Four Thousand Beautiful Words

I haven't done a photo post like this in a while, but I had the urge tonight to just share things that have caught my eye of late. Grateful eyes see beauty everywhere. With all the rain we've had lately...well, there seems to be a theme.

A Gerbera daisy in my yard

Beads of water on a leaf on the deck

Cherry tomatoes in our garden

Water droplets on the dressina plant

All photos by Linda Davenport 2009

Pay Attention...Just Pay Attention

I was running a bit late this morning. That's not terribly unusual, sad to say, but this morning my lateness was compounded by a need to run an errand five miles in the opposite direction from my usual work route, and to stop for gas. 

My errand route took me almost due east. As I'm racing along, I top a hill and catch the most beautiful sunrise...a true take-your-breath-away vision of gold, cream, white, grey, blue, and silver.  I gasped out loud and immediately reached for my camera, remembering almost as quickly that another errand on my list for today is getting batteries to replace the absoultely dead ones in the camera. I reached for my cell phone to grab a quick snapshot, remembering that I had left it at home and, in the interest of time, declined to go back into the house and pick it up.

It was about then that I heard that quiet little voice saying, "Just enjoy the sunrise!" And I felt a little embarrassed that I was, indeed, so caught up in trying to capture the moment that I was letting it get by me. I was forgoing the beauty of right now in my frenzy to save it for later. What kind of sense does that make?

Fast forward ten minutes...my errand complete, I raced back in the other direction and stopped for gas at a little country convenience store near my home. I was looking ahead, trying to figure out if there were pumps open and which one to aim for...and not noticing the enormous bump-and-dip combination at the edge of the parking lot, the one that I rolled over just slightly faster than I should and nearly ripped the bottom out of my car.  Beneath the cries of, "Oh, s*it!" I heard a by-now familiar voice saying, "There you go again. Pay attention to what's happening now and let the next few minutes take care of themselves!"

Embarrassment gave way to chagrin and edged toward humilliation when I realized the nice gentleman about to enter the store saw the whole debacle. He cringed and hollered (that's the only word for it), and I immediately flashed with anger, assuming he was laughing at me. My little voice was having a very busy morning, and once more nudged me. "You did it; why are you getting mad because he saw it? Just own it, Linda...just own it."

I went in the store. The fellow was standing in line with his purchases. He must have known I would be embarrassed; he didn't make eye contact. I said, "Did I scare you when I nearly took the bottom out of my car?" He relaxed, laughed, and said, "No, I was just hurting for your car!"  The laughter took the tension right out of the moment. He and the clerk shared stories about how many people have done the same thing, how you have to slow to a crawl to cross that spot without bumping, and how one young lady ripped her bumper off going over that spot. I felt a lot better by the time I'd paid for my gas.

Sorry I don't have pictures of the beautiful sunrise to share with you, but I think maybe I needed the lesson more than you needed the photos. Maybe next time.

All Gratefuled Up and No One to Thank

Church signs have caught my eye several times of late. Here's the latest:

Pity the poor atheist who feels grateful and has no one to thank.

If you've been reading here for any time at all, you know that gratitude is one of the fundamental spiritual principles of my life. There are times when I am so filled with gratitude, with appreciation and receptiveness, that I feel like I might just burst, a somewhat rounder than usual human shaped nova of golden light, a giant gratitude sparkler sending little bits of happy light everywhere. It's an intense feeling, as close to ecstatic communion with the divine All as anything I know.

I don't know why someone would think that not having a specific entiy toward which to speak words of thanks would reduce the beauty or intensity of the emotion.

If you receive an anonymous gift, something that you really need or want, are you miserable and piteous because you have no one to thank?  You might be driven mad with curiousity. You could, if you're the cynical, suspicious sort, be so consumed with identifying the source that you fail to appreciate the gift. Or, I suppose, if you're one who absolutely cannot rest until you've sent a couteous thank you note, you might lose sleep until you've fulfilled that obligation.

