Hello Friends,
Below please find some brief musings on the concept of Gratitude.
I started writing this as an update, and then it turned into a letter, and then a poem… and then a prayer. Truly I’m not sure what it is– but it is written from the heart. This feels very personal to put out there to the world at large, but I imagine that I am not alone in the place I find myself in as I share this. It’s been a tough year– the contrasts of the intense beauty of the gifts and the incredible grief of losses endured made for a year that was… well… not boring! So, I hope that if your year has been a wild ride, if you find yourself in the primordial chaos, stewing in infinite potential, that this will help bring a sense of– as Jack Kornfield would say– “gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us.”
Contemplations on Gratitude
Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I have been trying to write this for a couple of weeks now. Just sitting with it. Letting percolate…
I have felt the sentiment of this just under the surface, but the words have been slow to come. Instead, it’s been a soup of images and feelings, some of them hard to regard. Just sit with this and be with the texture of it. Don’t try to say this yet, I tell myself.
I have no doubt that for most of us who have come into contact with the miracle of this Medicine that it’s no challenge to list off the myriad blessings in our lives and easy to rouse the open-hearted feelings of gratitude that accompany them. Even though this flavor of gratitude is a beautiful sentiment to contemplate, that feels somehow remedial for the places I know this community is capable of going. We can go deeper. And just how deep can gratitude flow?
I’ve been reviewing this past year, contemplating what it is I’m most grateful for…
What I have found is this:
That in the chaotic soup of
Destinies dissolved,
Beloved friends departed,
New paths illuminated,
In the rending, tearing and stretching of the heart
In all directions and inside out;
In letting go of the life imagined…
Allowing the ash of that future to blow away in the Cosmic Wind,
In the stepping off the edge of the cliff into the Abyss,
In feeling torn to pieces
As the face of chaos and the unknown rouses deep and reverberating cries for the familiar…
In this Alchemical Dance,
In the Bright Mirror She holds to my heart,
And to my now uniquely weathered face,
What I have found is this…
That we can feel pain but see beauty in the same instant,
That the Universe rises to meet steps taken in faith and trust,
And thickets full of fragrant flowers blossom around blind corners chanced to travel on this dense jungle path.
And when it’s not flowers but Jaguars, we can stretch in every direction until we succumb to the heat and pressure of their alchemy; As we feel torn apart our hearts are also bursting open– And in the singularity of that surrender,
The heart gives birth to a whole new Universe.
I’m tender. I’m raw. I feel Love again. And It hurts so beautiful.
For this I am grateful.
With profound respect I bow my head to the ground before the designing principles of the Universe and give my thanks for all the challenges and obstacles that have allowed my heart to feel Love.
May I continue to encounter the obstacles and challenges that hasten awakening.
May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion.
May everything learned from my mistakes and my ignorance be the cause of the swift and complete enlightenment of myself and all beings in all times and all places.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
With Great Love,
With Great Respect,
With Profound Gratitude,
Jess
