“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.” —Rumi Like big sweaters and soft scarves on a chilly fall morning, I am finding a return to a regular practice of gratitude to be fortifying against internal chills.
Gratitude List: 1. One small boy submitted a cello piece he wrote, to the York Symphony Orchestra Song Writing Contest for students. He received a call from the director yesterday that he won an honorable mention. I’m so happy that his hard work received some recognition. 2. Stories. Grit. Resilience. Resolve. 3. The small sounds of morning. The little water fountain, a boy shuffling through pages in the next room. Small cat squeaks and mews of greeting. 4. Advocates. 5. A warm robe and slippers.
Gratitude List: 1. The play, while it was absolutely marvelous, is over. I only ushered, and I am exhausted. My son the sound engineer is more tired than I, and I am sure the actors are working on a deficit. It’s going to be a gentle week in my classroom, I think. 2. Fall color. The maple trees are on fire. 3. Listening ears. 4. Challenge. I am trying to lean into the challenges, and accept what they will teach me. Does this get harder with age? Or am I just in a phase of comfort-seeking? In my dream last night, I was afraid to scale a large rock, but when it came to it, I scrambled up without effort. I will carry that sense of personal empowerment with me. 5. Slow and steady wins the race. That’s more of an exhortation than a gratitude. So personal exhortations will be my fifth gratitude. When I find myself in a negative self-talk loop, I’ll add exhortations. You’ve got this, Grrrrl.
May we walk in Beauty!
(Isn’t that “h” in exhaustion and exhortation an interesting bit of extra and perhaps unheeded breathiness? I do like it. Say exhaustion with the “h” and it has a nice helpful exhale in the middle. Exhale–that’s an “h” that definitely gets pronounced. It’s almost onomatopoetic: It sounds like what it is. And the almost enunciated “h” in exhortation is fortifying. Try saying that one in the word, and you’re ready to conquer that coming challenge. Remember to breathe!)
Gratitude List: 1. The way that rages and shocks and personal affronts can burn up and burn out, leaving crystal clear resolve–and a little bit of empathy–in their wake. 2. Watching my children become ever more themselves. 3. Sunrise: Magenta and indigo clouds, and a tiny peep of aquamarine sky. 4. Beauty all around. 5. Resolve.
Gratitude List: 1. How dreams and half-dreams bring clarity. 2. A low-impact day today. Juniors and Seniors are busy. My other students will mostly write and read quietly. 3. People who speak the truth, who aren’t swayed by money and power, who stand between the powers and the vulnerable. 4. Sweater weather. 5. Sometimes people who are blissfully unaware of the wound you are wearing give you exactly the words necessary to make it bearable.
I think this is going to sound vague and smug and self-serving. I think my writing here and on social media is so often heart-on-my-sleeve, but this is more raw, more personal, more sulky, and yes, more vague, too. It’s a thing I want to talk about without talking about it. Do you ever have those experiences?
I’m dealing with some resentment and rage right now. I’m used to experiencing outrage on behalf of others. It sometimes feels like it’s become one of my defaults in recent years. Less frequently do I feel outrage on behalf of myself, and I don’t know exactly where to feel it, but here it is. It’s been plopped right into my lap. I think I have become really good at being reasonable about other people’s attitudes and behaviors toward me, so when I feel deeply and personally attacked about something that really matters to me, I have to take hours to process, to sort out what is mine, and what is truly cause for outrage. It’s a slow burn, rather than a quick blaze.
I don’t want to feed the fire by giving it air. Perhaps it will become the source of poetry and story, and I can give it a voice that way. Meanwhile, I think I need to re-start my Gratitude Practice, get back to essentials, take care of my own house so I don’t set fire to the houses of others.
Gratitude List: 1. A voice. Whether it’s a whisper, a shout, an echo, a web of sound, a single word, an avalanche of analysis: Give voice to your voice. Do not let anyone take it away from you. Boost the voices of others. Amplify the signal. 2. The ones who stand in the gap, who speak out for justice for those who are oppressed, who fight for the survival of the planet, who put people above greed and money. 3. The turning. Like the turning of the season to autumn, the world is turning. Like the transition from labor to birth, the world is groaning. From the fire comes new life. May we stand in solidarity with those who are midwifing the new thing into being. 4. Three cats in the house. 5. Cool weather and warm clothes. This is a not a metaphor. This is a metaphor.