In my spiritual path, gratitude is not a command and thanks is not an obligation; neither are they optional. Gratitude is not a religious tenet; it's a spiritual principle, both an action and a result, a universal cause-and-effect that applies to everyone. It's a state of open, receptive awareness, one that allows blessings to flow through our lives and opens the way to connect with the Divine in everyone and everything. It is also the emotion that results from that connection and from awareness of our many blessings. And the idea that people who don't believe in deity deserve pity because they feel gratitude and don't have a god to whom they can express that gratitude indicates a lack of understanding of the principle.

There's more than one way to express gratitude. Saying thank you to the source of our gifts is one way, a good one, but I'm a bigger fan of "paying it forward." What better way could there be to acknowledge our gratitude and expess our awareness and appreciation for the good things in our lives than by helping others, by being a blessing in their lives? A personal thank you to your Source is nice; allowing that Source to work through you in the lives of others is divine. If you serve the All, what does it matter if you call on a god or not? Whether you serve in the Name of Love or in the name of love, the principle is the same.

There is no need to pity the athiest or anyone else who feels gratitude. Gratitude is its own reward, a self-fueling cycle of awareness, appreciation, and action.  A person who is truly grateful is open to receive and willing to repay, with or without a named god to thank for it. The universal principle of gratitude doesn't recognize labels like theist/athiest, believer/non-believer. Like the sun that shines on both good and evil and the rain that falls on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45), the joys of a grateful life are available to everyone.

That's something we can all be grateful for.

Something Moved Me

I got a comment from the lovely and talented Sitara Haye nudging me to get off my blogger's arse and write something. She reminded me that I don't have to be profound or even articulate...just write something. "Something has moved you in the last couple of months," she said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love you, Sitara, and I still hate it when you're right and I have to get up off the proverbial comfy couch and jumpstart myself into action. Inertia, thy name is Heartsong.

On the other hand, I like moving once I get going (bodies in motion and all that)...prefer it actually, to stillness...so thank you for the nudge.

Huh...I guess you moved me. Entry number one in my list of things that have moved me lately: Good friends who kick your butt in the gentlest and kindest of ways when you need it most. Thank you.

With Number One out of the way, the rest of the list follows.

Things That Moved Me (numbers 2 - 10)

2. My friend Indigo Satin (not her real name, unless you count her seems-like-forever-now internet and email name as real, which I do because it reflects her beautiful, flowing spirit and the deep, cool colors of her soul). As I type this, surgeons have just stitched her body back together after removing both breasts and a lymph node. She's in "recovery" at the hospital; the real recovery starts when her son and sister take her home to heal. She's beautiful, sensual, spiritual, sexy, smart, and soulful...and while I will miss the sweet, sexy, "baby's butt" cleavage she always seemed to have in her oh-so-lovely low-cut tops and corsetry, there is nothing that can dim the light in an around this amazing woman. I love you, Booful. (You can read her thoughts leading up to her surgery here, if you're interested; I hope she keeps writing as she recovers, though it may be a while before she feels like lifting arms to type.)

3. Our garden. Who would have thought, way back when Mom and Dad were sweating and digging and hoeing their little hearts out while I worked equally hard to avoid the sweating and digging and hoeing, that I would be such a garden nerd in my middle years? I love our growing, green babies! I love dirt! I'm even warming up to sweat, hoes, digging, and earthworms tilling the soil and pooping out nutritious goodness, goddess bless 'em. Compost is delightful. Weeding is an act of love. Yeah, I'm smitten...completely head over heels in love with it all.

4. Indigo Buntings. Beautiful, brilliant blue birds, blue all over except for charcoal gray outlines on wing and tail feathers. When one of these little fellows streaks by the window or rests for a while on the feeder or bird bath, my eyes can't drink in enough of the blue. They're like little drops of happy that sweeten whatever cup I'm handed on that day. For a moment, everything is a little more beautiful.

5. Mountains. The earthly ones, tall and strong and solid...and the people ones. People mountains are the ones you know you can go to when you're the one who needs to be heard, held, shored up. They're the ones who never listen superficially, just waiting for the chance to turn the conversation back to their own issues. They're the ones who, no matter how empty you are, they don't try to fill you up. They just accept that's where you are right now, that you'll fill up again in time, and all they have to do is love you while you work your way through it. And because they don't feel compelled to save you, they don't get mad when you don't heal on their time schedule. They wait, like mountains, timeless and unchanging.

