Gratitude on a Thursday

"You must appreciate...and engage your time in mentioning and thanking the True One. You must live in the utmost happiness. If any trouble or vicissitude comes into your lives, if your heart is depressed on account of health, livelihood or vocation, let not these things affect you. They should not cause unhappiness, for Baha'u'llah has brought you divine happiness. He has prepared heavenly food for you; He has destined eternal bounty for you; He has bestowed everlasting glory upon you. Therefore, these glad tidings should cause you to soar in the atmosphere of joy forever and ever. Render continual thanks unto God so that the confirmations of God may encircle you all." ~'Abdu'l-Baha ~

I am feeling grateful for a good number of things today. So much so that even though it is not gratitude Monday, I just have to share!

When I woke up this morning my dear friend and personal trainer extraordinaire Pascale had just posted this awesome blog post about gratitude AND tea. Two of my all time favourite things in one blog post. What could be better? Starting my day reading her blog just got me started on the right foot, and I just *knew* it was going to be a good day.

I spent my morning volunteering on Soil Born Farm, which today meant raking enormous quantities of leaves into piles, raking the piles onto tarps, pulling the tarps across the farm to our leaf mountain, and piling them all up in a central location to be turned into mulch. The sky was blue. The sun was shining. The leaves were crunchy beneath our feet, and there were birds out in the trees and flitting here and there from treetop to treetop. After so long of no physical activity, it felt really, really good to do some good physical work outside in the winter sunshine. After we were done raking we pulled the remaining beets, kohlrabi, turnips and chard out of one of the beds in the youth garden. It felt SO good to get my hands back into the soil. There is something about harvesting food that is pure magic. I feel it in my body and my heart. Guy and I ate lunch outside in the sunshine. It is slightly chilly now, but once the sunshine started warming us up I realized what a blessing it is to still be able to eat a home-cooked vegetarian meal outside on an organic farm in the middle of winter.

This afternoon my father had the first of his music compositions performed at a concert at Sac State. It was a five-part piece for a woodwind quintet, and it was lovely. He has worked so hard this year teaching all day and going to school at night, and then spending every free moment when we was not at school or work composing music that I rarely see him. But tomorrow afternoon he has his final concert, and then he is done! He will have his Master's degree in music composition! I am really proud of him. He has composed some tremendously beautiful pieces of music this year, and I am looking forward to hearing them be performed tomorrow.

Have you looked up recently? Why don't you take a moment now and go outside and check out the moon. She is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l right now friends. Crisp, wide-faced, heading towards being full, but not quite. She is begging to be admired, so get thyself outside and admire!

I am also feeling grateful for the quote at the top of this email, and for the message it contains. I have been reading it every morning lately. Today I began my day by reading it, and thought I could do with reading it again before I head to bed tonight because I received another "thank you for applying for this position" letter today, and have been trying to re-orient my perspective and see it as another door closing so that I get one step closer to the one that is going to open if I keep looking and applying and staying positive. Yes. I am definitely grateful for the reminder that I should not allow external circumstances over which I have no control get me down.

On the way home from dinner out with my parents tonight we drove through a neighbourhood called the fabulous 40s. It is one of the wealthiest areas of the city, and it is famous for its gorgeous Christmas light decorations, so during the month of December people drive up and down through the streets to enjoy the magical light displays. Most of the trees on the streets are wrapped in lights. Strands of coloured and white lights arc over the road, creating a tunnel of fairy lights to drive through. Christmas trees glow inside people's living rooms, and every window and eave is draped with lights. My favourites are the strands of white icicle lights hanging from the eaves of some homes. They give off a soft, pretty glow, but are not too over the top. Driving up and down the streets of the fabulous 40s at this time of year is like entering another world. One that makes me feel ever so slightly like I have driven into a Disney movie, and any moment a prince is going to suddenly appear, take my hand, and lead me off down the street of lights as fireworks go off in the clear sky above. It is surreal, but it is also fun, and tonight I found myself feeling grateful for the light displays that make this season so lighthearted and dreamlike.

How about you, friends? What are you feeling grateful for on this clear, crisp winter's night?

