WEEK 2: CULTIVATING HABITS OF GRATITUDE
Friday is INSPIRATION DAY in our Gratitude Journey!
Enjoy three offerings — a story, poetry, and inspiring quotes — as well as a SURPRISE mini-podcast today! There’s lots of goodness for your holiday weekend (it is Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in many Commonwealth nations and some European countries) to deepen your practices of gratitude.
For the holiday, I’m opening the post to the ENTIRE community. It’s been a stressful week here in the United States. I figure we could all use some inspiration right now.
The post is part of a larger, month-long exploration of gratitude for paid subscribers at The Cottage. But everyone is welcome to reflect along with us today — and this post can be shared as widely as you like with others.
On Thursday morning, my husband shouted from the basement: “Oh no! There’s a leak!”
I ran downstairs dreading what might be happening. Over the years, we’ve had to replace the water heater twice, the washing machine, and a ruined drain. All of those expensive projects began with the words, “Oh no! There’s a leak!”
He was in the bathroom and pointed to the ceiling. Indeed, water from the upstairs bathroom was raining through a crack into the first floor tub. Not just a leak. A plumbing problem of some sort — a pricey sort, I feared. I winced, just a little, worrying about what this would entail and how disruptive it will be.
But my next reaction surprised me.
I remembered how, in my first apartment, a bathtub leak in the unit above mine caused the ceiling in my kitchen to come crashing down, a plumbing problem so bad that a portion of the upstairs’ neighbor’s clawfoot tub was hanging precariously above my table. I looked at the widening crack in my bathroom ceiling. At least the leak is above a tub and the water was going right down the drain. There was no flood on the floor, no water inundating the basement. No broken pipes hanging through an open hole.
Something was leaking and will have to be fixed. Immediately. The ceiling will be ripped out and replaced. It won’t be fun. It wasn’t expected.
But it could be worse. Much worse. And I felt, well, grateful.
I don’t know what this will cost. I don’t like having a watery crack in my first floor bathroom ceiling. I don’t know how it will be repaired. I don’t like or appreciate these sorts of homeowner problems at all. But it could be worse.
I don’t usually think like that. I wondered if my odd response was somehow associated with our gratitude practice. I realized that my calm about the leak exemplified this insight from Professor David DeSteno quoted on pages 67-68 in Grateful:
Gratitude isn’t about passive reflection; it’s not about being thankful for things that have already occurred and, thus, can’t be changed; it’s about ensuring the benefits of what comes next.
Practicing gratitude creates an “upward spiral” of well-being (Grateful, page 68). Practicing gratitude strengthens resilience. To quote my own words back to myself: practicing gratitude is about “building thanks into the foundation of our future.”
I’ll let you know about the ceiling leak. But right now, I’m grateful that my foundation isn’t cracked. It appears to be holding firm on habits of giving thanks.
Cues, habits, and practices are about cultivating new awareness. As we develop these things, we see differently — with gracious hindsight, new possibilities of widened sight, and with informed foresight. Our experiences and the world become more fully alive with wonder, opening with surprising moments of gratefulness.
Today’s poems are about noticing things — and practicing awareness.
Reflect on Pat Schneider’s “The Patience of Ordinary Things.”
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
Please also read Schneider’s “Instructions for the Journey,”
The self you leave behind
is only a skin you have outgrown.
Don't grieve for it.
Look to the wet, raw, unfinished
self, the one you are becoming. . . .
Pour yourself a cup of tea this weekend. Notice ordinary things. Look for the tenderly unfolding moment. Share with us what you see.
You can learn more about the poet Pat Schneider HERE.
INSPIRATION
If you must look back, do so forgivingly.
If you will look forward, do so prayerfully.
But the wisest course would be to be present in the present gratefully.
―Maya Angelou
Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist of just words but gratitude is shown in acts.
— Henri Frederic Amiel
We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
— Cynthia Ozick
Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we experience an increase in our sympathetic joy, our happiness at another's happiness.
— Stephen Levine
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
— John F. Kennedy
SURPRISE!
In the summer of 2020, I got to chat with Anne Lamott about gratitude as part of a project hosted by Convergence. Below are two short audio selections from that discussion. Anne is, of course, amazing. I fangirled - a lot - just look at my smile!
IT’S EASY TO HAVE GRATITUDE WHEN YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT
“Thanks” is a huge mind-shift, from thinking that God wants our happy chatter and a public demonstration and is deeply interested in our opinions of the people we hate, to feeling quiet gratitude, humbly and amazingly, without shame at having been so blessed.
— Anne Lamott
A photo from my Wednesday gratitude walk. All the shades of autumn in the tree made me reflect on the beauty of diversity, each color splendid on its own and together making the whole even more wondrous.
When it seems like everything is falling apart, it's sometimes hard to consider whether it could be worse, but there have definitely been times I could look at a situation and say, "well, at least it isn't our worst case scenario."
I laughed out loud when I read this posting...in a good way, with you, not at you. I've become aware -- these last couple of months as we've come out from under the COVID cloud -- that the pandemic (and the chaos-uncertainty-angst-whatever that has come with it) has made me much more CONSCIOUSLY grateful...and, I think, kinder,. Not surprisingly, these are habits I that I hope have now become ingrained in my daily interactions with others (...hum, is character the word I'm looking for to describe daily interactions?). Also, found Judy Atwater's comment about the role that breathing plays in gratitude most interesting...and will definitely be doing some serious thinking about why.