6. Mountains. I know, I used this one already, but I'm moved by them in more than one way, and each one deserves its own number. It's my list. I can do that. When you look at the face of a mountain, the rock and dirt kind, you rarely see a surface that hasn't been shaped by events, some gentle and slow, some cataclysmic and abrupt. Volcanoes erupt, rocks slide, rivers run, fires rage...and the face of the mountain is changed forever. The mountain never tries to hide its face, no matter how ravaged or altered. The only regret ever expressed is by us, looking on, at the loss of some aspect of the mountain we were particularly fond of. We hate it when the rock slide changes the silhouette. We cry when fire turns a green mountainside into a ragged, charred expanse. Why is that? Why are we eager to hang onto things as they used to be? Seems a foolish thing to me, yet I catch myself wallowing in missing things that used to be instead of enjoying things that are. Mountains are good teachers.

7. Vulnerability. When people share less-than-favorite parts of themselves with me...fears, anxieties, feelings of inadequacy, loneliness...all the myriad of human worries and failings...it feels like such a profound honor. It's like they're laying down their shields, opening up and removing their armor, and standing naked and unprotected in front of me. That's huge, because we are all armed to the teeth. A single word, a glance, a shrug...we carry an arsenal that can wound as surely as any sword. Courage...not ignorance of danger or absence of fear, but willingness to be there anyway...is amazing. Trust is a gift.

8. The tastes and scents of summer. Peaches. Sweet red peppers. Melons. Iced tea with fresh mint. Fresh, pan-fried, corn. Tomatoes. Salsa. Anything grilled outside. Ice cold beer. Salads. Fresh herbs still warm from the summer sun. The way the air tastes when you breathe through your mouth after an afternoon rain. Jasmine. Magnolia. Marigold. Heliotrope. Blackberries. Squash. Pool water (don't lie - you know exactly what it tastes like). Okra, tomatoes, and onions with cornbread. Salty kisses after a day of garden work.

9. Our daughters. The women they have become. The surprise of it all. I remember when Amybeth played softball...I watched her all the time and then one night I watched her play and she was moving so fluidly, doing the right things with skill and strength, and I found myself thinking, "When did she become so capable? When did she change from my baby girl who tackled everything with her baby hands and her innocent enthusiasm and not-yet-ripe clumsiness into this young woman, fast and strong and knowledgeable? Nowadays I see Amybear with her gardening and her spiritual path, strong from the physical effort of growing and tending plants. I marvel at Sarah and her animals, at Amybeth and her passion and unwillingness to accept anyhing less than making a positive difference in the world. It's not that I didn't expect them to succeed, to be amazing. I've always known they would. I guess I'm surprised by "...the quickslivery racehorse passage of time..." (Pat Conroy). I know they're smart, strong, capable young women. I'm just surprised that they're not babies anymore. Where does the time go?

10. The pure yes-ness of it all. I find myself moved to tears with gratitude and wonder, sitting on the front porch with Jim, hot, tired from a hard day of work in the yard, garden, house...looking out across the yard, watching fireflies, and thinking...this is all I ever wanted...someone to work alongside, to share a glass of tea at the end of the day, to love without reservation. It just doesn't get any better.

You were right, Sitara. Thanks for the nudge.

Of Heaven and Earth

On the way to work a couple of days ago, I heard Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton on the radio singing, "When I Get Where I'm Going" (written by George Teren and Rivers Rutherford)...

Yeah when I get where I'm goin

There'll be only happy tears

I will shed the sins and struggles

I have carried all these years

And I'll leave my heart wide open

I will love and have no fear

Yeah when I get where I'm going

Don't cry for me down here.

It's a well-written song, beautifully performed by Paisley and Parton. But even while I was enjoying the music, I found myself thinking, "Why have I never felt that way?"

Even when I was trying to walk a Christian path, I was never focused on "where I'm going." I always felt like I was already there. Here. This is where I'm going, where I am.

