#Adventword Day 21: Thanks

THE MORNING WALK by Mary Oliver from Long Life:  Essays and Other Writings 
(Da Capo Press)

There are a lot of words meaning thanks.
Some you can only whisper.
Others you can only sing.
The pewee whistles instead.
The snake turns in circles,
the beaver slaps his tail
on the surface of the pond.
The deer in the pinewoods stamps his hoof.
Goldfinches shine as they float through the air.
A person, sometimes, will hum a little Mahler.
Or put arms around old oak tree.
Or take out lovely pencil and notebook and find a few 
touching, kissing words.

Softest of Mornings and The Lifeline of Awareness and Gratitude

Softest of Mornings by Mary Oliver from Long Life:  Essays and Other Writings (DaCapo Press)
Softest of mornings, hello.
And what will you do today, I wonder,
   to my heart?
And how much honey can the heart stand, I wonder,
   before it must break?

This is trivial, or nothing:  a snail
   climbing a trellis of leaves
     and the blue trumpets of flowers.

No doubt clocks are ticking loudly
   all over the world.
I don't hear them.  The snail's pale horns
   extend and wave this way and that
as her fingers-body shuffles forward, leaving behind
   the silvery path of her slime.

Oh, softest of mornings, how shall I break this?
How shall I move away from the snail, and the flowers?
How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?


As I was paging through books looking for a poem for this Mary Oliver Monday  I was struck by this one. And not because it speaks to my experience, as is usually the case with what I usually write about; rather because this morning I hear the clock ticking so I haven't been looking at the leaves.

Instead of my normal oozing into the soft morning, today I jumped out of bed, barely glancing out the window and that only to see if it was raining yet, before making coffee and making my bed (in that order) so I could be at my desk and get an early start on work.  Maybe it's the charged air brought about by the approaching storm that has me humming and vibrating and active this morning. Maybe it's the energy behind some work projects that I want to hold onto and perpetuate this week.  Or maybe it's just the knowledge that the pages of my "to do" notebook are filling up faster than things are being crossed out.  Whatever it is, my focus this morning has been on my desk, not on the world outside my window.

And that got me to thinking about awareness and gratitude.

A friend and I were talking about this subject last week.  We'd both been in dark places recently and were sharing how we could to stop ourselves from sliding back down that slippery slope of self-pity and woe that often ends with a canonball into the pit of despair. He said that he has come to realize that lack of gratitude leads to those dark places.  If he holds in one hand something as simple as the blessing of sight and all that comes along with that, it far outweighs any misery he might be tempted to hold onto with the other.  Opening his eyes for a moment of awareness and gratitude each day have become essential for him.

So this morning I may not have spent time looking out my window yet but I can take a moment to be thankful for what I can see here at my desk.  A  soy candle that smells like cedar wood and pine needles reminds me of the trees when I don't have time to get out and walk among them.  The flame of that candle that I light as I sit down to work is an acknowledgment of the presence of the Holy and the Spirit that animates my work and connects it to something bigger.  Icons of Julian of Norwich, Brigid and Melangell  honor the legacy of wise women who have gone before me and the small stack of books on the corner is a nod to the creativity of contemporary women who inspire me.  The containers of Sharpies behind my computer remind me of a young contemporary woman who inspires me, Malala Yousafzai, and makes me ever the more grateful for the freedom and resources I have so often taken for granted in my own pursuit of knowledge.  And the pink and red apples in my grandmother's old milk glass bowl  . . . well the blessings that come along with that sight are far too numerous even to begin to count.

Mary Oliver Monday - Don't tell the CDC we're starting an epidemic

Mozart, for Example by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)
All the quick notes
Mozart didn’t have time to use
before he entered the cloud boat

are falling now from the beaks
of the finches
that have gathered from the joyous summer

into the hard winter
and, like Mozart, they speak of nothingbut light and delight,

though it is true, the heavy blades of the world
are still pounding underneath.
And this is what you can do too, maybe,

if you live simply and with a lyrical heart
in the cumbered neighborhoods or even,
as Mozart sometimes managed to, in a palace,

offering tune after tune after tune,
making some hard-hearted prince
prudent and kind, just by being happy.


I'm posting this poem in honor of someone who will likely never see it.  I don't know much about him.  I don't know his name or where he lives.  I don't know who his friends or family are.  I don't even know if he has friends or family, although I can't imagine he doesn't.  I don't know if he's gay or straight, partnered or single.  I don't know if he's Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu or Zoroastrian or unaffiliated or other.  

