Ubiquitous Gratitude

November 25, 2019

Greetings from the ubiquitous,

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”  Mary Oliver

Before you woke up this morning, what you seek was placed inside everything you encounter in your day.  It is the essence of what will bring you peace and happiness.  Interested?

Some days ago, I was out for a run, crunching over the first serious snow of the fall, a collision of seasons, creating frozen leaf dioramas.  I made my way along the river path, trying to feel more like myself, legs aching, body still disagreeing with me, my mind on the nagging trivialities.

I stopped on the path, icy and pitted with frozen tracks from other people, intending to turn around before I fell down, and instead stepped into a small opening in the brush that led to the edge of the river.  The snow squeaked under my shoes, no one had been this way.

I stood at the bank and watched the water and then eased down to a crouch and looked.  The sun had just reached the tips of the trees, and the brightness washed over my world.  There was a constellation in the snow, countless glittering offspring of the light.  In the shallows, through clear water, I could see a deer print in the mud.  Along the edge there was as scrim of ice that had spiderwebbed as it dared the edges of its existence.

I watched the river tickling the edge of the snow.  There was a tip of a branch peeking from the water, the end was a frozen-drop diamond, and the sun was filling it.  As the water moved it covered the tip, receded, covered it again.  It looked as though something in the river was winking at me.

In that quiet quiet moment, in this simple fragment of day, there was peace enough for the gift to present itself.  I felt whatever was wound up in me loosen, untwist just enough, so that I could feel the gift.

Some days later I stood waiting for coffee to brew at Starbucks.  I was practicing patience.  One of the baristas wheeled a mop and bucket into the dining area and began swabbing the tile in shiny swoops.  I asked if I could try, and too surprised to say no, she handed me the mop.

In the few minutes it took me to mop the floor, I was taken back to my first job, when mopping was a daily chore.  I smiled at having left that burden behind.  I kept moving across the floor, feeling something seep into me.  It wasn’t until after I finished that I knew what it was.  A little perspective, a small act of kindness, a smidgen of satisfaction in a little work, and this other thing that was there among all of it. 

Another morning, in another city.  I woke too early, grumbling in my head, almost as soon as I woke, about the poor night’s sleep.  In the middle of the night the fire alarm had gone off in the hotel and disrupted an already flawed dip into dreams.  I scowled at the coffee machine in the room, and quickly gathered whatever clothes I’d left in the chair by the window and headed out of the room to search for a more satisfying brew. 

Outside the morning was still dark, made gloomier by the rain.  Hunched under my jacket I made my way along the sidewalk, skirting the wettest places, trying to stay close enough to the buildings along the street to stay dry.  Within the block I was wet, which seasoned my mood perfectly.

At the corner was a small park, a wedge of green amidst concrete.  The space had been lined with street people during the day, alive with the smell of pot and spilled beer and urine.  At the edge of the park was a glass bus shelter, I zagged around it in the damp darkness.  There was a man sprawled on the concrete, his head and shoulders covered with a collection of clothes he’d fashioned into his quilt.  His legs jutted onto the sidewalk, getting rained on.  One of his shoes had come off in his sleep.  For some reason, this small detail broke me. 

I stopped, feeling this urge and feeling helpless.  Then I noticed the old woman there.  She was sitting in her walker, jacket pulled up over her head, slumped forward in sleep.  The woman’s head nodded forward and she twitched awake and she looked up to see me.  I may have been part of her dream, and she closed her eyes again and retreated into sleep.

A block away, a five star hotel and a king sized bed within arms reach of a coffee pot with the wrong brand of coffee.

What lies among these vignettes, the essence I brought away from them, was gratitude.  What I know to be true, and hope you will see, is that gratitude is inherent in every moment, in every, every minute, placed there for us to find.  If only we pay attention. 

Grateful for the beauty of nature, for the moment to see it, for senses to capture it, for the Creator who anticipated the time we would intersect with it.  Grateful to have the chance to be kind.  Grateful for the richness of our lives, which sometimes must be shocked into us to appreciate.

What follows is what we are made for.  Yes, we are made to strive, to struggle, to recover and adapt and push on, but in all of that we are made to be happy in our effort.  Gratitude is a seed you plant that blooms in happiness. 

Before you finish reading this, think ahead, think of what awaits you in just a few days. Perhaps family gathered, perhaps a moment of prayer, then maybe a child says what they are thankful for and the food is decimated and there is a nap.  And in that cornucopia, we hope to find gratitude. 

But please recognize that in each moment between now and then, and ever after, there waits the essence, made in every flower, in each act of compassion, in love, each place where pain subsides or laughter roars.  Find your way to be grateful for all we are given.

For any of us, therein lies the challenge.  Life is not presented in way for us to see in chapters or acts, or in laid out in a musical score so we can see the crescendo, or banners or markers with plainly written instructions.  It is messy and chaotic, and so are we.  And still gratitude waits in all of it, if only we look, and then take it into us.  And then share it.

Hope this finds you feeling it,

David