As a child, I went to the Baptist church. I sang the Sunday School songs and colored the pictures of angels. Even then, the notion that this life is merely a trial to be endured on our way to our "real home" left me cold. Later, when my mother moved us from Baptist to Jehovah's Witness, the idea of a "new earth" made a little more sense, but not so much that I ever felt like I was just marking time, suffering and hoping to make the grade to get there.

Why is that? I am a southern American and our culture is saturated with Judeo-Christian (mostly fundamental Protestant Christian) references to streets of gold and mansions on the hills of our heavenly home. How is it that I never, not once, bought into that vision of our future or longed for the day when I would shed my earthly bonds and fly heavenward? I don't recall ever feeling burdened by sin and struggle, nor have I ever looked homeward toward angels.

Some will undoubtedly see my lack of heavenly focus as evidence that my heart is hardened and I'm lost to the sin and struggle. But I gotta tell you, my heart doesn't feel hard. My heart feels joy and pain. I feel bad when I do something that doesn't uphold my values. I hurt when I hurt others. I'm not evil. I'm not mean. I'm not cruel. No, I definitely don't buy the depraved sinner theory.

I don't know why I have always known that living this life is more important than focusing on some future state of supposed perfection. Maybe I've lived enough turns of the wheel to have figured that out. Maybe not. Whatever the reason, it's allowed me to find delicious joy and beauty every single day. When I'm in pain, when I'm struggling, the next beautiful thing is right here, right now, not something to hope for after I've suffered until I'm dead.

Regardless of why I've always believed this way, one thing that's crystal clear is my life is richer, fuller, more joyful, and more blessed because of it. Gratitude doesn't always require an explanation.

Joyous Encounters With the Divine - More Than One Door To God

After my post yesterday about opening the God door, I had to share something.

I was given a couple of glimpses of God today by people for whom, I'm sure, opening the God door was the last thing on their minds.

The first came early this morning as I was walking into the office. A few yards from the door, I heard behind me, "She's running...she's running! She's running to catch up to YOU!"  I turned and saw a friend running toward me. We laughed, shared our good mornings, and when she asked how I was, I responded (as I often do), "Fat and sassy!" 

She immediately replied, "Oh, we've got to eliminate that phrase!"

Me: "Oh, but it's a good thing!"

Friend: "Does your subconcious know that?"

Zing! Bullseye! Just the reminder I needed to pay attention to the messages I send myself. Funny thing is...I was just thinking about that very topic as part of a workshop I'm in the beginning stages of developing about how we claim to believe that words have power, yet we're careless with how we use those words, especially about ourselves. Even though, conciously, I infuse postive meaning into the words, I'm not sure my subconscious knows any other than the literal meaning of "fat." I don't mind being sassy, but fat is not a state I want to perpetuate. Shame on me, and thank you, Teresa, for being the voice of God this morning.

Next...standing in line in the company cafe, waiting to purchase my oh-goodie-it's-quiche-day breakfast...a woman turns and smiles, one of those hopeful, please talk to me smiles. I shared my joy about quiche day, and she asked, "How do you eat quiche and lose so much weight?"

Now, I didn't know her...don't remember having seen her...but she had noticed and watched my weight loss. And by commenting on it, she not only made me feel good, she gave me an opening to share my frustration at having gained a portion of that weight back. We then talked at length, sharing our frustrations, struggles, and hopes, our successes and continued efforts. It was a shot in the arm, better than any weight loss drug ever invented. And she reminded me that we are influencing others all the time, even when we're not aware of it. Thank you, Lisa, for being the smiling, sharing face of God for me this morning.

Blessings are all around us, all the time.  Sometimes God wears business casual and runs on the sidewalk.

Wishing you joyous encounters with the Divine, every day...and an open, aware, and grateful heart with which to recognize them.

Protecting our Egosystem

I heard a speaker at the conference I'm attending (Society for New Communications Research in San Francisco, talking about protecting our "egosystem." By the time I figured out I had misheard him, that he really said "ecosystem," my mind had already taken off on the idea of egosystems and how we operate within them.

