see if I was OK. And there were decent people working on a Sunday who got me off the road and to the tire center. Thinking about the good things about this experience improved my outlook and increased my gratitude. That's what my prayer was about this evening.
ReplyDeleteLet me just say if I haven't already how much I really enjoy the music aspect of this daily experience! When I listened to this song (one of my favorites) and watched the video (which somehow I had never actually seen!), it was exactly what I needed.
ReplyDeleteSo, thank you, Lee! :)
I've been listening to a lot of Indigo Girls music again lately, and one of the songs that I know I listen to a lot when I'm struggling with the hard stuff is "All That We Let In" When I'm struggling and in a place of darkness and having trouble seeing that everything is Holy now, I often sing this line from the song over and over....
"You may not see it when it's sticking to your skin
But we're better off for all that we let in" (All That We Let In by the Indigo Girls)