Tag: gratitude

Like It or Not

Rachel Henry3 Comments

Coming into being is apparently not easy. From galaxies to stars to humans to any being that has to break its way out of an egg or a seed, taking form in this existence involves a good deal of struggle.

It’s so tempting to ask why, but that’s like asking why the lupine dotting the hillsides these days are purple. You can explain it in terms of the wavelengths of light, but that really only answers how they are purple, not the more fundamental why not red? In this case, why is not a useful question, as it says in one of Anne Lamott’s essays.

We are always coming into existence, but we—or at least certainly I—am not always happy about the struggle. There are things that we accept are going to be hard—giving birth, climbing Mount Everest, losing a loved one—and there are things that we can see will be hard for others—adolescence, for example. Yet we don’t tell anyone, you know, why don’t you just skip this whole adolescence thing, it’s not much fun. Whether a society has healthy or unhealthy ways of helping its members through this stage, they all still have to go through it.

And we don’t emerge fully formed at 20. As long as we’re alive, we’ll continue to be drawn forth. We’ll be invited to deeper and deeper communion with life, we’ll continue to be created, and that means we’ll continue to struggle.

In all likelihood, we’ll continue not to like that struggle, but maybe there’s something beyond our liking or not liking it. Maybe there’s a way to say, oh, this is happening, not in a passive but in a participatory way. And maybe that’s when it gets easy, not the kind of easy I generally picture where everything matches the version of life in my head but some other kind of easy that we can’t understand until we experience it.

This is one of those things I didn’t make up. The great religious traditions all include this idea. Now if only I would listen.

Beyond Powerball

Rachel Henry2 Comments

I should probably start by clarifying that the Californian who won Powerball is not me, just in case you were wondering.

One fun thing about Powerball fever is talking with people about how they would spend the money. Everyone I spoke with planned to share their winnings with friends and family, and some more widely. No one said, “I’m going to put it in a Swiss bank account, buy the biggest yacht I can find, and go live in the middle of the ocean by myself.”

The idea of having $1.5 billion dollars allows us to imagine abundance, which appears to inspire generosity. The thing is, we live inside of astonishing abundance every day.

I was eavesdropping on a conversation between a few students on campus the other day. (Yes, if you’re near me, I’m eavesdropping on you. It’s one of my favorite pastimes.) Two of them wished a third good luck on a presentation, and after he left proceeded to pick his appearance apart in a breathtakingly unkind and thorough way.

Wow, I thought, that’s harsh, and not five seconds later watched myself internally do exactly the same thing to someone who for whatever reason didn’t meet my expectations. It was unsettling.

I think if we were truly conscious of the abundance of gifts we have, that judgmental voice in our heads might quiet down. We might recognize that this other person is a gift, that he or she is part of ourselves in ways that we can’t fully understand and that quite literally make us whole. We might be more generous—with our patience, with our love, with our understanding.

And the odds of success are better than 292 million to one.

 

Yes! Thank You!

Rachel HenryLeave a comment

This is one of my favorite blog entries of the year—the one in which I choose a few of the myriad things that inspire me to say “Yes!” and list them out. Here is this year’s offering:

I am grateful that there are so many ways to say this same thing:

  • “Love is our origin, love is our ground, and love is our destiny” (Jim Finley).
  • Everything comes forth from God, is an example of God, and returns to God (my paraphrase of Richard Rohr’s paraphrase of St. Bonaventure in his book Eager to Love).
  • “Love is the essential structure of reality, the metaphysical basis of all that exists, the eternal pattern of the universe” (Ilia Delio describing Bede Griffiths’ approach in her book Christ in Evolution).

I am grateful chocolate-covered carrot bits are not a thing.

I am grateful for transformations of all kinds:

  • the bursting forth of flower buds into full blown blossoms
  • the changing and falling of leaves
  • the caterpillar’s chrysalis and the emerging butterfly
  • sobriety
  • the breaking open of our hearts in the presence of suffering

I am grateful for how often what I’m reading is grammatically correct and perfectly proofread, all things considered.

I am grateful for generosity of heart in so many forms:

  • parents rising in the middle of the night to tend their sick children
  • people sending money across the globe to those they will never meet
  • people smiling at others for no particular reason
  • animals caring for other animals in all those videos careening through Facebook feeds
  • plants growing to support all life on Earth

I am grateful for imagination—in a world that has never been at peace, the concept still exists.

I am grateful for the Sunday comics and beautifully illustrated children’s books.

I am grateful for all the people who so grace my life with love, perspective, good humor, and, of course, good food on a daily basis, including everyone reading these words. Happy Thanksgiving!

Note: I will be on vacation next week. May everyone be well fed.

Seeing Each Other Through

Rachel Henry4 Comments

Friendship is a curious and wonderful thing. I spent last weekend with college friends whom I’ve now known for more than half my life, twenty-three years to be exact.