Is there a better word for the complex environment of people and personalities we live in? My egosystem is made up of everyone - including me - in my network. In the most liberal interpretation, that includes the entire world. On a more immediate level, it's all the people in my personal network, on my web. And the balance in my egosystem is just as delicate and important to maintain as the ecosystem of the physical world.

With the exception of a few enlightened souls, we all go through the world with our egos raw and exposed. Even for those of us who work hard to recognize and minimize the destructive power of letting our ego always be in control, it's still there getting bruised and knocked about on a daily basis. Too much knocking and bruising and we start to get defensive, protective, retreating into behavior designed to protect from pain.

That makes sense...except the tools we use and the degree to which we employ them are usually way off base. If something frightens us, for example, instead of investigating the source of our fear, we run and hide behind ignorance (the deliberate kind) or, worse yet, apply liberal doses of anger. When we feel vulnerable, we attack, not to mitigate the threat but to anhilate it. We we feel angry, we gunny sack our feelings and whip out the passive-aggressive survival kit, mucking up the whole mess even further. The list is endless. And since it affects everyone on our web, in our egosystem, we end up with human environmental issues... damaged relationships, poor interpersonal encounters, loneliness, heartache.

So how do we protect our fragile egosystem? Start by recognizing it exists. Think about all the people in your world - your very complex, busy, populated world of family, friends, coworkers, strangers. How you treat them matters. How you react to them matters. And though you don't have any control over their actions, your own will certainly have an impact. Are your actions going to bring about the most desired responses? What if they don't? Do you minimize the damage or do you increase the fallout by reacting badly? Do you seek to engage healthily with your human environment, mitigating and controlling pestlike emotions and behaviors, or do you apply the emotional equivalent of DDT?  Just as in our physical environment, anytime you attempt to completely wipe out a component, even  those that annoy you, you create imbalances that skew the web. You don't want to let anger run amok in your life; you don't want to try to eliminate it altogether, either. It's a valid human emotion that, when recognized and used wisely, is valuable.

Thinking on a broader scale, how do our attempts to control group social behavior affect the fragile egosystem of our communities?  If we restrict freedom in favor of safety, what is the effect? What if we don't? How far is far enough and how far is too far?  Whose rights "weigh more?" 

Fear, anger, vulnerability, love, jealousy...they all have their place, even if it's merely to point us toward something that needs fixing.  Working responsibly within our egosystems means that we pay attention to the ego's messages and look to the sources, read the messages there, respond healthily and in ways that foster growth, peace, harmony, and self-respect for ourselves and others. WE look for ways to balance the needs of society with the needs and rights of individuals.

It's our world, this egosystem. We need to spend as much time working to protect our human emotional environment as we do our physical environment. Living "green" starts at home. So does living human, and in human terms, home is you and me.  Balancing and protecting our egosystems starts with us.

Peace.

The Perfect Score: Thanksgiving - 1, Gratitude - 364

Why do we only have one day a year set aside for giving thanks? I used to ask that question and often said that every day should be Thanksgiving. But I've changed my mind. I think one Thanksgiving Day is enough. What we need more of are Gratitude Days.

Thanks and Gratitude are related but they're not the same. Thanks is the daughter of Gratitude, and the granddaughter of Awareness. Along with her sister, Humility, Thanks is the natural descendant of the true gran dames of a rich, joyous life.

When we say "thank you" for something, we are acknowledging a gift, a blessing, a current state. It's a nod to the universe that says, "Yep...I got it...and I know it's good." Giving thanks is a good thing - the right thing - to do, but the real power comes from gratitude.

Gratitude is a state of being, the result of awareness, and is the doorway through which the gifts and blessings we are so thankful for enter into our lives. To be grateful is to be open, to choose an arms-flung-wide-in-wonder way of walking through the world, open to experience, to receiving all there is to feel and do and know.

A beautiful website, Gratefullness.org, refers to gratefullness as, "...the simple response of our heart to this life in all its fullness," and adds, "The practice of gratefulness moves us in four directions: It restores courage, inspires generosity, reconciles relationships, and has the potential to heal our Earth." (Please visit Brother David's website and learn more about what Gratefullness.org is doing to move the world in those four directions.)

