Whole-hearted Gratitude

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

What is gratitude exactly? I once thought it was saying thank you to someone so they knew their gift was appreciated. That’s not wrong … but maybe it’s only the icing on the cake. I want the whole cake, and I want to eat it too. : ) For that, I will dig a little deeper. Gratitude, I now believe, is mostly a gift I give myself. The irony is precious: What we give ourselves, we cannot help but give to others.

Gratitude is a feeling I recognize in my heart, a lifeline of interconnectedness. It is the marvellous reckoning that I am not alone. In order to receive gifts whole-heartedly, I must open myself like the mother ship opens its portal in Star Wars to take on smaller craft. This is a homecoming of sorts, a recognition that some part of me was floating around unnoticed til I opened the gate and prepared the landing pad.

So much goes unnoticed. Since my 19 year-old son Sam took his first steps towards being a power line technician (a.k.a “lineman”), my eyes have opened to the work these folks do. Hanging in the air, many stories up, they set their body-minds to intricate, skillful, and hazardous work. Their efforts make it possible for me to send our newsletter and for you to receive it. I wonder now … if we do not place our attention on receiving gratefully, do we not instead just take? That is not the world I want to live in.

How many gifts are hanging outside your mother ship awaiting permission to board? What does it feel like when you welcome them home? How might you expand your awareness of receiving so that gratitude better nourishes you, and by proxy, your community?