Tag Archives: gratitude

On Practicing Joy.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

This post is for you if being told to practice gratitude pisses you off, even a little.
 
We’re prompted to be grateful. A lot. So many studies show that gratitude is good for us—body, mind, soul, and spirit. And self-help types aren’t shy about promoting gratitude practices.
 
Keep a gratitude journal. Keep a gratitude jar. Say prayers of gratitude. Daily is best, hourly if you can manage it.
 
This time of year, especially, it seems gratitude is all around.
 
I have a terrible secret, my friends. For me, gratitude feels like a death-dealing “should.” Gratitude feels preachy to me. Gratitude feels falsely sweet, a close cousin to denial and forced forgiveness. Gratitude makes my body tighten and harden, just a little, until I override that response because what kind of terrible person has a problem with gratitude, for god’s sake??
 
This is me. If you’re good with gratitude, rock on!
 
But if you, like me, find “gratitude” grating, I have a suggestion. Practice joy. Joy is still abstract, so let’s bring this concept down to the level of our bodies. What feels good to you? What brings you pleasure? In what do you delight?  
 
I keep a Pleasure and Delight journal, not a gratitude journal. Every night, I note what brought me pleasure that day. Sun on my face. The dinner my husband cooked. “White Lotus, Season 2.” A hot shower. The smell of our pine trees being rained on for the first time in months. A scruffy-tailed squirrel hoovering birdseed on the veranda. A conversation. A cat in my lap. That first cup of coffee. Swimming in a wilderness lake. Reading (or writing) a beautiful sentence. Snow on our mountains. Sitting on a rock with my feet in the river. The color red.
 
So many moments of joy, when I stop and pay attention.
 
Am I grateful for these things that bring joy? Of course. Does keeping this list help me pay attention to what brings pleasure and delight? Yes. I’m more apt to notice what feels good to me, and also what feels bad to me.
 
Life is complex. We are complex. We, and life, can be two things at once. Maybe more than two things at once. At heart, we are just fancy animals with bodies that relish pleasure and delight. We benefit when we don’t judge the soft animals of our bodies, but instead let them love what they love. Make your pleasure and delight a judgment-free zone.
 
This holiday season, may we notice our joy. May we let our lives be what they are, containers for both beauty and pain. May we stand with hands open, hearts present, simply being here now. May we say “Thank you!” when we notice our joy. May we say “Thank you!” when we feel our pleasure and delight.

May we savor these moments, sink our roots down into them, and grow ever more strong, resilient, and able to weather our storms: sturdy trees who joyfully shelter ourselves, our families and communities, and our world.
 
Notice what brings you joy, and do more of that. Intentionally create pleasure and delight for yourself. Savor these moments. Remember these moments. Gather these moments and feed on them.
 
My joy practice ritualizes and nourishes my connection with Earth and the Ground of Being—the Source who gives life to all things and who receives us back into herself when we die.  
 
To nourish and strengthen ourselves with pleasure and delight is a holy act.
 

I think this is
the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
~Mary Oliver, Kingfisher

A note on Thanksgiving Day: Millions of Indigenous people died in the genocide perpetrated by White European colonists. For their descendants who remain, Thanksgiving Day is a day to remember and mourn. May we descendants of those White European colonists take seriously and reckon with this legacy. 

I live and work on the original homelands of the Wasq’ú (Wasco), and the Tana’nma (Warm Springs) people. They ceded this land to the U.S. government in the Treaty of 1855. The Numu (Paiute) people were forcibly moved to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation starting in 1879. The Klamath Trail ran north through this region to the great Celilo Falls trading grounds and the Klamath Tribes claim it as their own. Descendants of these original people are thriving members of our communities today. I acknowledge and thank the original stewards of this land.

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Photo Credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Let’s Just Walk Today

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Himalayas New YorkerDo you remember a moment when you made a major life decision or chose to acquiesce to a loved one’s wishes and then said, “Oh. Shit. This is what that means”? Maybe it was moving in together, or getting married, or having kids, or your husband saying he felt called to be an Episcopal priest. I had that moment recently (again) after Jed said, “I’d like to walk the Camino de Santiago, and I want you to come with me.” “I’d love to,” I replied.

As this adventure has become less theoretical and more real, I’ve been freaking out more and more. Then I think, “Come on. You’re a coach. Coach yourself.” So yesterday I did.

First a little background: The Camino de Santiago’s most-traveled route, the one popularized in The Way, is 500 miles of well-trodden path that begins in St. Jean Pied de Port in the far south of France, crosses the Pyrenees and most of the northern part of Spain, and ends in Santiago de Compostela. It’s not wilderness. The Camino passes through several cities including Pamplona, Burgos, and Leon. Along The Way there are many small towns full of shops and bars and cafes and hotels catering to the more than 150,000 people who make this trek annually, and have for a thousand years. The freaking out part, for me, is that we plan to take five weeks to walk these 500 miles, which works out to about 15 miles per day. We’ll take a few rest days, so the average goes up to around 17 miles per day. That’s fewer miles than some walk in a day, and more miles than others.

Yesterday, when I felt the freak-out, I got quiet and listened to what my mind was saying. Here’s what I heard:

  • I don’t want to do this.
  • It’s not safe to do this.
  • I shouldn’t have to do this.
  • I don’t know how to do this.
  • I don’t know what’s going to happen.

That’s when it clicked. I think my life needs to be predictable, that I need to feel in control, and that I must always look and feel competent. I know these things about myself.

The Camino will challenge these beliefs so much.

My husband included this video in his adult forum on the Camino yesterday. About half way in these four words appeared: “Let’s Just Walk Today.” And I got it. I understood then that The Way through this experience for me is Let’s Just Walk Today.

The Camino is already providing.

Let’s: I walk in community. I walk with the love of my life, with the prayers and support of family and friends and people I’ve never met, and with fellow pilgrims.
Just Walk: Take the next step. Trust the Camino. Simplify. Lighten up. Let go.
Today: Breathe in all this awesomeness with appreciation and gratitude.

Peregrinos say that the Camino changes their life, usually in ways they did not expect. I walk to grow in trust, flexibility, and acceptance. I am grateful for your prayers, support, and gifts. I invite you to accompany me. I’ll let you know what happens along The Way.

Wayfinding on the Camino

This way, Pilgrim.

Mountain Poetry

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Siskiyou Mountains

The Klamath Mountains straddle the Oregon-California border, and are one of the wildest, most rugged ranges in the lower 48.

Fall in southern Oregon is magical. This year especially so. I’m grateful to be having abundant hiking time in the mountains that surround the Rogue Valley. Here’s a poem that describes the over-flowingness of mountain bounty, and its effects on my “bubble of a heart.”

Piute Creek

By Gary Snyder

 

One granite ridge

A tree, would be enough

Or even a rock, a small creek,

A bark shred in a pool.

Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted

Tough trees crammed

In thin stone fractures

A huge moon on it all, is too much.

The mind wanders. A million

Summers, night air still and the rocks

Warm.   Sky over endless mountains.

All the junk that goes with being human

Drops away, hard rock wavers

Even the heavy present seems to fail

This bubble of a heart.

Words and books

Like a small creek off a high ledge

Gone in the dry air.

 

A clear, attentive mind

Has no meaning but that

Which sees is truly seen.

No one loves rock, yet we are here.

Night chills. A flick

In the moonlight

Slips into Juniper shadow:

Back there unseen

Cold proud eyes

Of Cougar or Coyote

Watch me rise and go.

 

Link to the poem here.
My photo, taken October 18, 2013 in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest along the California-Oregon border.