Gratitude starts with awareness...not filtered awareness of "the good things in our lives," but full awareness, without judgment, of All There Is and our place among that All. When we practice conscious awareness, we see the world differently. As Dr. Wayne Dyer says, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." When we choose to be aware of All, All opens up to us, and we are the recipients of more gifts than we could possibly imagine. Grateful eyes see beauty everywhere.

I think the score is perfect. One day set aside to practice thanksgiving is enough...as long as we spend the other 364 days each year practicing gratefullness. In the words of Dag Hammerskjold, "For all that has been - thanks. For all that will be - yes."

Here's to one day of, "Thank you!" surrounded by 364 days of, "Yes!"

A View of the Mountain - Autumn in my Life

Looking out my kitchen window this afternoon, I caught the first glimpse of White Oak Mountain in the distance that I've seen since late March, maybe early April. In spring and summer, the trees completely block the mountain view, so much so that you wouldn't know the mountain was there if you didn't know the area.

Not exactly earth-shatterng news, is it? Trees shed their leaves every fall, graceful branches standing naked and unashamed, revealing sky and views hidden when they're all decked out in foliage. What struck me as I was looking out that window was how the trees and the mountain view were mirroring my own life right now.

I'm 52. My birth daughter is days away from 28, and my two step-daughters will soon be 20 and 18. The nature of my role as Mom has changed dramatically in the last few years. My baby girls are now beautiful young women, quite self-sufficient most of the time, and are actively pursuing their own interests. There are spaces in my life now that used to be crowded, spaces that reveal views I've missed for a long time.

I've reached the early autumn of my life and the leaves are falling. As those leaves drop away, the me that I used to know when I was a child is coming back into view.

I like her. She's creative, thoughtful, a writer and a photographer with an eye for beautiful things and a desire to share them with others. She's smart and she has a sense of humor She loves to cook and likes to eat, sometimes too much (some things never change). And she's learned a lot of things through her life's spring and summer, stories and lessons and memories that beg to be told, so she writes daily and loves it.

My friend and fellow writer Sitara says, “Give me an eight-spoked Wheel and I’ll show you the wisdom of the world.” She's so right. I can feel the Wheel turning, through the day, through the year, and throughout my life. The wisdom is found in paying attention, listening, and staying in synch with the Wheel.

I'm paying attention as the leaves fall and the views are revealed, some familiar, some new. Unlike the seasons, my own life is not infinite. My wheel will eventually stop turning. Time is short and I'm going to enjoy every vista along the way.

Describe your life painting...

Raventalker (www.raventalker.com) came up with a brilliant question on an email group I belong to: If you were to create a painting of your life .. your whole life … what would it be?

My answer is below...but I'm more interested in yours. What would your life painting be?

I don't know exactly what form it would take, but often I've visualized my life as a movie...a bright, glowing sphere...dancing around, moving from thought to fantasy to song to dance to love...then gradually being enclosed in a darker sphere, one that never extinguished the light, but that captured it and forced it into a more even "flow"...straight, often downward...sometimes staying close the the ground for long periods of time. The dark sphere gets thicker and more opaque so that the light inside becomes almost invisible, but not quite. Then comes the day when the light begins to grow brighter, becoming a physical force pushing at the walls of the sphere...there's a lot of turmoil and commotion and the dark sphere flies low and slow, but all the while the light is struggling and pushing and growing...until, finally, the light begins to break through the sphere in cracks and holes...streaming free for the first time in years. You can hear the dark sphere screaming as it breaks up...clinging to its own life...but the light won't stop, can't stop...and finally the last shards of the sphere break apart and fall away. The light is free! At first, the light floods the world, spread everywhere, only gradually beginning to once again coalesce into its own natural form, the beautiful, glowing sphere...shinning, bouncing, dancing, singing, loving...

If my movie had any subtitles, it would be Kahlil Gibran, "Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. "

More wisdom from Mom and good stewardship...

(from a personal email sent to ChattanoogaPagansATyahoogroupsDOTcom, June 2, 2008:

When I was growing up, I thought my mother was the cheapest, stingiest woman on the planet! She reused EVERYTHING!

