Raw Gratitude

What if there's nothing else to learn, nothing else one needs to do to have a fulfilling and good life except this one secret--gratitude? It seems too simple, huh?

I just read, Kissing the Virgin's Mouth, a novel by Donna M. Gershten that proposes the above, through and through. Here's how the book opens, and I don't know about you, but I was captured in the first paragraph:

I have begun to teach Isabel the important things. Just as I taught my hija. Feel gratitude. That's what I told my little five-year-old cousin yesterday when she found a coin in the grass. Wrapped her fat fingers around a peso, eyes bright. Say thank you, I tell her; like this: I kneeled beside her, pretending the peso was inside my tight fist and I closed my eyes and filled my heart and kissed my fist long and firm like a mother who finds her lost child, like a father saying good-bye. She did it too. Thank who? That is not important. 

Some people think that I am religious.

I am not. 

I believe in gratitude.

Gratitude, raw gratitude. I aspire to begin each day, end each day and smatter the day with gratitude. Feeling it when I'm hooked up to my HeartMath gets me in the green coherent state every single time. Is it enough? What if it is in fact everything, all we need to learn? Raw gratitude.

Do you ever wake up in the morning and get a snippet in your head clear as a bell? This happens to me sometimes in the moments between sleep and waking. The day before the Boston bombings, I woke with this snippet--Sit and open, Creator will come and do the steady work.

Once I was up and moving about (and doubting mind was fully awake), I questioned, how do I open? Answer seemed too simple to be effective--gratitude. Later the following day, when I turned on the news for information about the bombing and felt the pain to the heart that I'm sure you all recognize, I experimented because I didn't know what else to do: I sat, opened and let Creator do the steady work of repair. I continue to give thanks to the fine people who rushed in to help with compassion overpowering their bodies, rather than fear, I give thanks to the cameras that held steady so that information could be gleaned, I give thanks to the men and woman who used their medical skill and expertise to save lives.... In my own life experience, through joys as well as tragedies, raw gratitude has softened and opened the heart.

Boston Marathon Heroes

Monday after I heard the news, I text my family on the east coast to see how they were faring. One remark was, "this world is ruined." I text back my first thought, a mantra that I would go back to again and again and write on the board of my classroom Monday night when my sad and bewildered students entered the room for evening classes:

Goodness is not as loud as bombs, yet it quietly and persistently surrounds the people of Boston. 

Are you guys seeing all the hero stories out there? If not, go to this heroes link and this inspirational one if you want more. Among the most iconic of the heroes was the man in the cowboy hat, Carolos Arredondo. After losing both his sons as a result of the war in Iraq, he was at the marathon supporting a charity group running for fallen veterans, and leapt into action, saving the life of a young man who would ultimately lose both his legs below the knees. I wonder if the deaths of his sons were somehow transformed in the act of being at the marathon and saving the life of another young man (IC Truth #3--Everything, no matter how challenging, has the ability to be transformed)?

Remember my last blog article, inspired by the banner in FDR's presidential office, "Let Unconquerable Gladness Dwell." Don't lose hope that goodness, in its quiet and persistent nature is everywhere, all the time and leaps into action when it is most needed. May the heroes of the Boston Marathon inspire you to carry their light of hope in the days to come. 

Unconquerable Gladness

I spent a day witnessing miracles in my clients and experiencing a sense of awe for the challenges they're managing so very beautifully. As I drove home last night, I thought of the motto that decorated President FDR's office, "Let Unconquerable Gladness Dwell." This was his North Star, that which encapsulated his beliefs and values and got him through leading our country out of the Great Depression and international conflict.

I can think of no better technique for cultivating, "Let Unconquerable Gladness Dwell," than the practice of gratitude. Practicing gratitude is big news and has the ability to direct our attention to the good, which is always a reality, always, even in the midst of challenges. This kind of resiliency is what my clients demonstrated to me yesterday. It takes great faith to rest in "Unconquerable Gladness" when hardship knocks at our doors and is inescapable. I go back to one of my biggest challenges to the practice of gratitude--the recent loss of my father. On the day of his remembrance and burial, I committed to doing my ultimate experiment in gratitude and made a pact with myself: today, I will grieve and not stop the flow of sadness, but after today is through, I will do my best to focus only on the goodness of my Pop's life and let these memories sustain me. The reward of this practice has been a lightness I did not think possible after the passing of one so dear. Another unexpected bonus has been incredible visits from my father in my dreams, and these, of course, have strengthened my "unconquerable" gratitude for his precious life.

Let Unconquerable Gladness Dwell. Let in the these-are-the-good-things-and-I'm-holding-to-it gratitude. Then, if you're brave, come into my office and hook up to the HeartMath technologies and see gratitude in real time and the positive effects such reality has on your body, mind and spirit. Take untangible emotions like gladness and gratitude, and see how your physiology responds. The best medicine is generated within us--Let Unconquerable Gladness Dwell. Let it in, let it in, let it in....