Wisdom of a Pearl?

 “Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.”  -G.B. Stern

Thinking grateful thoughts is all well and good, and may have a positive effect on my own outlook--but to really make a difference I need to find ways to SHOW my gratitude. So, as part of my “year of living gratefully” I’m trying to write a thank you note every day to someone, for something.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Finding just ten minutes out of 24 hours to think of someone other than myself long enough to write a quick note?

It is proving to be a lot harder than I’d imagined! Days just disappear from the calendar, with my attention being demanded by all sorts of things. Finding time to write a little thank you card (like finding time to meditate, or to pray, or to compose, or to exercise, or to do any of a zillion other healthy things) is surprisingly difficult! I hope it gets easier, as it becomes a habit. Like checking my email, or the morning boxscores.

It also may get easier, if I can find ways to re-frame some of my attitudes. Last week I found myself just not WANTING to write thank you notes. I didn’t want to, because I was annoyed and upset by some people and things they had done that I felt were thoughtless.

So I tried a little experiment. I decided to write a thank you note to one of the people who had bugged me that week.

I couldn’t thank them for bugging me, so I had to take some time to re-think the incident, and see if there was SOMETHING positive in the transaction, for which I COULD be thankful. It took a little effort—but I did think of something. Instead of stewing over the offending behavior, I wrote about something positive. I did the same thing the next day—reframing in my mind another interaction that had bothered me. It was a little easier to do, the second time. It felt a little less awkward—a little more natural.

Now, a week later, I’ve noticed an interesting thing. I’m still not happy about what those two people did—but I’m not as bothered as I was before writing the notes. And in fact, since writing them, I haven’t thought much at all about those things that had seemed like such blatant, horrible offences.

Hmmmmmm. This reminds me of something I read once, about the way pearls are formed. Here is how the process works:

“A natural pearl begins its life as a foreign object, such as a parasite or piece of shell that accidentally lodges itself in an oyster's soft inner body where it cannot be expelled. To ease this irritant, the oyster's body takes defensive action. The oyster begins to secrete a smooth, hard crystalline substance around the irritant in order to protect itself. This substance is called "nacre." As long as the irritant remains within its body, the oyster will continue to secrete nacre around it, layer upon layer. Over time, the irritant will be completely encased by the silky crystalline coatings. And the result, ultimately, is the lovely and lustrous gem called a pearl.”*

The process begins with an intrusion; a disturbance--something that gets stuck deep inside. In the oyster, that triggers a response to coat the irritant with something smooth and soft, so that eventually the oyster creates a thing of beauty out of what once was an annoyance.

We humans usually take another approach. When something irritates us, we usually try to do one of two things. Either we try anything we can to get rid of it; to flush it out of our systems and our lives--or sometimes we hold on to the irritant firmly, keeping it exposed so we can revisit it over and over. We keep poking at it the way we can't stop scratching a mosquito bite, even though we know scratching just makes it worse.

What would it be like if we could un-learn that behavior? Imagine if our daily irritations could prompt us to “secrete” a soothing substance of our own, that could transform the annoyance into a thing of beauty! Maybe that's what the Scriptures mean when they tell us: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  (Romans 12:21)

If we can have the eyes to see SOMETHING good in anything that happens to us; to realize that even those who hurt us have some good qualities and intentions—then we can learn and grow and benefit from whatever comes our way. Everything that happens to us today, even if it comes in the form of an annoyance, can be fertile ground for growing something beautiful tomorrow.

* http://www.americanpearl.com/historyoyster.html

365 Thank Yous

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”  -Cicero

I’ve had a few weeks now to think about my gratitude “project.” I’ve collected a small pile of books about thankfulness and gratitude for inspiration. Now it is time to actually DO something. But how/when/where do I start?

I thought about ways to organize my year of gratitude. Should I keep a gratitude journal that I update each night before going to bed? Could I practice some thanksgiving ritual each morning when I first get up? What if I were to actually write and mail a thank you note to someone every day of the year? God knows the Post Office could use the extra income!

365 Thank Yous! That sounds like a winner to me! And how hard could it be to respond to just ONE thing each day with gratitude? I could probably come up with 365 notes just to my wife, for all the special things about her that I take for granted!

After just a few minutes of research, I found out that 365 Thank Yous had also sounded like a good idea to a West Coast lawyer named John Kralik, who published a book with that title last year (©2010, Hyperion).