My dad carried sandwiches for lunch every day for years so we went through a lot of sliced bread. She carefully shook the crumbs out of the empty bread bags, folded them, and put them inside another saved bread bag in the drawer. Those bags got used for everything. We wrapped left over biscuits after dinner in them (which were, in turn, resued as biscuit toast for breakfast the next morning). We saved receipts in them. We split them down the seam and used them to cover a bowl that didn't have a lid (secured with a rubber band saved from something else).

Wax paper was the absolute gold standard for wrapping sandwhiches, and if Dad remembered to bring it home, it was sometimes resued, too. There was no plastic cutlery in our house. If Dad needed a spoon or fork, Mom took one out of the drawer and Dad brought it home to be washed. By the way, my Mom STILL uses much of the same set of stainless tableware we had back then, so I know that process worked!

Empty mayonnaise jars were used as canning jars, nail containers, bean canisters, etc. When Mom bought things like Zip-Lock bags, they were reused, too. In fact, she still saves them and has so many empty, washed clean, and carefully saved bags that she probably won't have to buy another for years! Popcorn came in just one bag, not a box with six bags inside it, each one wrapped individually in plastic. Cheese had one wrapper on it instead of an outer wrap and a wrapper around each slide. Things that grew out of style or didn't look quite as shiny and new as before were still used as long as they retained usefullness; Mom still has the same Charles Chips can she had when I was a child and still stores flour in it, and it works just fine.

She made new clothing out of old clothing and out of cloth flour sacks (not seen much anymore, but they do still make them), dust cloths out of old tee shirts, biscuit/cookie cutters from empty vegetable cans. We picked up hickory nuts and made hickory nut pies instead of pecan, made the best pear preserves in the world from knotty old Keiffer pears we picked up from old trees in the pasture, and ate persimmons, blackberries, dewberries, and mucadines we found wild in the woods. She and Dad grew much of what we ate, saving seed from one harvest to start the next. Dad kept a few cattle almost all the time, selling a few and using a couple a year to stock the freezer. The beef we ate was wrapped in a single piece of butcher paper with the contents written right on the paper, not in a stryofoam tray with an absorbant pad and a plastic overwrap with a paper label. Found objects and windfalls were put to good and lasting use; when my aunt was given l arge commercial spools of sewing thread, Mom and my grandmother carefully selected multiple strands of complimentary colors and wound them into balls of "yarn," crocheting clothing from it, some of which I still have and wear.

After that wonderful example of good stewardship, all I could do when I grew up was run madly from it and try to become much more sophisticated. I learned how to buy plastic bags and only use them once...how to through away empty glass jars because I didn't can my own food (why, when it was so eash to buy it at the grocery?), ignore healthful, readily available food because it was too much effort to pick it, and to just chuck my old tee shirts and buy nice, neatly trimmed wash cloths new and use them for dusting and cleaning. Food scraps were just trash. I never reused bread bags because when I did, my friends said, "Ewwwwwwwww! That's not sanitary!" Somehow it didn't occur to me that A) the bread came wrapped in it and we didn't say, "Ewwww!" and B) I was over 20 years old and hadn't died from it in all that time.

So here I am, many years later, looking at Mom (right next door) and finally thinking, "You were one smart woman!" She was a much better steward of the land we have chosen to call home than I ever was. I'm learning all over again what it means to keep the promises Three Crows and I made when we moved up here. There are so many things that I can do that not only reduce my impact on the environment but save resources that my family can use for other things.

What has helped more than anything is awareness. From the moment we stood in what is now our back yard and promised to be good stewards and partners with this land, we have been more aware. By stating and sharing our intention out loud, we moved it from a nice thought to an act of will. As simple as that sounds, I believe it has been key to moving us more and more in the right direction. And conversations like this one have the same effect. As we raise our awareness, more opportunities will present themselves.

Is our family "there" yet? Heck, no! But we're closer...much closer...and like all journeys, this one starts with a single step. With the way we work now, I'm not sure returning to my Mom's way of life is entirely possible, but many of her tricks are already serving us...both our family and the big us...well...and we're enjoying the process as well as the product.