The joy of clouds

I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and saw clouds! If I had said this a couple of years ago, with as much enthusiasm as I am saying it now, my friends in Canada would have looked at me with a perplexed expression on their faces. But I have not actually seen ONE cloud in months. Not one. Hence my delight today that although there is blue sky, the sun has yet to burn through the clouds, which in my hopeful opinion, is an indication that the chance of rain at some point in the next few weeks is that much greater!

I met a man at a conference I attended this summer in San Francisco who paints clouds. That is his life and his love. Clouds. I was intrigued, and spent a good deal of time talking with him. His name is Chris Page, and he lives in Belchertown (what a name, eh? ;-), MA. After Chris and I were done talking and before I moved on, he handed me a card. On one side of it was his personal information. On the other side were clouds, and this:

"Find an individual cloud in the sky. Acquire it in your mind as part of your art collection. Watch your acquisition until it is gone from view. In your mind let go of your acquisition." 

The conference was about changing our patterns of thought. He was challenging people to think about how they see the world differently using clouds as his tool for perception altering. Are there clouds in the sky outside where you are? Have you stopped to watch them lately? I used to lie on my back on the cool marble front porch of my house as a child in Cyprus with my friends, while eating ice cream. While we ate we could watch the clouds, pointing to dogs, cats, cars, birds, and all sorts of other things that passed by in the clouds, before morphing into something else, or drifting past completely.

I don't know why as adults we stop taking the time to lie on our backs and watch the clouds. Maybe you do. I should speak for myself. I know I don't do it nearly enough these days. Same with the stars and the moon. When was the last time you took a blanket out in the back yard or into a park, lay on your back, and just watched the stars?

I am feeling grateful for the clouds today. I am also feeling grateful for the cool breeze that is moving in my window -- a rarity for the past few months, and a clear indication that we are definitely headed into Fall. I am also grateful that the poet Jane Hirshfield is giving a reading tonight two hours from where I live. I am hoping to drive down there to hear her tonight.

This morning when I woke up I came across this video of an incredible woman named Bel Kaufman who is 100 years old who is a comedian and educator, and just completely set aflame with the spirit of life and joy. Check out this clip. I guarantee it will make you smile!

I am about to head out to the funeral of a friend's husband, another friend's father, and another's brother. I never met him, but his wife, daughter, sister and niece are all in the women's devotional group that takes place in my living room twice a month. Deaths can be incredibly sad times, but when I saw this man's wife last week, right after he passed away, and looked into her eyes, I saw such brightness, love and clarity there. I told her what I saw, and she smiled and told me that her heart has never felt more open, because with her partner gone from this physical world, she has been looking around her at her children, her sister in law, her niece, and even her religious community and realizing that every joy in her life was brought into her life by her husband. That he gave her so much beauty and joy, and that all of that she will have with her forever. I teared up listening to her. How hard is it to let go...how much easier to cling to the person you have just lost, and yet what better way to honour her husband than to celebrate all the joy he has brought into her life?

The clouds are slowly dispersing, as I write, and the sunshine again falling down among the pink blossoms covering the branches of the bush outside my window. I am feeling grateful for the opportunity to enjoy the clouds; to watch them as they disappear, and to let go of my acquisition, as Chris put it. The joy is still here, so really nothing has been lost.

Whatever you fill your Monday with, I invite you to take the time to sit quietly and notice something that brings you joy, take it in, watch it, enjoy it, and then let it go, while holding onto the joy that it brought you. Leave a comment if you feel like sharing your experience with this. I wish you all a beautiful gratitude Monday, friends!

Gratitude Mondays

I have been meaning to write this post since Friday, but was in need of some time away from the computer screen, so I practiced self compassion, and took a digital sabbatical over the weekend,  indulging instead in a number of other delicious things including yoga in the park, and reading my novel, The Invisible Bridge (Vintage Contemporaries), at the kitchen table, while lounging on the living room couch, curled up with a duvet on the back porch in the late afternoon sunlight, and even out in the garden under the walnut tree. I sipped golden tipped Assam tea and munched on sun dried apricots while I read, and when I got tired of reading at home I grabbed my journal and my novel and headed over to a local coffee house called Old Soul for a hot chai with my friend Dionne and her son Lucas. It was a sublimely relaxing and rejuvenating weekend.

