Something That We Are Still Building

A few references for working with gratitude this week …

* Gratitude is a felt practice. It’s not a cognitive list-making process, nor is it the self-satisfied reassurance that could result from surveying the relative comfort and privilege of our lives. To feel gratitude, we have to pause and allow our subject to emerge, and then we have to train our attention on presence so that our hearts can naturally enter a state of generous appreciation. Rick Hanson calls this installing the trait. We have to feel into it, again and again.

* What keeps us from gratitude? To open to the presence of heart wherein gratitude is abundantly available, we must also open to grief — for they are inextricably bound. We must sense the unreal othering (Tara Brach’s term) of millions of indigenous lives, as well as other, subtler layers of the season: the climate impact of travel and unbridled consumerism, the millions of trees cut down and turkeys slaughtered for the feast, the pain of those for whom the holidays magnify loneliness and loss, our personal fears and anxieties. We have to open our hearts unconditionally if we are to tap into the unspeakable thanks that is the silence beneath all noise.

* First we thought, then we thanked. The word “thank” emerged from the word “think” as follows: the Old English þancian, þoncian "to give thanks, thank, to recompense, to reward," from Proto-Germanic thankōjanan (source also of Old Saxon thancon, Old Norse þakka, Danish takke, Old Frisian thankia, Old High German danchon, Middle Dutch, Dutch, German danken "to thank"), from thankoz "thought; gratitude," from root tong- "to think, feel."

* In Sanskrit, Kritajna is translated as gratitude. Its roots are krita meaning “cultivated” and jna referring to “wisdom,” pointing to the practice of gratitude as a means to cultivate consciousness and wisdom.

* I read yesterday that the Israeli defenses released the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha after detaining him for questioning for two days. At the moment when Mosab was captured, he was walking with his family to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in southern Gaza, for his was one of the fortunate few names on a State Department evacuation list. He was carrying his three year old son, Mustafa, on his shoulders. Here’s one more thing about Mosab Abu Toha: he recently calculated that it would take him 56 years to read all the books in his library, provided he could average reading 80 books per year. Provided he could be alive and reading in his library.

We love what we have, no matter how little,

because if we don’t, everything will be gone. If we don’t,

we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us.

What’s here is something that we are still

building. It’s something we cannot yet see,

because we are a part

of it.

Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we,

we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce

wind, the trees that will give shade

to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.

-Mosab Abu Toha

* Salah Abu Ali, who tends his family’s orchards in a village on the outskirts of Bethlemen, often sleeps beneath the gnarled trunk of Al Badawi, an ancient olive tree. At 4000-5000 years old, Al Badawi is one of the oldest living trees on Earth and still produces nearly 900 pounds of olives every year. This is one definition of love.

* Gumbo. Roasted chicken. Cherry kugel. Apricot rugelach. The jewels are spilling out of the freezer. My husband’s 97 year old Jewish grandmother spent the past month preparing from scratch one dish per day in anticipation of hosting 20 family members for three days in her home. She would have it no other way. It’s been two years since her husband, to whom she was married for 75 years, passed away.

* "I believe that appreciation is a holy thing," Fred Rogers said. Loss and delight thread their way through each of our lives. We can count our days and blessings, and we can also put ourselves in the place to touch awe. We are rooted in an ancient weave and today, unfathomably, we are here. Today, we have breath in our bodies and love is here to be stewarded. Thanks comes from think. Grateful comes from grace. Gratitude is living presence.

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