In his book, Kralik describes going through a nasty divorce, as his law practice faced bankruptcy. He was in poor health, and his life seemed to be falling apart all around him. Hiking one New Year’s Day, Kralik contemplated all these things that seemed to be conspiring against him. As he walked, he heard a voice saying: “Until you learn to be grateful for the things you have, you will not receive the things you want.”

Hard-pressed to think of ANYTHING going right in his life, for which to give thanks, Kralik nevertheless challenged himself to write 365 thank you notes over the next 12 months. In the end, it took a bit longer than that—15 months all told—and his book relates how he did it.

More importantly, it relates how writing those thank you notes changed Kralik’s life. Being intentionally grateful—and expressing that gratitude daily—increased his self-awareness and shifted his priorities. It helped him find new ways to relate to others, and to change the way he handled his business. 365 Thank Yous chronicles these changes—and their remarkable consequences for his emotional, physical, and professional life.

“I did not view writing thank-you notes as a self-help system,” Kralik writes, “nor did I view it as a new, positive psychological method to delude myself into believing that my life is better than it really is or to cultivate an artificial state of well-being. This is just an exercise in average good manners…it is a good thing to do and makes the world a better place. It also made me a better man.”

I think I’ll write the first of my 365 Thank Yous to John!

For more about John Kralik and his book, see:

http://365thankyounotes.com/

All My Troubles Seem Small

"All my troubles seem small
When I see these people with their backs against the wall
When I watch what they go through
When I see how far they fall
Compared to them—I’ve got no troubles at all"
-T.R. Ritchie



Leslie and I were invited to attend the Happiness House’s Christmas celebration the other night, in Canandaigua. Our friend Julie is one of the Activities Directors at Happiness House, which provides physical therapy and occupational therapy and invaluable emotional support for adults who have suffered severe brain injuries. We’ve had the privilege to sing for the folks at Happiness House a few times. It is always a joyful—and humbling—experience.

The individuals served by Happiness House have been dealt horrific hands of cards, but they play them with grace and dignity and a great deal of courage. Progress can be slow—measured in small steps and gestures over periods of years, not days. But progress is made, and celebrated with love and great…well…happiness. And those little bits of progress add up to true miracles.

Looking around us I saw a room filled with wide-open smiles. Everyone was happy to be there: staff, volunteers, caregivers, members… I didn’t hear a single word of complaint, or sarcastic comment, or cutting remark.

I thought how different this was, from the way we often treat each other in church. Don’t get me wrong—I love my church, and my church family—but there are times we can just lose our way, in pretty insignificant squabbles and fights. I think about battles over what time a service starts, or whether or not to wear robes, or over what someone said that hurt someone else’s feelings…and how all those things can quickly escalate into little civil wars.

And I thought about how often I complain and moan and groan about petty little difficulties. I live such a privileged life. I have a home and a job. I have a beautiful, loving wife. I’m relatively healthy. My days are filled with meaningful activities, and opportunities to be constructive and creative. But how many times (a day!) do I feel sorry for myself?

Whenever we leave Happiness House, I find myself humming T.R. Ritchie’s song “All My Troubles Seem Small.” I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude to all the folks there, for being my teachers. They gently remind me that there is more joy in a simple act of kindness, than in a pile of stuff—and those molehills I elevate into mountains just don’t amount to much at all.

Thank you Happiness House!

http://trritchie.com/

http://www.happinesshouse.org/

Leaving the Kingdom of Night

“The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything.”     - Albert Schweitzer

David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk who writes beautifully about the spiritual life says this, in his book Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer:

    “The root of joy is gratefulness. We tend to misunderstand the link between joy and gratefulness. We notice that joyful people are grateful and suppose that they are grateful for their joy. But the reverse is true: their joy springs from gratefulness. If one has all the good luck in the world, but takes it for granted, it will not give one joy. Yet even bad luck will give joy to those who manage to be grateful for it. We hold the key to lasting happiness in our own hands. For it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”

I think most of us are more than willing to show gratitude, when things go our way--to say “thank you” when someone is particularly nice to us. And sometimes we think: If I could just catch a break, and get out of this streak of misfortune, then I’d be happy to show some gratitude!

But that kind of thinking shows we’ve gotten the whole thing backwards. It isn’t experiencing joy that makes us thankful, it is being thankful that brings joy into our lives.

So if GRATITUDE makes us more happy, what makes us more GRATEFUL?

WE do.

Gratitude is a CHOICE we make. It is a behavior we can learn and develop through practice. When we do, it brings happiness and joy into our lives.