I was reading a blog entry by Karen Walrond about gratitude the other day. She has a blog that I read called Chookoloonks, but she has a number of other gigs, including a page she is writing now for Babble Voices called Bliss Your Heart. Karen is an incredible photographer, so her blog focuses on her gorgeous photos, however her Friday Bliss your heart features focus on gratitude, and what she is grateful for in her life. Scrolling through her entries left me feeling incredibly lighthearted, and I thought to myself--"why don't I have a gratitude day on my blog?" And so here it is. My gratitude day is going to be Monday (officially), but I am hoping that by practicing on Monday I will get better at being more conscious of what I am grateful for every day. I may or may not always include photos, as what I am most interested in is writing, but I am hoping this will create a bit of a domino effect, you know? Make you think to yourself "maybe I should make a gratitude list..." Maybe you should!

Here's my list this week:

1. I am grateful for my dear friend Dionne and her gorgeous son Lucas. I only met Dionne this year, but I already feel like I have known her for years. She is great company; is incredibly inspiring as a mother of a 6-month old baby boy (read: patience and perseverance beyond ANYTHING I have even begun to experience in my life) and an athlete (she runs nine miles every other day....did I mention that she has a 6-month old son? Well she runs those nine miles pushing the little fellow, and she is training for a half marathon)....In addition to inspiring me, Dionne makes me laugh at life; we both love to read novels; we are doing a spiritual study of the Baha'i Ruhi materials together; we pray together; we hit yard sales together, and she is one of the most devoted (and encouraging) readers on my blog (Louise, you are the other one!)

Watching Dionne with Lucas has been teaching me a lot about continuing to do your best, even when you aren't sure how you are going to keep trying. Lucas himself has taught me about joy. He is a non-stop source of it. When he smiles at you, his eyes smile. My entire day shifts on its axis when this little man smiles.

2. Prayers. The ones in my Baha'i prayer book most especially. The ones I whisper in the morning before I start my day, and at the end before I sleep. They bring me back to my true self -- my spiritual reality. It is really good to be reminded at least twice a day.

3. My community. The folks that I go out to breakfast and dinner with. The people who join me for movies. The people I teach children and youth classes alongside. The people I go to the beach to collect pebbles with. The ones I eat ice cream with. The ones I write with. The ones I dance with. The ones I farm with. I cannot imagine this life without them.

4. My writing. I write daily now, and it is such a blessing to be able to put pen to paper. There are few things I love as much as writing. Taking the time to stop and be present with what is around me, and to record its tiniest details.

5. The free yoga in the park classes that I go to on Saturday mornings. Starting my weekend outside under a blue sky with birds singing in the trees around me and the smell of roses in the air is truly incredible. I leave feeling full of joy and energized for my weekend.

6. My volunteer work on a local organic farm. There is really almost nothing that makes me happier than spending the day with my hands in the soil growing and harvesting colourful, healthy food.

7. The women that I do a women's devotional gathering every other week with. I love the level of unity that exists in our group despite the fact that we all come from completely different cultural, ethnic and faith backgrounds.

8. The crunch of the leaves beneath my sandals as I walked to the movie theatre last night in the golden summer light, and the same sound as I headed home again later at night, the trees all lit up from beneath by the yellow streetlights, the starry sky laid out crisp and clear above, and the gushing sound of sprinklers shooting water back and forth in arcs across the lawns on my street. 

9. The sound of semi-eaten walnuts, discarded by careless squirrels, falling from the giant walnut tree in the back garden, hitting our roof with loud thuds like it is hailing golf-balls, and then rolling down the slope of the roof and falling down to the ground. I do not know why, but despite startling me (every. single. time), the sound also makes me smile. August is the month of raining walnuts.

10. The breeze that blows into my bedroom at night while I sleep. Having grown up in Cyprus, where no such breeze blows during the summer, it is incredibly refreshing to sleep with a cool breeze blowing and blowing, and to wake up snuggled up warm with the cool air all around me.

What are you feeling grateful for?