I guess it's like the rest of life - doing the right thing feels good.

Love in abundance,

Heartsong

Come Saturday morning...

...I'll be doing my regular Saturday stuff and loving it.

I cherish Saturday mornings for a lot of reasons. It's the first no-alarm-clock day of every week. I get to wake up with my beloved; we cuddle and make love and laugh and wish the coffee would make itself.

After breakfast, I tackle my two Saturday chores - trash and recycling. The trash run isn't exactly fun, but it's satisfying to get the bags of yuck off property and into the landfill. Recycling, on the other hand, is one of the highlights of my week.

We do what I call "big chunk" sorting throughout the week; steel and aluminum cans go into one container, paper into another, glass and plastic into a third, or sometimes in with the paper. Come Saturday morning, I take it all outside to the big table and sort everything. It can get a little messy but I don't mind. It all gets loaded into Bessie (our trusty Ford Ranger, 190-odd thousand miles and still going strong) for the trip to the recycle center.

This is my friend G___. Actually, he's just a guy I met this morning at the center and I don't really know anything about him except that he recycles. He gives up part of his Saturday to keep some of his family's trash out of the landfill. That's good enough for me to call him a friend. He was a nice guy with a good sense of humor; when I promised him I wouldn't identify him or say where he was from, he immediately replied, "Thank God! I have to beat off the stalkers already." A good steward and a quick wit...what's not to like?

The recycle center was full of people like G___ and me today. That gives me hope. There aren't enough of us yet, but the numbers are growing, and every can, bottle, and bag that G___ and I and others like us recycle is one that doesn't wind up in the landfill. It's a small thing, but it's important and I'm happy to be part of it.

To G___ and all recyclers, reusers, reducers...thank you. Enjoy your recycling chore...it's an act of love and life.

The Chicken or the Egg?

"I am not grateful because I am rich. I am rich because I am grateful." - Me

There are many situations in this world where the question of, "Which came first?" might be difficult to answer. The pairing of gratitude and abundance is not one of them. I am convinced beyond all doubt that gratitude definitely comes first. Gratitude creates abundance.

It's the stuff of parables, fables, and fairy tales. The rich man has everything yet, without gratitude, his spirit remains poor. The poor man has little but his grateful heart soars and his life is full and rich in ways the ungrateful never know.

Gratitude begins with awareness - awareness of the good things in our lives, large and small, and a conscious decision to express our gratitude for all that we have. Most of us aren't habitually grateful. The good news is that we can learn. And when we do, we open doors to abundance and fullness that we didn't know existed. A grateful heart creates an attitude of abundance, and that inner reality manifests as outward reality. We don't just feel richer. We truly draw more and more good things into our lives. We grow richer with every thank you.

Creating any new habit takes time, but it's an investment that pays unlimited returns. Make the investment. Try this for a year and see what happens: Start a journal - I've heard it called a "gratitude journal" but I like to call it, "My Overflowing Book of Good Things." Every night before you go to sleep, write down five things you are grateful for. What? You can't name five things you're grateful for? Yes, you can - even if one of them is, "I'm glad I only have to come up with five." or, "I'm glad I'm ending this crazy day instead of starting it!" Every morning, start a new page with the date and the numbers one through five down the side, ready to be filled in at the end of the day. As you go through your day, make mental notes or jot down things for which you are grateful, no matter how small. Be faithful. Do it every morning and every night.

Here's what I predict will happen: You will become more and more aware of things that enrich your life right now. You'll spend less time thinking about what you don't have and more time enjoying what you do. You'll grow happier, calmer, a little bit less invested in the rat race. Over time, your awareness will expand to be grateful for things you never even thought of. Along the way, you'll experience a sweeter, juicier, tastier life. At some point it will occur to you that a lot of good things have been happening to you lately, and that your life is really good. One day, you'll be on your way to work or running errands. You'll be stopped at a traffic light and glance around at other vehicles and their drivers. You'll see their faces - scowling, angry, half-awake - and you'll notice that, in contrast, you're wearing a slight smile, naturally and for no apparent reason. And you'll think, "I am so rich."

And you'll be right.