many streams lead to the very same ocean vapor rising toward heavenly realms clouds rain light-infused tears kindness showers graciously upon faces and hearts up-turned with humility receiving blessings in open surrender
present if only for a single breath gratitude unfolds a soft petaled prayer emerging newborn wet from lips salty and sweets oaked by the light-infused tears
Laura is a mother, wife, visual artist, writer, singer-songwriter and experiential educator combining art,yoga, meditation and Jewish spirituality. She is also a Creativity Coach, SoulCollage® facilitator and Spiritual Director. Throughout the past 11 years of child rearing, teaching, facilitating and eventually coaching and spiritual direction, she has also been ill with a wide variety of symptoms receiving several different diagnoses. On September 3, 2009 after an emergency room visit, she was finally diagnosed with RRMS (relapsing remitting ms). While no longer able to work outside her home, she continues to be engaged in the world through blogging regularly and offering individual services via the Internet and phone conferencing. As challenging as living with a chronic, disabling disease is she feels that in many ways, MS has expanded her heart, mind, soul and appreciation for all the things her body IS able to do. “It seems that as the neural connections in my central nervous system decrease, my compassion toward my own lived experience and toward all beings increases. For this I am deeply grateful.” Laura's columns focus on "Healing with Gratitude."
It is the small things. The ordinary things people walk past without a second glance, that seem to draw me near. Maybe it is the light, the shadow, the shape, the color or perhaps a great deal of time spent alone, in-doors, physically unwell. No, this affair began long ago, as a small child gaze transfixed upon dust motes sparkling in the wake cast by sunlight through windows. “Daydreamer”, they called me. I was not dreaming, I was fully present, just not to what the grown-ups were talking about. I was and still am w i d e, w i d e awake to this simple truth. I AM IN LOVE WITH LIFE.
… And I see it in freckled amber leaves and broken twigs resting on rain-pocked snow.
Laura is a mother, wife, visual artist, writer, singer-songwriter and experiential educator combining art, yoga, meditation and Jewish spirituality. She is also a Creativity Coach, SoulCollage® facilitator and Spiritual Director. Throughout the past 11 years of child rearing, teaching, facilitating and eventually coaching and spiritual direction, she has also been ill with a wide variety of symptoms receiving several different diagnoses. On September 3, 2009 after an emergency room visit, she was finally diagnosed with RRMS (relapsing remitting ms). While no longer able to work outside her home, she continues to be engaged in the world through blogging regularly and offering individual services via the Internet and phone conferencing. As challenging as living with a chronic, disabling disease is she feels that in many ways, MS has expanded her heart, mind, soul and appreciation for all the things her body IS able to do. “It seems that as the neural connections in my central nervous system decrease, my compassion toward my own lived experience and toward all beings increases. For this I am deeply grateful.” Laura's columns focus on "Healing with Gratitude."
Year after year our family grows. We have 4, 5, and even 6 separate "christmas parties" to attend each December. It is rather easy to get overwhelmed and rushed. Gifts being thrown at the children after they've eaten pumpkin pie and cookies does not always seem to be the most loving combination (all though it sounds like it would be). Especially when you do this 4, 5 or even 6 times!
This year I am really trying to help my daughter understand how truly blessed we are so that she may truly and genuinely thankful and appreciative throughout this crazy busy time. I want us to remember each other and the love we shared. I want us to remember hearing grandmas and grandpas telling us stories or sharing their old recipes with us. I want us to remember the little cousins dancing to Christmas music together and smiling from ear to ear. I want my nieces and nephews to remember how safe and loved they felt in the arms of me and my family. It's not about the toys and the overindulgence that has become Christmas. It's about breathing in the simple goodness that is family. It's about family and friends knowing and feeling how special and important they are to us because we took the time and found the energy and words to make sure they were aware of their roles in our lives.
May your holidays be filled with an abundance of beautiful and loving blessings.
Holiday Delight
Parties, presents, desserts and pies oh my!
These are some of the joys during our holiday times.
You’ll see friendly faces, worship, praise, and say grace.
You’ll fill your little belly with lots of love and flavor.
Made by those who enjoy and savor
Your presence and smile.
All you have to do my sweet child,
Is open your heart to receive and give out love wherever you go.
Those you love will spend money, love and time
Creating days and moments for you to feel much delight.
We are blessed with family, food and friends.
We are gifted these moments to enjoy and extend
Our hearts, our hands, our smiles and our gifts.
Use your smile and laughter to uplift and shift
The holiday grinches you meet and help them to see
How blessed we are and how thankful we can be.