All I know is that just when I needed a shot of positive energy this weekend, there he was, bouncing down Connecticut Avenue by the firehouse in Kensington, beaming at everyone he saw.  He exuded joy and I found myself smiling as I drove past, infected by his contagious smile.  

So thank you, happy-guy-walking-down-the-street with your backpack on.  Today I'll do my best to help spread the epidemic of light and delight, just by being happy.  

In case you need a little motivation and don't have a bouncy guy in a backpack walking down the street to inspire you, here's a 30 second clip from the brilliant movie, Amadeus, of Tom Hulce as Mozart laughing. 

Mary Oliver Monday - A Lot of Images Meaning "Thanks"

THE MORNING WALK by Mary Oliver from Long Life:  Essays and Other Writings
(Da Capo Press)

There are a lot of words meaning thanks.
Some you can only whisper.
Others you can only sing.
The pewee whistles instead.
The snake turns in circles,
the beaver slaps his tail
on the surface of the pond.
The deer in the pinewoods stamps his hoof.
Goldfinches shine as they float through the air.
A person, sometimes, will hum a little Mahler.
Or put arms around old oak tree.
Or take out lovely pencil and notebook and find a few
touching, kissing words.


Or a person, sometimes, will pull out her camera and try to capture moments that inspired such overwhelming feelings of gratitude, perhaps in order to return to those images with a notebook and pencil at a later date, inviting the words to come after they've had some time to simmer. 

That's the work I find I'm doing now so I thought on this Mary Oliver Monday I'd share some images of thanks with you and invite you to share what has you saying, "Thanks," lately.



The resilience of nature
 

Doors opening
 

The survival of ancient wisdom


 




The beauty of perspective
 



Firm footholds on bumpy paths

                     

 



Blue sky, blue sea, blue bell . . . so many shades of blue.



This view



Curiosity and Daring



Artistic whimsy



The pleasure of discovering small surprises



Connecting with the ancestors

Vibrant colors



Acting without fear





Revisiting thin places

A Poem for Earth Day

'Nature' Is What We See by Emily Dickinson
'Nature' is what we see--
The Hill-- the Afternoon--
Squirrel--Eclipse--the Bumble bee--
Nay--Nature is Heaven--
Nature is what we hear--
The Boblink--the Sea--
Thunder--the Cricket--
Nay--Nature is Harmony--
Natures is what we know--
Yet have no art to say--
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

This weekend I spent part of each day playing in the dirt-- planting poppies, herbs and a rose bush, sowing seeds in the wildflower and butterfly garden, digging up and moving rogue lilies to place where they can actually get some sun and blossom.  While my hands were busy digging, my eyes and ears were open. 

If nature is what I saw while I was engaged in this work of co-creating, it's the broken robin's egg under the flowering pink dogwood, sprouts of lily of the valley poking up through the mud, a rabbit pulling up dried grass to make a nest by the front porch, the blue and yellow blossoms of forget-me-nots.

If nature is what I heard, it was the chatter and creaks of a pair of rusty blackbirds warning me away from their nest in my neighbor's yard, the rustle of wind blowing through the new leaves on the maple trees, the buzz of a bumble bee hovering over fragrant white alyssum.

I read Emily Dickinson's poem as an invitation to attentiveness, an encouragement to be in the present moment, an act which, for me, often leads to gratitude.  When I go out for a walk later this afternoon I'll again have my eyes and ears open and come back with a different litany of what nature is. 

So on this Earth Day, I invite you to join Emily and I looking and listening, in considering what nature is for you . . .

A touch of Frost for a frosty morning

DUST OF SNOW by Robert Frost from New Hampshire (Henry Holt)

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued

A dust of snow is about all we've had this winter in the DC area, a baker's dozen of days with enough snow to make it look like the grass has been covered with powdered sugar.  This morning's snow/sleet mix has left the landscape glazed like a pound cake.  But even that drizzle of snow was enough to lift my spirits.

I'm in the minority that loves snow.  I strain to catch a glimpse of the first flakes of the winter once the autumn wind turns cold and damp.   That first discernible snow always seems to me like the universe is throwing a party, tossing about handfuls of white confetti and inviting me to join in the celebration. 

Last week in the Celtic spirituality class at the Cathedral that I was co-teaching with the wise and wonderful Sue Mosher, we wrapped the series with a session on celebrating the seasons.  During the group discussion time, the idea of harbingers came up-- those signs that let us know that the season is about to turn.   

