Daily Gratitude: Beginnings

Day 24/365: I am grateful to live in a world where we can always begin again, start over, have a second chance.

Several years ago, I participated in an intuitive painting workshop that pushed all my buttons and set my insecurities ringing. After a great deal of frustration and tears, I made a breakthrough ... not particularly in the quality of my art, but in the way I thought about it and myself.

It prompted the following poem:

Begin Again

I stand at an expanse of white paper.
  Fears rise like a rush of ravens cawing
  my inadequacies to an indifferent world.
  “Begin!” I cry above their screechings.

I throw paint — fuchsia, chartreuse, deep purple.
   Hope for a miracle slowly sinks into gloom
   as the Muse rejects my careless offering.
   “Begin again!” she commands.

I craft a lofty scene filled with symbol and sign.
   Color and context weave an eye-pleasing cry
   for approval and recognition that does not come.
   “Begin again,” the Muse repeats.

I wildly cover the space with scribble and daub.
   Then, lost on the page, I stand frozen in fear,
   a hollow husk with no place to hide.
   “Begin again,” she whispers.

I stand — waiting, listening, attending.
   A feeling guides me to a land timeless and unplanned.
   Brush, color and hand create in unjudged harmony.
   I am awake, alive, vision vibrating through me.

Softly the Muse just repeats, “Begin again.”

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Daily Gratitude: Learning

Day 21/365: I am so grateful for the abundance of learning resources available to us in today's world. In addition to books and libraries, we have the Internet, made useful by Google, Wikipedia, a multitude of online university courses, and millions of websites created by subject matter experts (and non-experts, of course).

The Internet is our version of the Royal Library of Alexandria with its hundreds of thousands of scrolls. We have the extremely good fortune, though, to have all this information at our fingertips, largely free, and available to almost everyone.

We have unlimited choices in what we choose to learn. May it lead us toward being a kinder, smarter, more peaceful species.

More thoughts on learning:

"Still I am learning."
 -- Michelangelo, on his death bed

"Learning without reflection is a waste.
Refection without learning is dangerous."
-- Confucius

"Learning is perhaps the only pleasure that might replace increasing consumption as our chosen mode of enriching experience. 

Some day, the joy of recognizing a pattern in a leaf or the geological strata in a cliff face might replace the satisfactions of new carpeting or more horsepower in an engine, and the chance to learn in the workplace might seem more valuable than increased purchasing power or a move up the organizational chart."
 -- Mary C. Bateson, from Peripheral Vision

Daily Gratitude: Poetry

Day 16/365: I am grateful for poetry and the almost magical way words and meaning flow together into a stream that takes you to unexpected places.

More thoughts on poetry:

"Poetry is the voice of the soul." 
 -- Carolyn Forche

Poetry is like "dancing on dynamite."
-- Hart Crane

"Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom."
  -- Robert Frost

"If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know *that* is poetry.  

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know *that* is poetry.  These are the only ways I know.  Is there any other way?"
-- Emily Dickinson

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Daily Gratitude: Walking with Missy

Day 13/365: I am grateful for my daily walks with Missy, for her willingness to explore and for her stubbornness when she wants to go a different way and show me things I might not otherwise see.

"Be content with what you have;
Rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
-- Lao Tzu

"The walk is the important thing.  I can sleep on a problem without finding a solution.  But when I'm walking, an idea will come to me."
-- Naguib Mahfouz

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Daily Gratitude: Words

Day 12/365: How grateful I am for words. Words that I read, words I write, words that pass back and forth between friends, family, neighbors and nations.

More thoughts on words:

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."       
  --Mother Teresa

“Words are events, they do things, change things.”
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

"Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear." -- words found on a Grecian cup, attributed to the Greek poet Sappho.poem, poetry.

"The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words."
-- William Gass

“Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

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Daily Gratitude: Wonder

Day 11/365: I am so grateful to live in a wonder-filled Universe that keeps me in a child-like state of awe and appreciation.

"We are all born with a sense of wonder.
Wonder and awe allow us to transcend the ordinary.
 
Wonder inspires us to open our hearts and our minds to engender gratitude."
-- Louis Schwartzberg

Daily Gratitude: Gift of Art

Day 8/365 - I am so grateful for photography and Photoshop that allows me to play with images in a way that sometimes takes my breath away.

Originally a piece of a burned shed in Harmony, CA, this image morphed into an image titled "Into the Mystery."

An opportunity to talk about about the Gratitude Miracles journal pushed it into the field of gratitude and this morning it continued its journey into a new incarnation called "Pieces of Peace" which I hope will be accepted by Pacifica Graduate Institute as part of their Pondering Peace celebration early next month.

Daily Gratitude: Wonder

Day 11/365 - I am so grateful for the unending wonders of the world that keep me in childlike awe.

"We are all born with a sense of wonder.
Wonder and awe allow us to transcend the ordinary.
 
Wonder inspires us to open our hearts and our minds to engender gratitude."
-- Louis Schwartzberg