It’s up to us to spread the love.
It’s up to us to share our hugs.
We are blessed. We are so fortunate.
Let us share what we have in every moment.
It’s the holidays. It’s time to pray.
It’s time to give thanks and appreciate.
The things we will receive are special and great.
The family, friends, and love are even better.
Rejoice, enjoy, uplift, give, share, care, bless, pray and play
All through these spectacular and love filled holidays.
If you're able to do so you may have just found your way
to create more happy and healthy moments during these cold and snowy days.
Once a year a special day rolls around, a truly American holiday where we actually pause, give thanks, and count our blessings—individually, and as a nation. If your family is like mine, once everyone is seated around the Thanksgiving table, a quick prayer of thanks may be offered, but when done, we dive in like vultures to taste, savor and overindulge. Forget gratitude, let’s eat!
To make sure my family was aware of the many blessings in our life, I wanted to find a way to extend and deepen this all-to-brief moment of gratitude. If you care to deepen your Thanksgiving experience, as well, allow me to share a Gratitude Ceremony I devised to mark this special day, to make it one we would not soon forget.
THE GRATITUDE BOWL
Choose a large wooden bowl and fill it with clean sand. Place it in the middle of your holiday table.
Place votive candles—one for each person at the table—into the bowl.
One-by-one, have each one light his or her candle and say aloud something they are grateful for.
That's it. Simple, but powerful.
Here is what transpired at our family table the first time we performed our "Gratitude Ceremony."
Once all were seated, grace said, I informed my family what we were about to do. Upon hearing they would have to express something aloud they were grateful for, the usual reactions set in. My two daughters loved it and excitedly began to chatter about what they would say. My son did the expected— a deep sigh of exasperation accompanied by a dramatic roll of the eyes. I could hear his mental wheels turning: "Oh, no! Another one of mom's weird things." Other relatives looked ill at ease.
My daughters went first, thinking it great fun. Each one lit her candle and offered a sweet token of verbal gratitude—one for the presence of our loyal, loving dog; the other for friends and family.
Now it was my son's turn. He remained eerily silent. "I can't think of anything I'm grateful for," he said, and continued to stare into the bowl with the hope that an appropriate gratitude would emerge from beneath the sand. No such luck. I reassured him that it was alright, that perhaps something would come to him and he could share it later.
Mine went something like this: “I am so grateful to have each of you to love.” Other relatives chimed in with thoughts of health, employment, and so on.
As we ate our meal, the candles burned brightly. I occasionally glanced at my son as he continued to gaze into the flickering flames. I knew he was still pondering what he could possibly be grateful for.
Our dinner came to an end and it was time to begin the monumental task of clearing and washing the dishes. My son halted our movements in mid-stream by his proclamation—"I've got one! I've got a gratitude." He was grateful for the dinner and for all of us being together. His final comment took us by surprise. "I really liked this Mom, this candle thing, I mean. Can we do it again next year?"
A chorus of concurring voices chimed in.
Someone then asked if we could repeat the whole scenario at Christmas. Of course, I said, yes. A deep sense of love and appreciation washed over me. And, I must admit, I felt like doing a little happy dance, complete with victory whoops. I was able to get them to do one of those "weird" things where we make a special memory and move to a deeper place in our relationships. Chalk one up for the Gratitude Bowl!
This holiday season, I invite you to explore unique ways in which you and yours can proclaim your gratitude and blessings to one another. The Gratitude Bowl does work wonders, but it is just a prop. Each one of us can learn to seek out and express the blessings that surround us. A “gratitude attitude” can be ours, moment by moment, not just at holiday times, but every single day of the year.
I’m trying to recall the exact moment when I began to live with an open heart, and if I am remembering correctly, it had a great deal to do with gratitude as a spiritual practice.
Within its pages, she invited the reader to begin keeping a gratitude journal. She wrote: “... you simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life."
I was taken by the idea and pulled together a group of kindred women to study her book and to begin the process of living with “simple abundance.” We met every Monday and agreed to begin our personal Gratitude Journals, though a few of us were rather skeptical about the promised results.
I know I was, especially the first day of journal-keeping when I could not complete the basic task of writing down five things you were grateful for. I could only come up with three. Life was difficult then. My marriage was failing and I was struggling with poor health ...
Needless to say I remember the three things I did write to this day as if they were cast in stone:
The sounds of birds outside my window
The smell of coffee brewing in the morning
The laughter of my children in the next room
That was it. That was all I could come up with in terms of gratitude on that cold February day.