Friends I met on my walk yesterday: 1. Crow. Crow reminds me to get the wide perspective, to take on the adventure that any wind offers, to speak my mind. Crows don’t take heed for nothing. 2. Dogbane. Dogbane reminds me to be resourceful, to take note of the helpers who are always present, and to spin: cord, stories, prayers. . . 3. Deer. She ran across Schmuck Road, causing an SUV to brake. She reminds me to pause. She reminds me to love myself unconditionally, to live from the heart, to listen. 4. Monarch. He reminds me of resilience, how fragility and strength are not mutually exclusive. He reminds me to always look for beauty in everything. 5. Scarlet Pimpernel. A tiny five-petaled scarlet flower found in the grasses. When I was in college, I watched the old black and white movie The Scarlet Pimpernel, about a French dandy who uses disguises to rescue aristocrats condemned to the guillotine. What I took away from the movie is the importance of resisting the machines vengeance and death-dealing. Be surprising. Pop up wherever you’re needed.
Things That Made Me Happy Today (Another way to say Gratitude): 1. The chenille bedspread. It’s so comforting to snuggle up under it. 2. My Best Bird, the Oriole, flitting in and out of the honeysuckle vines all morning. 3. The holler is filled with the scent of honeysuckle. 4. Reading Bud, Not Buddy with the kid before he headed off to school this morning. 5. Completing the grading for four of my six classes. Only two more to go! 6. Talking on the phone with Sarah this morning. 7. The way the sun dapples the pathway the deer have made in the bosque across the stream. 8. How Ellis hums to himself wherever he is, like his dad.
Gratitude List: 1. Dreaming of crows. The way poet/priestesses unpack the images. Snuggling my shadows. 2. Today I had so many opportunities to do my WORK. Teaching is my vocation, and I love so much about it, but the best thing about it is that it lets me do my Work. It includes tears and hugs and hard conversations and so much self-reflection. 3. Curiosity. When people get curious about each other. Curiosity is a fine engineer, building bridges of gossamer web and light across chasms. But stronger bridges than you can imagine. 4. This fine boy of mine, who keeps being ahead of himself in so many ways. Perhaps what I mean to say is that he is ahead of my perceptions. Or that he grows into whatever space he enters. With grace and thoughtfulness. . .and curiosity (there it is again). He leaves a stage of childhood behind tonight at his eighth grade graduation. 5. Cool breezes. This means exactly what it says, because my room is hot as a sauna. But then it means more than that because your poems and your wisdom and your presence in the world are cool breezes to me, my friends.
Some trees develop friendships, they say, filling out their branches on the outer edges, criss-crossing the air between them with a fine hatch of lighter branches, creating two halves of a single crown.
When they took down the old poplar, seventy years old and ninety feet tall, and rot-wood spreading from its heart, half the sky in the hollow was revealed, its other half still obscured by sycamore, now lone and lopsided, missing half a crown.
Beneath the drive, buckled now by poplar’s knees, are their roots still entwined?
Gratitude List: 1. Green grass, blue sky, puffy white clouds, and pink trees. 2. The children playing outside together 3. Serendipity and synchronicity 4. Traffic was a breeze this afternoon. (I know this one seems petty, but it’s a really big deal to me. On a good day, I can get to school in 25-30 minutes. The ride home can top 45.) 5. The water is back on. We have not had water since Friday when the pump failed. The plumber is now my hero, and I told him so.
After all is said and done, when you’ve won the battle, when you catch your breath and stretch your fingers to the sun,
will you still believe in all the words and songs that led you to your path? Will you remember all the guides who walked beside you in the lonesome days?
Will you praise the small coincidences of the wayside trees that brought you comfort, and the sort of incidental shining stones that made a trail for you to follow?
After the dust has settled, after the room has stopped spinning, after the dice have rolled the magic number, will you stumble onward blindly
in the noonday glare, or will you pause and rest a moment, give a knowing glance toward the river and the willows, the pebbles and the flaming trees of spring?
Will you sing a grateful poem to the day? Will you kneel? Will you build an altar? Will you dance? Will you pray?
Gratitude List: 1. Phoebe calling 2. Bluebird muttering 3. Fixing things 4. Water 5. Poeming
Mockingbird Chronicles 