I'm good at noticing the harbingers.  I keep an eye out for the crocuses and daffodils stretching their stalks up through the earth after their winter slumber.  I scan the summer twilight for the first flash of lightning bugs and gaze at the October trees waiting for them to spark and catch fire.  And of course, there's the snow.

What I'm not so good at, is appreciating a season when I'm in the thick of it.  And that's when I need reminders of what is rather than harbingers of what's to come.  I need a dusting of snow to help me recapture those feelings of delight, joy, gratitude that I feel when I spy the first snowflakes.  I need to be reminded that today and every day there's something to celebrate.








 

Measuring Specific Gratitude

SOME THINGS THE WORLD GAVE by Mary Oliver

1
Times in the morning early
when it rained and the long gray
buildings came forward from darkness
offering their windows for light.

2
Evenings out there on the plains
when sunset donated farms
that yearned so far to the west that the world
centered there and bowed down.

3
A teacher at a country school
walking home past a great marsh
where ducks came gliding in --
she saw the boy out hunting and waved.

4
Silence on a hill where the path ended
and then the forest below
moving in one long whisper
as evening touched the leaves.

5
Shelter in winter that day --
a storm coming, but in the lee
of an island in a cover with friends --
oh, little bright cup of sun.

 

Alfalfa Fields in St. Denis, Seurat
 

I was looking for a poem on gratitude to post for this Thanksgiving week Mary Oliver Monday when I came across this little gem.  What I particularly like about this poem is its particularities.  So often when people talk about the things for which they are grateful they paint their canvas of blessings with large brush strokes-- family, friends, health, freedom, community, creation.  In this poem, however, gratitude is conveyed in precise points of color like a painting by Seurat or Pisarro.  Viewed together as a whole, they make up the portrait of a lifetime of awareness and gratitude.

I've been thinking about these particular moments as measurements of specific gratitude.  If you're like me, you probably learned about specific gravity in high school but chances are you don't remember much about it because unlike figuring out percentages (which comes in handy when hitting the seasonal sales at Lord & Taylor), determining the specific gravity of an object is a skill you've yet to use in life. But somehow it's an idea that seems relevant to this poem.

If I see my daily life as the standard material, particular moments become the substances being tested.  On days that I'm at my most dense, some of the lighter moments in life don't even break the surface.  I don't notice the sea of stars in the clear winter sky.  The encouraging words of a friend go in one ear and out the other.  I take for granted the warm bed I climb into each night.  But at other times the color blue of the autumn sky stops me in my tracks.  Witnessing a stranger offering a helping hand to a neighbor moves me to tears.  I savor every sip of a good cup of Earl Grey.  Gratitude settles in my soul like led sinking in 39.2°F distilled water.  

Haymakers Resting, Pisarro

Maybe then, it isn't so much those moments being measured as my life.  I don't know the scientific term for testing my own density on any given day but in spiritual terms I think it's called awareness.

 

Monday or How Billy Collins taught me it was okay to look out my window . . .

MONDAY by Billy Collins from The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (Random House)

Jane Austen may not have been a poet but she did
write at this table by the window every morning,
and probably spent some time looking outside.

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.   

My favorite window is the one by my bed that looks out onto the back yard.  I tend to wake up the first time as the milky light of morning pours into dawn, so I get up and look to see what birds are breakfasting there.  The robins of early spring have now been joined by common place birds I think I know the names of but am not quite sure-- are they wrens or are they sparrows?  I recognized the mourning dove when I saw her yesterday.  And the grackles last week.  Occasionally an odd bird turns up that sends me leafing through my Audubon guide.  I'm still awaiting the return of last year's sap sucker who never managed to venture into a tree to be true to his name, but preferred to forage in the grass.   

A view of the wildflower garden from my window

Later in the morning, after a cup of tea and before I move to my desk, I survey the wildflower garden to see what's in bloom.  Again, I'm not a very well informed naturalist.  I don't know the names of all the plants but I can identify the columbines in an array of purples and blues.  They lord over the salvia and foxglove, and I can almost hear them bragging about their abundant blossoms as they sway and swagger in the breeze.  In a few weeks they'll be quieted by the wild echinacea that takes over the garden and then I'll start looking for the goldfinches who land on the stalks, pluck the petals off the flowers and feast on the seeds.

As I pass the window throughout the day I'll look outside some more.  Is that a rabbit or a clump of brown leaves under the forsythia bush on the hill?  Is it going to rain soon or can I sneak outside for a quick walk?  What is that squirrel up to, hunkered down in the hollow of the maple tree?

