Gratitude Journal

Sunset over Missoula, May 31, 2008

This week has been one of many blessings for me: time on retreat, exciting news from a friend, a birthday and the well-spring of support and kind messages that flowed from all corners of the world, and the birth of new routines in familiar lands. So, without further adieu, I am grateful for:

Rootedness. I remember being utterly stunned by the beauty of Montana one fall evening just after returning from my MA work in Bristol, UK. “Wow, I thought, I had taken all of this for granted before.” And now after yet more adventures far from home, I return again to be astonished by just how good it feels to be here. While Western Montana is objectively probably no more beautiful than much of the world, for me there is a beauty that reaches beyond aesthetics to the core of my being… I look forward to many more journeys ‘out there’ and many more astonished returns.
Mount Sentinel wildflower (5/31/08)
Ritual. I used to think poorly of ritual, considering it “oh, so unevolved.” But I am discovering more and more that ritual plays an amazing role in our lives, giving us grounding and depth. We build human relationships through our shared rituals and we deepen our relationship to the earth as well. Eating has become an important one for me, sharing meals with friends and family as much as possible, getting to know people and our food, connecting with the process of creation.

Some of us, while looking at a piece of carrot, can see the whole cosmos in it, can see the sunshine in it, can see the earth in it. It has come from the whole cosmos for our nourishment.

You may like to smile to it before you put it in your mouth. When you chew it, you are aware that you are chewing a piece of carrot. Don’t put anything else into your mouth, like your projects, your worries, your fear, just put the carrot in…

There are some people who eat an orange but don’t really eat it. They eat their sorrow, fear, anger, past, and future. They are not really present, with body and mind united. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Larger rituals, too, help bring the body and mind together. Just over a month ago I did my second Native American sweat lodge ceremony. Through the heat, the darkness, and the chanting, the ego naturally faded allowing body and mind (or heart and mind) to become one. The message then was loud and clear, “the head is working overtime, the heart is starving, you are off course.”

Last week another ritual, this one a Buddhist Puja, again brought grounding. This time we sat, chanted the refuges and precepts in Pali, then a long English liturgy in call and response with hands folded in prayer mudra along with making offerings (incense and candles) to the Buddha, and finally several mantras in Sanskrit. Again at some point in all of this things just seemed to settle, the mind shut off its chatter, and a sense of wholeness grew within me. This time the message was, “welcome home.”
Deepening self-knowledge. I’ve always known myself as a fairly intelligent and sensitive guy, but lately I have had more and more lessons on how these gifts can get out of balance and become sources of suffering rather than joy. For one, I can rely too much on my head to try to think my way out of difficult situations rather than just sitting with them to see what lesson may come. It’s funny, these are times when meditation is so essential to staying on course, yet because the mind has kicked into overdrive, meditation is its most difficult (and so I find more excuses to avoid it). As for sensitivity, it is wonderful to be able to attune myself to the world around me or my studies fairly quickly. But it can be a curse when the world around me becomes radically out of balance for too long a time.
Balance and creativity. So, as life re-assumes a state of balance for me, I am grateful for the creativity that is beginning to boil up; again seeing so much beauty, composing poetry, settling back into deep thoughts on life and Buddhism, etc.

Hikers and deer on Mount Sentinel. As I sat watching the sunset, one of them passing by said, “I bet you’re in heaven now.” I just smiled and nodded.
Silence. Truly it is golden. Like meditation it sinks into my bones and brings order to life. And like meditation it is easily forgone in the pursuit of other things, with terrible consequences. So now that I have it again, I’m soaking it up and saying THANK YOU.