I find our friendship remarkable because we remained connected through a span of time in which human beings—at least in the western world—behave in ways that are designed to alienate people. I don’t mean that we were bad people, just that we were in our twenties, a period when we struggle so hard to establish an identity that we can feel threatened by others’ attempts to do the same. Now we can joke about our differences, but there was a time when we—or at least I—took those aspects of our personalities so seriously that we could have allowed them to pull us apart.

And that would have been a great loss because I can confess the important things to these friends, from jealousy toward women who can wear cute, flat, bad-for-your-feet sandals to my deepest heartbreaks. These are generous, funny, smart women, and we can laugh or be silent together, drink good wine or eat onion rings with equal giddiness.

These two know me at so many levels. They know I didn’t learn how to clean a toilet until my junior year of college. They know I will always be the last one ready to go. They have listened with great love and patience to my self-doubts and my fears that the world was falling apart. They have held the preciousness of my self when I couldn’t and reflected it back to me until I could find it again. They have done this not once but many times.

One of my favorite hymns, The Servant Song, says, “I will share your joy and sorrow till we’ve seen this journey through.” I’m not sure that we can offer one another anything more essential than sharing our joys and sorrows. I know that Heidi and Molly will do exactly that for me and that we will be together until the end of our journeys, and that is a tremendous gift. I love you both. Thank you.

Of Dentistry and Dulcimers

Rachel Henry5 Comments

Yesterday, I started with a visit to the dentist and wrapped up the evening listening to a concert of Hungarian hammered dulcimer and vocals. I never would have believed beforehand that I’d find the same thing at both events.

My general attitude toward getting my teeth cleaned is resentment. Surprisingly, thinking that I shouldn’t have to waste my time in the dentist’s chair does not prevent plaque and tartar from growing in my mouth. My hygienist is extremely conscientious and always tells me places of concern to brush or floss more thoroughly, which I rarely appreciate because I don’t want to spend any more time on the nightly routine than I already do.

Yesterday I was lying there with my mouth open in my usual resentful way thinking that I would hate to spend the day looking at other people’s mouths when it occurred to me what a tremendous gift my hygienist was giving me. It is utterly amazing that someone is willing to stick her fingers in my mouth and scrape plaque off my teeth. It is remarkably generous that she cares enough about other people’s teeth to remind me over and over again to take my time flossing.

At the recital in the evening, the two musicians did twenty or so pieces, and the dulcimer player looked at his music for only one of them. About halfway through, I was thinking, musicians are incredible—how do they keep all that music in their head at once? I couldn’t do that. Then once again an awareness of the immensity of the gift they were giving us in the audience hit me. These musicians were willing to share their abilities with whoever happened to walk through the door.

Before yesterday, I wouldn’t have equated resentment and admiration, but it turns out they can sometimes both be about me. They prevent me from seeing and appreciating the generosity of those around me, from receiving the gifts they are literally pouring out.

Thank You, Dear Friend

Rachel Henry9 Comments

One time, in the midst of moving across country, I stopped at my friend Bardwell’s house with my Ford Escort packed to the gills, my toiletries unwisely buried behind one of the seats. I was in my mid-twenties. Bardwell must have been in his early seventies.

He took my face between his hands and looked at me with his twinkling blue eyes and transferred into me some knowing of my own preciousness, as Jim Finley would call it. I don’t recall the words he used, but I’m sure they included “love,” a word I sometimes have trouble using with even my closest friends, though never, since that visit, with him.

Bardwell taught me and many, many other college students Asian religions. He didn’t reduce religion to a system of ideas but rather offered us a way of being in the world, a way he practiced. I always thought that when the Tao Te Ching talked about a sage, it was talking about someone like Bardwell.

He marked our papers in green or purple felt-tip pen and reading his comments felt intimate, as if the ink held the attention and love with which he responded to our efforts. He taught us to be careful with words: childlike not childish, pacifist not passive. He encouraged us to take risks in our writing and thinking by rewarding the successes and not paying too much attention to the failures as long as there was some daring in the attempt.

Long after I had graduated, he was the first to tell me the concept that now shapes my seeking in this life—that there is no such thing as our individual identities, that we are all parts of a single whole. He may have been saying it all along, but when I finally heard it, it stuck, though I had no idea what he meant.

There are many wonderful facets to Bardwell—his gentle and quick sense of humor, his love of puns and baseball, the way his smile sometimes reveals the six-year-old inside—but as ever, when I want to capture the essence of something or someone, I’ll steal a few lines from William Stafford, this time from the poem “You Reading This, Be Ready”:

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?

That’s where Bardwell lives from—that breathing respect for all and for the reality of our interconnectedness held in the awareness that it is all gift. Should you ever be lucky enough to meet him, you’ll feel it.

Opening to Life

Rachel Henry1 Comment

The beginning of the new quarter at work reminded me how fortunate I am to work with an exceptional bunch of student assistants. I’d say this is a shout-out to them, but they probably don’t even use that term anymore.

