“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” – Brother David Steindl-Rast From [[Belonging]]: > I highly recommend taking a moment at the end of every day to write a list of five to ten things you are grateful for. At first, a gratitude practice may feel forced—and making a daily list, arduous and pointless. You may find yourself only grateful for a piece of chocolate, or a cuddle with an animal friend, and it’s tempting to weigh these small luxuries against the many other hours in which you found no gratitude. But if you keep a discipline to the writing of these lists, your attention throughout the day will gravitate towards beauty as you search for things worthy of mention. Your lists will grow longer—but more importantly, it is the subtle shift in your way of seeing that will transform your life. > > Gratefulness brings our awareness not only to what is beautiful, but to what we are excluding from our concept of beauty. In this way, gratitude is a great mentor in the practice of belonging. > > There will of course be clear highlights in a day, moments in which the fullness of our gratitude naturally gathers, but through the practice we come to see that poetry lives in ordinary places. We may suddenly realize the service our teapot has so cheerfully provided for us, offering its loyalty to the steeping and good keeping of our tea without question. We may be struck then with the lack of tenderness with which we have washed it. Or perhaps we notice for the first time the subtle music fish roe makes when it snaps in our teeth and we can’t believe all the senseless conversation we’ve made over sushi, missing it completely. Or maybe there is a brief month in spring when the cottonwoods release their intoxicating perfume and it’s not until winter that we miss the weeks we neglected to climb the hill to breathe it in. > > The act of gratitude is one of the great acts of remembership. Whether through prayer, ritual, poetry, or song, gratitude solidifies our relationship with the living mystery. It rejoins us to the intangible wholeness from which we feel disconnected. As we remember ourselves to the holy in nature, we are forging our own belonging. > > Gratitude is also a form of forgiveness. Things must be respectfully thanked before they will release us. After years of keeping a gratitude list I call Beautiful Things, I would find oddly difficult things like pain, loss, and even conflict making their way onto my top ten. In my practice of yesness, which is the funny little word I use to describe the discipline of affirming whatever arises, the lines began to blur between beauty and pain, between crisis and opportunity. The more curious I became about those troublemakers, the more I began to see them as Rumi did in “The Guest House,” as “guides from beyond” who were “clearing me out for some new delight.” As long as I was resisting them, they hung around and became more threatening. But the moment I treated them honourably, even moving into appreciation for them, they would open the door to unexpected pleasure. > > We reclaim our membership in the divine family of things by remembering that the language of appreciation is our mother-tongue. To sink down into the fullness of even a single moment is to become aware of all the helpful conditions that are enabling our well-being in every given moment. Joseph Campbell’s famous saying, “Follow your bliss,” is not an irresponsible phrase that ignores the pain of life, but a reminder to also receive pleasure and contentment, even in the depths of suffering. > > As we pay respectful gratitude for the jewels of beauty strewn throughout a day, pleasure begins to reach and flow through us. We become more generous of spirit. Not simply in the sense of giving things away to others, but as a demeanour. Like an open door to the divine, pleasure is an invitation to joy, that it may live more fully in our lives. Breathe into the fullness of your expanded self and consider that what presents itself as fear may actually be exhilaration. As your future approaches you, worry less how it may receive you and say a prayer instead for your becoming approachable. > > Recognize the invisible hands that guide you, the breath that breathes you, the walls and roof that keep cold from chilling you, the water that magically springs from your taps, the long line of ancestors whose every step made your incarnation possible. You belong to these holy helpers. You have undisputed membership. In your recognition of this wealth, your own life cannot help but become an offering back to that which feeds you. Chief Oren Lyons, Listening to Natural Law, Spiritual Ecology: > All of our ceremonies are thanksgiving. We have thanksgiving twelve months a year. In the spring when the sap runs through the trees, we have ceremonies, thanksgiving. For the maple, chief of the trees, leader of all the trees, thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for all the trees. Planting thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for the strawberries, first fruit. Thanksgiving for the bees, the corn, green corn, thanksgiving. Harvest thanksgiving. Community, process, chiefs, clan mothers, everybody is there. Families are there. How do you inspire respect for something? By giving thanks, by doing it. > > We have to do that. We have to be thankful. That’s what we said. Two things were told to us: To be thankful, so those are our ceremonies, ceremonies of thanksgiving. We built nations around it, and you can do that, too. And the other thing they said was enjoy life. That’s a rule, a law—enjoy life—you’re supposed to. I know you can only do as much as you can do, and then when you do that, you’re supposed to get outside and enjoy life. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Do the best you can but get at it.