I persisted through the process of recording my "gratitudes" daily and our group members did too. It got easier; gratitude grew. (I was able to finally come up with five each day—sometimes even more.) This journey felt like we were at the health club, lifting weights together, growing our spiritual muscles by the day, gratitude by recorded gratitude. Within three weeks we were stunned by the results. We were more grateful, appreciative of life, in tune with the simple, yet extravagant pleasures of our daily lives. Life was good--no matter what was happening.
As I write these thoughts today, my heart still floods with gratitude for all the small, seemingly insignificant things that find their way into my daily awareness:
A warm and soft bed to sleep in each night. The gentle breathing of my husband in the middle of the night. A cell phone that keeps me connected to my children far away. The sound of birds calling at dawn’s first light. This computer with which I can write this words. And coffee, always the satisfying and pungent aroma of the day’s first cup ...
These simple things sustain me. What are your simple and daily abundances?
This magazine, its gifted and selfless writers, along with its readers, continue to inspire and delight me. I am grateful for all that we are and all that we are becoming here. We are changing, as you can see. And we will continue to do so over the next few months, so we thank you ahead of time for your patience and support.
There is a new sparkle and verve within its pages, as is the ever-present invitation to ground and center ourselves in the majesty of the moment; to live awake and aware so that not one precious day of life is wasted; and to keep our hearts open to ourselves and others. To be born as a human being, as the Buddha taught, is a rare and priceless gift. May we honor, live and use it as best we can.
I invite you to feast on these gratitude-inspired articles. I'm confident that lift your heart and help you soar through your day with appreciation:
And, on a personal note, I am deeply grateful these days—heart open wide—because of Jack Kornfield’s new book, A Lamp in the Darkness. I share my thoughts on it in a review that accompanies our monthly Giveaway. To do, as Jack advises ...
“Be the potter of your own life. Center yourself at the wheel. Find the stillpoint.”
... will always bring us home to the domain of the open heart and of gratitude.
With metta,
Jan Lundy, Editor
Buddha Chick Life
p.s. Congratulations to two winners! Aimie will be the recipient of Healing Touch by Dorothea Hover-Kramer and Terry is the winner of Deva Premal's CD, "Password." Enjoy these fabulous resources!
Laura is a mother, wife, visual artist, writer, singer-songwriter and experiential educator combining art, yoga, meditation and Jewish spirituality. She is also a Creativity Coach, SoulCollage® facilitator and Spiritual Director. Throughout the past 11 years of child rearing, teaching, facilitating and eventually coaching and spiritual direction, she has also been ill with a wide variety of symptoms receiving several different diagnoses. On September 3, 2009 after an emergency room visit, she was finally diagnosed with RRMS (relapsing remitting ms). While no longer able to work outside her home, she continues to be engaged in the world through blogging regularly and offering individual services via the Internet and phone conferencing. As challenging as living with a chronic, disabling disease is she feels that in many ways, MS has expanded her heart, mind, soul and appreciation for all the things her body IS able to do. “It seems that as the neural connections in my central nervous system decrease, my compassion toward my own lived experience and toward all beings increases. For this I am deeply grateful.” Laura's columns focus on "Healing with Gratitude."
One Thanksgiving, when my family was very young, I found myself longing for table graces that were all-inclusive. I had many friends, (including my best friend and husband) who were not comfortable with the "G" word, as they called it, and they didn't want to invoke God before eating a meal. I felt, though, that this was leaving us with an awkward silence, and we were missing the opportunity to express our gratitude and our connection to the food, to life, and to each other in a language that felt eloquent or sincere. So I took it upon myself to pen a collection which I call Simple Graces for Every Meal. Since then I have sold thousands of this little book, and received many stories of appreciation from people for whom the book has become a central family tradition. I'm happy to offer a few of the graces here, as we head into the holiday season.
Let the depth of our compassion nourish all we meet just as the bounty at this table nourishes us.
~~~
With grateful hearts, we give thanks for the beauty at this table; for love, harmony, wisdom, and for the abundant plenty. May these blessings light our days and may their energies radiate through us to all beings in the world.
~~~
With joy and reverence we give thanks for the wondrous power of growing things, and for the sustenance our lives receive from the beauty of the earth and the fellowship of all beings.
~~~
Let us savor our days as we savor this meal. Let us linger to enjoy the bounty of each season. Let us live to declare we find life itself delicious.
