In Gratitude This Thanksgiving

Expressing gratitude is transformative, just as transformative as expressing complaint. Imagine an experiment involving two people. One is asked to spend ten minutes each morning and evening expressing gratitude (there is always something to be grateful for), while the other is asked to spend the same amount of time practicing complaining (there is, after all, always something to complain about). One of the subjects is saying things like, “I hate my job. I can’t stand this apartment. Why can’t I make enough money? My spouse doesn’t get along with me. That dog next door never stops barking and I just can’t stand this neighborhood.” The other is saying things like, “I’m really grateful for the opportunity to work; there are so many people these days who can’t even find a job. And I’m sure grateful for my health. What a gorgeous day; I really like this fall breeze.” They do this experiment for a year. Guaranteed, at the end of that year the person practicing complaining will have deeply reaffirmed all his negative “stuff” rather than having let it go, while the one practicing gratitude will be a very grateful person. What you practice is what you are; practice and the goal of practice are identical, cause and effect are one reality. Expressing gratitude can, indeed, change our way of seeing ourselves and the world.

— John Daido Loori, Roshi, in Bringing the Sacred to Life: The Daily Practice of Zen Ritual

I'm grateful for this guy; he's grateful for FIRE TRUCKS

On more than one occasion, I heard Daido Roshi tell this story about gratitude in a talk, and since then I’ve wondered how to bring the practice of gratitude into my life in a way that does not feel strange or artificial. I cannot say that I’m a complainer (though perhaps my husband would say otherwise?), but I’m certainly a worrier, and incessant worrying orients one toward the negative just as much as incessant complaining does. I’m grateful, therefore, to Amanda of Let’s Take the Metro, who writes a weekly post expressing her gratitude for the blessings in her life, and who has challenged all of us to write a Thanksgiving post naming one hundred blessings in our lives. One hundred blessings? Why yes, and probably many more …

1. BRIAN (whose real name I am using because he is not, as he likes to think, just a “character” when I write about him here), for never, ever, ever wanting or needing or expecting me to be anything other than myself, in all my messed-up glory
2. Also, his making sure that I get to the temple and to writing class and to sesshin and to occasional nights out with friends and so on
3. And I cannot forget, his doing the dishes every night — and much, much more household work than that, but it is for the dishes I am most thankful
4. The Critter, the Critter, the Critter, oh I love him so
5. The little one on the way
6. My sister Jessica, for always understanding, and also for introducing me to some great music
7. My sister Elisabeth, for always understanding, and also for telling me what to make for dinner
8. My father, for being my impossible-to-explain father
9. My mother, whom I miss
10. My grandmother
11. My stepmother Nancy; there should be a better word than “stepmother” for her
12. My in-laws: they’re not crazy
13. Angus, our kitty
14. Our beautiful neighborhood
15. My teachers Daido Roshi and Shugen Sensei
16. Having found the dharma
17. The Mountains and Rivers Order sangha
18. My writing teacher
19. My Writers Studio colleagues
20. My Writers Studio students
21. The readers of this blog, especially for their care and support in responding to posts like this one
22. All of the lovely bloggers whom I follow
23. The Natural Parents Network team
24. The poetry of Linda Gregg
25. The poetry of Marie Howe
26. The poetry of Kenneth Koch (I could go on like this, but I’ll stop at the first three that popped to mind.)
27. Sufjan Stevens, for The Age of Adz; nothing I’ve heard this year comes even close
28. My body, for having carried and borne one child and now carrying another
29. My body, for nourishing the Critter
30. My body, for having finished three marathons and might just have one or two (or more?) left in it
31. Fred Lebow, for making the New York City Marathon the awesome five-borough experience it is
32. Joan Benoit Samuelson and Grete Waitz, for showing the world what women can do
33. My BOB stroller, for keeping me running, sort of
34. Being able to work from home
35. The Critter’s lovely Montessori school
36. My clients
37. Christina Katz, for providing a map for developing a professional writing career
38. Other teachers of writing whom I’ve known only from their books: especially Brenda Ueland, Anne Lamott, and Natalie Goldberg
39. Oh, and Kim Addonizio and Dorriane Laux, also teachers of writing whom I’ve known only from their books, but they get their own special thanks as being the authors of the book that I bought when I decided to start writing poetry again
40. My girlfriends from Simsbury; some of whom I’ve known as long as thirty years? longer?
41. My college friends; and I don’t even like to think that as of this year we, too, have known each other for decades, egads!
42. Sherine, for always listening; plus, recipes for PIE!
43. Melissa, for finding me years and years after grad school was over (though maybe I found her?)
44. Having taken part in the Simsbury High School concert choir
45. Having taken part in the New Blue
46. My singing voice, which perhaps I’ll use again someday
47. Joss Whedon, for Buffy
48. The BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, for being the very bestest long, long film to watch on a cold, snowy day
49. Charlotte Joko Beck, for her two books that have meant so much to me
50. Ossipee Lake in New Hampshire
51. Mount Chocorua
52. The Yum-Yum Shop in Wolfboro, New Hampshire, for their sugar crullers
53. Bailey’s in Wolfboro, New Hampshire, for their hot fudge
54. Paris, France; someday my love and I will get back there
55. Our CSA
56. The Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza
57. Prospect Park
58. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden
59. The first signs of spring: crocuses, daffodils, magnolia trees
60. Lilacs, for their heady scent
61. The bluebells of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden — like nothing else you’ve ever seen
62. And especially day lilies, which generally appear around the time when I’m thinking that all the best flowers are gone for the year
63. The leaves of deciduous trees, for changing color before they fall away
64. And especially the leaves of sweetgum trees, for being shaped like stars and turning all colors of the autumn
65. The Brooklyn Birthing Center and its kick-ass midwives
66. Thanksgiving, for warming up the darkest weeks of the year
67. Christmas, for lighting up the darkest weeks of the year
68. The U.S. Naval Observatory, for providing the means for me to obsess about the minutes of sunlight per day at this time of year
69. Charles Schulz, for A Charlie Brown Christmas
70. Vince Guaraldi, for the music for A Charlie Brown Christmas
71. Bill Watterson, for Calvin and Hobbes
72. Cyndi Lauper, for showing when I most needed to see that it’s just fine to be yourself
73. Sinéad O’Connor, for The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
74. The Beatles, for damn thing they did
75. Bach, for every damn thing he wrote
76. Beethoven, for his Symphony No. 7
77. Arvo Pärt, for Tabula Rasa
78. Coffee
79. Hot chocolate
80. Red wine (how I miss it …)
81. My grandma Nevins’s coffee rolls, which my dad still makes
82. My grandma Dalessio’s string bean casserole, which we’ll be enjoying today
83. Elizabeth Mitchell, for You Are My Little Bird
84. James Marshall, for George and Martha
85. Arnold Lobel, for Frog and Toad
86. Madeleine L’Engle
87. Andrea O’Reilly, for Feminist Mothering
88. Katha Pollitt
89. Freddy’s, where I met my love — and where we saw the Red Sox win the World Series for the first time in eighty-six years
90. The 2004 Red Sox
91. Terry Francona, whom I’m going to miss
92. My laptop, which has suffered much undeserved abuse
93. My camera
94. The piano at my father’s house, which, alas, the Critter will not let me play
95. All Songs Considered, for introducing me to wondrous music
96. New Sounds, for the same
97. The Brian Lehrer Show
98. Top Cafe Tibet
99. The tot lot
100. For all that I have yet to encounter, and for all that I have forgotten: gassho

Mount Chocorua