According to Henri Nouwen, we can choose to be grateful in the face of both good and bad. Nouwen writes:

     “I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are steep and hurt and resentful. I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart responds in bitterness…I can choose to listen to the voices that forgive and to look at the faces that smile, even while I still hear words of revenge and see grimaces of hatred.”

But is that true when things are really bad? What about when we really suffer in this life? What about when we are victims of injustice and unfair pain?

Someone who experienced the very worst kind of pain and injustice is Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. When asked if he could still feel gratitude after the horrendous experience of living in Nazi death camps, Wiesel replied: Absolutely!

     “When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude…For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.”

Wiesel extends the prison metaphor to have meaning for all of us. It isn’t just evil dictators and military despots that build prisons. Many of us build prison walls for ourselves in our own minds. We line the walls with the barbed wire of our fears. Our internal judgments become patrolling guards. To escape requires walking past those guards, and the key that opens the prison doors in our minds is gratefulness.

No matter the pain or difficulty or trauma you face, Wiesel says:
     "[Gratitude] has the power to transform your life. If the dust settles and you’re still standing, there’s a reason for it…now start walking! You can leave the kingdom of night. You can start walking toward the gates right now. Your freedom begins with being thankful for the small things—gaining courage and strength to reach the big things.”

Traveling Light

Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky.
I join my hands in thanks
For the many wonders of life;
For having twenty-four brand-new hours before me.
          -Thich Nhat Hanh



This day is a gift. When I went to bed last night, I had no guarantee that I would see another day—but here it is, and I’m still here. I’m carrying a lot of baggage into this new day. But before I pick it all up and trudge anywhere, I just want to sit, and see that blue sky, and be thankful for the gift of these twenty-four hours.

A memory: I am in Paris on a beautiful spring day in 1975. I’m on my way home from my freshman year in college, headed for the little town in Germany, where my parents live. I had flown to Paris, and was going the rest of the way by train.

I’d heard so much about the spectacular beauty of Paris, “city of lights, city of magic.” I knew that the art and architecture, the culture and cuisine of Paris had been an inspiration to generations of writers, artists, and thinkers.

I am not exactly traveling light. Along with several bags stuffed with clothes and books, I have a guitar, a mandolin, and an electric typewriter (remember them?) with me. I’m travelling alone—just me and my small mountain of stuff. I didn’t want to leave things in storage at school. I didn’t want to pay to have them shipped ahead of me. So at the airport baggage claim, I put a couple straps over each shoulder, grab a couple of handles in each hand, and stagger to a cab, muttering curses all the way. Airport to cab to train station to train…each step is an unbelievable agony. By the time I get on my train and stow all my stuff, I am literally shaking from the exertion.

And that was all I saw of Paris. I haven’t had a chance to visit since—and don’t know if I ever will again. I had just one chance to experience the splendor and glory of “the City of Love”—and what I took away from it was a sore back and a bunch of blisters.

I have just one chance to experience the splendor and glory of today. As I unwrap the gift of this day, hour by hour, I will have a lot of choices to make. I will choose how much of my baggage I pick up and carry with me today—and how much I will lay down. To “join my hands in thanks for the many wonders of life,” I first have to put that baggage down and leave it lying there for a while.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

T Minus One And Counting

"Wake up, Wake up!
You have slept millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?"  -Kabir


Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. There will be turkey to eat and football to watch, just as there is every other year. And, as always, we’ll probably give a passing thought to being grateful—to “counting our blessings”—then plunge right back into our normal patterns of taking so many of those blessings for granted.

But what would it be like if we didn’t revert to form so predictably? What would it be like if we were TRULY grateful? What would it be like to really be aware of all the good things around us; to touch and taste and feel that goodness with an open heart?

What would it be like to go even further—to "give thanks in all circumstances?" To really look for silver linings in clouds, and to see character lessons in hardships, and to find opportunities to connect with others in times of pain?

This year I don’t want to mumble a few platitudes and just go back to the football game. Well…okay—I DO want to watch the football game—but I want my mumbled platitudes of thanksgiving to be not the END of my thanksgiving, but the BEGINNING. I want to put time and energy and thought into really learning to be thankful—and not just for a day, or for a season. I want tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, to be Day #1 of a “Year of Living Gratefully.” And I hope that by the end of that year, I’ll be a different person…a truly grateful person.

As I go through this year, I’d like to share my thoughts and feelings with you. I’d like to hear your reactions—and to have you share your experiences of feeling and expressing gratitude. Let's talk about how hard it is to be thankful sometimes—and how big a difference it can make in our lives when we truly are.