This group of young women and men help me remember that college students are exactly that—young women and men, not kids. They’re eager, excited, smart, talented, creative, responsible. They take ownership of their work, propose interesting ideas, and care about the results. They’re interested in a variety of topics—from video production to friendship to the inner workings of a watch—and have any number of projects going on all the time. They have lofty and fulfilling goals, like working at Pixar and developing their own brand of backpacks. And they are each utterly different from each other yet collaborate well as a team.

In trying to encapsulate what I appreciate about them, the best word I’ve found is alive-ness. In the work they do for me and the pieces of their lives they choose to share, there is an energy, an excitement that may be unique to their particular stage of life. It’s lovely to be around.

I wonder whether they are aware of their own enthusiasm. My mom once brought me a branch that had fallen off a plum tree just as the buds were beginning to open. I put it in a vase with water and set it on the kitchen table and it astonished me. The urgency of those buds to open was palpable—they were literally bursting with it. The new flowers strained toward life with a real force.

This may be the stage these students are in—an opening to the world. I am impressed that they are doing it with such joy, passion, and grace and am grateful for the opportunity to be present to it.

Thanks for This and That

Rachel Henry7 Comments

Whoever decided we should set aside time every year to pause and indulge in a little gratitude was really, really smart. Here is my annual list of a few of this year’s gifts.

I am grateful for how easy my life is and for knowing that life is so much more than ease.

I am grateful that practically the entire wealth of human knowledge is at our fingertips for the price of an Internet connection and that all the knowledge in the world is not worth as much as the smile of a child or an old friend.

I am grateful for moments of exquisite beauty and for the strange truth that, if we pay attention, the welling up of creation can be found even in those places we might usually consider least beautiful.

I am grateful for meals at fancy restaurants and for scrambled eggs on nights when I haven’t gone shopping.

I am grateful for all the ways to stay in touch with friends and family who are distant and for the times we gather in person.

I am grateful for times of high excitement and great good cheer and for times of quiet and rest.

I am grateful for old friends and those I’ve just met.

I am grateful that things pass away, that the seasons turn, that new life comes into being and that we are all, somehow, always both letting go and becoming new.

And of course I am grateful for chocolate.

Note: The blog and I will be on vacation next week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank You

Rachel Henry8 Comments

When I logged on last night, WordPress informed me that on that very date four years ago I started writing these reflections every week-ish. This is the kind of fact I wouldn’t have believed if a computer didn’t say it because four years is a long time.

Or it used to be. College was four years, and college lasted a long time, as I recall. As previously noted, this whole age thing alters either the space-time continuum or our perception of it. I know the latter is more likely, but I’m not ruling out the former.

Another reason it doesn’t feel as if it’s been a long time is you. Every time I wanted to spend the evening streaming an entire season of Arrested Development or scrolling through Facebook, I remembered that, miraculously, there are people on the other end of the ether who find this blog helpful.

Knowing that is humbling, in the truest sense of the word, that is, it reminds me that what happens here doesn’t so much come from me as through me but that I need to keep showing up. It keeps me honest, which means you keep me honest. You move me to look inside, beyond complaint, beyond self criticism (OK, usually) to say something I hope is useful. I have to give up my perfectionist streak and hit publish even on the days when I think, this is really not my best one. Almost every time, those posts receive the most likes and comments.

I saw a quote recently that said, “No one can do it for you, and you can’t get there alone.” That is absolutely true of this blog. Thank you.

What Are the Odds?

Rachel Henry2 Comments

I often choose to be annoyed by the tag line people attach to this or that online profile, but a few weeks ago, I saw one I liked: “Just to live is holy. Just to be is a blessing.”

A friend at work recently said that he often thinks about how huge the odds against his existence are. I once heard that if the timing at the Big Bang had been off by a trillionth of a second, particles would never have formed, much less stars, planets, and living beings. (This is one of those “I heard it somewhere” scientific facts rather than my usual “thoroughly researched on Google” scientific facts.)

He pointed out that you don’t have to get cosmic to be boggled by your good fortune. You only have to go a few branches back in your family tree because all of these people throughout history had to not only meet but also get together and feel frisky at an exact moment for your genome to come into existence. Not to mention all the twists and turns evolution didn’t take.

And then he said, “And what do we do with it? Play video games.” My internal response to this kind of reminder used to be, wow, I really need to change what I do. But trying to force myself to change my actions through guilt and mental chastisement has never really worked. The more effective question for me right now is “How do we do whatever we’re doing?”

If I could wake up every morning wildly grateful for and astonished by my existence, if I could maintain that reverence and wonder throughout the day whether I was doing dishes, working, or playing video games, I think my actions would change effortlessly, as a natural extension of my approach to life. If, with the psalmist, I could remember to sing, “I praise you, Lord, for I am wonderfully made,” I might start to do more of what I was made to do.