An Attitude of Gratitude

We all go through times in our journey which if given the choice, we might choose to avoid. It is at times like this when I tend to hear my Bubby’s voice reminding me that when you can see the good in a bad situation, then you know you are going to be ok. I have done this with Zoë’s cancer diagnosis, during the times my son has struggled (like last night), during my struggle with Liftline, etc. As I have made a list of the blessings in each situation, the way I see them, what I choose to believe about them shifts from an Eeyore attitude to an attitude of gratitude. The more I focus on what I have to be grateful for, the more I realize how much I have to be grateful for. It is as if gratefulness begets gratefulness begets gratefulness.
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While you are in the meantime.

Yesterday I received an email that asked me what are you supposed to do while you are in the meantime. So here are a few suggestions of what you can do while you are in the meantime. While you are in the meantime, help somebody. A poet once wrote, “I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother, and I found all three.” Sometimes when we are feeling empty, we benefit immeasurably by serving people in need. As their strength is renewed, our cups overflow. Stop waiting for an invitation to get involved. Go help somebody. As John F Kennedy once said, don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
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Wait!

It is no secret, to those of you who read my reflections on a regular basis, that I am a Chopped fan. I am not sure I have missed an episode since it first aired. I have learned a lot about cooking from watching the show in terms of techniques and flavor profiles and combinations. However, one of the recent episodes moved me to tears and touched me spiritually in a way that I was not expecting. It all happened with a single word. WAIT! This episode, like a few of the others, was a redemption battle between four chefs who had come in second in their initial competitions. I remember each of them well. However, from the beginning, I had my two favorites Yohanna and Lance. I had remembered them from their initial appearances because of their humility, their grace, and their creativity.
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Horton and the Who

As adults, sometimes what inspires us are things that are deep and reflective. Other times, it is something that brings us back to our childhood, something simple like a kid’s book. Recently, at our Pizza & Spirituality Chat Night, I read a Dr. Seuss book, Horton Hears A Who, to those who gathered to eat my first attempt at homemade pizza. If you have not read this book, do so or some of what is in my heart this morning may not make complete sense. There are a couple of things I love about this story. One is that Horton has this amazing capacity to love all of humanity. Horton believes “a person’s a person, no matter how small.” Another thing I have come to love about Horton is that he is an elephant of great faith. Horton is committed to protecting the people of who-ville, even though he cannot see them. However, protecting them is not as easy as it seems.
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Grace in Community

Those of you who know me personally know that I should have stock in some tissue company because it takes so little to bring tears to my eyes. While there have been days in my life I have cried because I was angry and days I have cried because I was sad, the past year and a half or so, I have most cried for two reasons. One is when my body has been in pain, which fortunately has not been very often. The other, is that my cup is overflowing with experiencing the Creator’s love. One of the situations which always leaves me feeling humbled is when I am blessed with the experience of grace in community. It is that kind of moment like January 1, 2000. It seemed like that day everyone was in love with each other.
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If God is love, then _____

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. One of the things I learned growing up in the temple was that God’s ways are not our ways and God’s understandings are not our understandings. Lately, I have been wondering if we put God in a box because it is what we have been taught to think about God. I guess what brought me to this place was the scripture from 1 John 4:8 that says God is love. ok, so what is love and how does it shape how I think about God. A while back I wrote a piece called Mastering Love. One of the things I wrote about there was that love has no obligations. As I have learned to embody love without obligations in my life, I have come to realize that what I do or do not do is out of my free will; it is because I want to do whatever I have done or said. When I have felt pressured or obligated to do something for someone, it has come from a sense of fear of what might happen or what others might think if I do not do X. In thinking about this in terms of God who is love, I have come to the understanding that God is not obligated to do anything for any of us. If God does anything for us in our lives, it is because God wants to, not because God has to. What I do in my life for God is because I want to, not because I have to.
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Want to lose weight?

There is hardly a person I talk to these days who does not think about their weight. How can you not? On the one hand, we have all these food shows (which I love btw) that tell you to stay hungry and keep cooking and diet commercials that try to sell you THE diet to follow to maintain that perfect figure while they even cook for you. As a result the diet industry in our country is growing at an exponential rate even in what we have been told is a struggling economy. Yet, how many of us are carrying around excess emotional and spiritual poundage and do not ever consider taking some of that weight off.
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Courage’s friend: Compassion

If courage were a person, how would you describe them? Ruth Gendler described courage as having “roots. She sleeps on a futon on the floor and lives close to the ground. Courage looks you straight in the eye. She is not impressed with powertrippers and she knows first aid. Courage is not afraid to weep and she is not afraid to pray, even when she is not sure who she is praying to. When Courage walks it is clear that she has made the journey from loneliness to solitude. The people who told me she is stern were not lying, they just forgot to mention that she is kind. Courage is what was hiding inside the king/queen of the forest and what lives inside each of us.
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