Each year I look forward to penning an annual Thanksgiving column for the women's magazine I've written for for the past thirteen years—the subject of which tends to be “Gratitude.” One year I was asked to write about “Appreciation” instead; the many ways we can show appreciation to others, and why it is important to do so. When I heard the news I thought to myself, ‘Hmmm ... I’ve got to think about this one.’ Not that I was stuck on gratitude, mind you, but the request did set me back a pace. I’ve been told over the years that my “Gratitude” column is eagerly anticipated and enjoyed by many readers. I’m glad because I believe that an attitude of gratitude is one of the most important virtues we can possess. But so is being able to express appreciation, so I set out to connect the two.
In my mind’s eye, I began to see, throughout the course of a day, all the ways that I might say “Thank You” or “I appreciate you” to someone. I witnessed myself at the supermarket, saying “Thank You” to the cashier and the person who bags my groceries. I thought of the postal carrier to whom I wave a hearty thanks as she deposits the mail in my curbside box. I thought of my husband and the hug of thanks I give him while he’s doing the dishes. I thought of the formal notes I love to send telling dear ones how much I value their presence in my life. Just pondering these simple actions—a verbal kudo, a wave, a hug, a note—caused a swell of gratitude to course through my heart. In that very moment, I made an important connection: Expressions of appreciation are sourced in a grateful heart.
Being A Graceful Giver
Are you the proud possessor of a grateful heart? Are you someone who sees life as full and blessed, rather than lacking and depressed? Are you the purveyor of a positive attitude? The wearer of a smile?
That’s me to a “T.” I say “Thank You” alot, for the simplest things. I know that drives some folks crazy. To them it seems ridiculous to thank someone for commonplace gestures. But you know what? When you say “Thank You” and really mean it, you can feel your heart open up a little bit. Flutter about. Dance a little happy dance. Offering appreciation is self-beneficial. It makes us feel good and it keeps our hearts open to one another.
Offering sentiments or tokens of appreciation makes other people feel good too. In a world that is challenging to face, ripe with situations that are difficult to bear, we can all use a boost now and then. My friend, Sylvia, told a story once about a sign she saw on the mantle of a retreat center. It stopped her in her tracks; gave her pause to reflect about this very issue. The sign said, “Life is so very difficult. How can we be anything but kind.” A “Thank You,” offered from the heart, can be one such act of kindness. Heaven knows, we can all use more kindness.
Being A Gracious Receiver
Are you a gracious receiver? Do you acknowledge someone’s vote of thanks when it is given? Or do you wave it off, dismiss it, depreciate it?
I read once, in Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book, Simple Abundance, that women can be “mean receivers.” This implies that when we receive a complement from someone, for example, we don’t accept it because, 1.) We don’t feel we are deserving of it, or, 2.) Our self-esteem is low enough that we are not capable of receiving the homage offered by a well meaning other. I witness women doing this all the time. When someone says “Thank You” for a gift or kindness, they poo-poo it by saying, “It was nothing.” What that says to me is that they feel as if it was nothing, indicative of a tendency toward self-deprecation. If you’re one of those women, next time someone extends you a heartfelt “Thank You,” vow to be a gracious receiver. Instead of dismissing their appreciation, straighten your shoulders, lift your chin, and look them square in the eyes, saying proudly, “You’re Welcome.” Then allow their gratitude to seep into your heart.
Being able to offer and accept appreciation are acts of self-affirming kindness. With such expressions, both the giver and receiver benefit. Both are blessed. This year, as Thanksgiving approaches and thoughts of gratitude come to mind, challenge yourself to offer more expressions of appreciation than usual: a touch, a smile, a hug. And if those soulful expressions are difficult for you—say it in writing, in flowers, in pie. You may be surprised just how delicious your holiday can be ...
(I incline my heart toward khanti: patient endurance, as I heal through a second MS exacerbation this summer with another round of IV steroids, grateful for the lovingkindness and wisdom of caretakers, family and friends.)
Laura is a mother, wife, visual artist, writer, singer-songwriter and experiential educator combining art, yoga, meditation and Jewish spirituality. She is also a Creativity Coach, SoulCollage® facilitator and Spiritual Director. Throughout the past 11 years of child rearing, teaching, facilitating and eventually coaching and spiritual direction, she has also been ill with a wide variety of symptoms receiving several different diagnoses. On September 3, 2009 after an emergency room visit, she was finally diagnosed with RRMS (relapsing remitting ms). While no longer able to work outside her home, she continues to be engaged in the world through blogging regularly and offering individual services via the Internet and phone conferencing. As challenging as living with a chronic, disabling disease is she feels that in many ways, MS has expanded her heart, mind, soul and appreciation for all the things her body IS able to do. “It seems that as the neural connections in my central nervous system decrease, my compassion toward my own lived experience and toward all beings increases. For this I am deeply grateful.”
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