Thursday, November 27, 2008

Gratitude

Gifts come to us in many forms. We are blessed in so many ways!

Awakening in the morning, breathing, stretching, thoughts appearing and dissolving,... sunlight and rain,... music and silence,...  challenges, dreams, opportunities, relationships and action-possibilities abound! 

We may or may not not like the forms of experience that show up: a difficulty may appear as "a bear on the path", as bad news, a rejection, something difficult to metabolize. Yet those are gift too. The difficult is what we grow from: as Rilke says in "The Man Watching", "this is how we grow: by being defeated by something greater than us". Success and victory feel good, comforts, nourishes and builds ego-strength. We all like that! But it's how we accept and deal with losses, with defeats, with conflict and incompatibility in our relationships, from failures in our communications,... its what we learn and how we respond,... that grows our characters.

The Great Persian Poet Rumi says: 
"God's presence is there in front of me, a fire on the left, 
a lovely stream on the right. One group walks towards the fire, into the fire, another towards the sweet flowing water.
No one knows which are blessed and which are not. 
Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.
A head goes under on the water surface, that head pokes out of the fire. Most people guard against going into the fire, 
and so end up in it. Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion are cheated by this reversal. 
The trickery goes further. The voice of the fire tells the truth saying I am not fire. I am fountainhead. 
Come into me and don't mind the sparks.

If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.
you should wish to have a hundred thousand moth-wings, so you could burn them away, one set a night...."

So appearances can be deceptive... when an experience appears that is unpleasant, and you want to turn away, consider Rumi's words... that it may be more enlightening to turn towards the heavy, the difficult, and see though its appearances, rather than turning away and failing to fathom the lessons inherent.

that is my offering this thanksgiving day!

may we accept with grace the bountiful blessings that come to us in many shapes, sizes and forms!