Before I rearranged my work space, the small table cum desk that barely held my lap top was in front of a big window that looks out into my side yard and my neighbor's back yard.  I used to find myself endlessly sitting and staring out the window when I "should" have been working.  I used to think of this wool gathering as a manifestation of one or more of my character flaws . . . procrastination, laziness, acedia . . . I could go on but I won't.  

Then I read the Billy Collins poem above and realized that looking out of the window is not an avoidance of work, rather it is part of my work as a writer. The practice of seeing, noticing, observing comes before the work of sharpening the pencils or turning on the computer.  Just as a chef has to chop the vegetables for the mis en place, I have to gather the elements I need to create.  The images, colors, sounds, textures that I see out my window may go into what I cook up on the page on any given day, but most importantly the task of looking out the window provides me with the most  important ingredient I feel I can include in my writing:  gratitude.


BTW - How great is that line, "in every section of the tangerine earth"-- perfection!

A Prayer in My Boot

A PRAYER IN MY BOOT
by Naomi Shihab Nye from 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (Harper Collins)

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep


Yesterday I confessed to not being able to live in the moment lately.  Naomi Shihab Nye offers a good remedy for that.  By carrying a prayer in my boot (or, ballet flat as is more often the case), ordinary encounters become opportunities to pause for a moment of mindfulness, gratitude, grace . . .

For what are you carrying a prayer in your boot today?

Billy Collins Sunday - This Little Piggy Went to Market

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET      
by Billy Collins from Ballistics (Random House)

is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the piggy with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe -- this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here --
I am even wondering why it's called "horseradish."
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don't want to be the one to ruin the children's party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.
By the way, I am completely down with going
"Wee wee wee" all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

When I woke up this morning and realized that April Fool's Day coincided with Billy Collins Sunday, I decided it was the perfect day for  a poem that contains the phrase "beautiful nonsense."
Although some nursery rhymes are thinly veiled political jibes or lessons in history, This Little Piggy is purely a nonsense rhyme written to delight children. 

Allowing ourselves to be delighted, to revel in beauty and nonsense, to put aside our critical thinking caps that  make us wonder why a pig would eat roast beef (and the one who didn't have any?  was it by choice?  was she a vegetarian sow?,  to be in the moment so we can be present and grateful for the things that make us go, "wee!"-- good aspirations for this April Fool's Sunday.

Otherwise

OTHERWISE
by Jane Kenyon from Otherwise (Gray Wolf Press)

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

No commentary today, just a reminder to be grateful for the ordinary things in life, for as Jane Kenyon writes, it might be otherwise . . .

A Quiet Life

A Quiet Life                                                                                                                                            by Baron Wormser from Scattered Chapters (Sarabande Books)

What a person desires in life
   is a properly boiled egg.
This isn't as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
   the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
   banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
   and furnaces and factories,
   of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
   of women in kerchiefs and men with
   sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
   and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
   of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
   stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
   the ace in any argument for God.
    Only God could have imagined from
   nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
   when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
   knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
   ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
   take it out on you, no dictators
   posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
   the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
   of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
   that came from nowhere.


A few weeks ago I began a practice that just happened to coincide with the beginning of Lent, but is a habit I hope to continue.  Each night before I go to bed, I take the small flowered notebook that rests on my night stand and write the headings, "The Small Step" and "The Small Gratitude."  Under each heading, I then record a few words:  worked on website, sorted out story idea, snow flurries on a Monday afternoon, a conversation with a kindred spirit.

The Small Step is to remind me that no matter how unproductive I may feel as a day comes to its close, chances are there was something I managed to do that inched me closer towards my goals. 

The Small Gratitude is also a prompt for keeping things in perspective, but it also makes me more mindful of these moments of gratitude as they occur.  When I initially started the practice, I had to review my entire day to try to recall one small think for which I was thankful.  Now, it seems as if there are several clamoring to be written down each evening. 

One of the things I love about Baron Wormser's poem is that it reminds me that even a small gratitude isn't necessarily as small as it appears at first glance.  Behind something as simple as a boiled egg, there is a story waiting to be told.  Gratitude for a simple snowflake can turn into an avalanche of thanksgiving if we look deeper.

How do you practice gratitude?

Welcome Morning

WELCOME MORNING

by Anne Sexton from The Awful Rowing Toward God (Chattus & Windus)

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry 'hello there, Anne'

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

to a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So, while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter in the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.

No commentary or reflection this welcome Saturday morning, just an invitation . . . to share a joy you experience today.