An Assemblage

I looked at my salad and saw dirt-stained hands planting, tending, picking, sorting and selling lettuce and herbs.  Dirt scuffed under heavy boots, along long dark rows of disked soil.  The air was pungent with bruised plants and dampness.

I heard low murmured voices talking about the weather, the sale at Target, the cost of gas as the cheese was made in long steel bins, fragrant with rennet and warm milk.

I listened to the sound of pigs grunting and gates clicking closed, dogs barking and cattle lowing as they ripped green grass and munched it between strong grinding teeth.  I heard the harsh sounds of animals loaded into trucks and men shouting, shoving them forward, fearful and nervous.

I heard rain pattering down on brown earth and the snapping of stems as strong hands moved rapidly through tomato vines and sent the small grape-like tomatoes to containers lying by.

I watched a potter shaping clay on a wheel spinning before her, pushing with curved wet palms against the slick pale lump and the same hands dipping the bisqued platter into a white vat of liquid glaze, the roaring of the kiln with flame in its heart burning at 2,000 degrees for hours on end.

I heard the clash and shout of a factory where the fork was stamped from long panes of stainless steel.  I heard saws and sanders, smelled glue and pine dust in the factory where the table was formed.

I sat at my table with the assembled things before me and thought of the effort of many people who had worked in unknown places at unseen jobs where their hands moved over and under, around the things I was to eat and be nourished by.

Of all the things in my home, few are formed by hands that I have ever touched.  How many people has it taken to make this place?  I'll never see their faces, never know their stories, never shake their hands.  The few things I do have an idea about - photographs, art, a tabletop, a few knitted things, are consequently so meaningful to me that they almost take on life and personality.

The salad was exceptional, and my satisfaction was complete.  In appreciation, I ate quietly and listened again for the sounds of all that had happened before I could have the food on my plate.  It was silent now except for the humming of the refrigerator and the town outside, echoing with voices and engines.

Aloha and Gratitude

It's Thanksgiving today.  I wondered if gratitude and appreciation are very much different from each other as I walked over to Duke's from our hotel on Kuhio St. this morning.  I sat on the open breeze-caressed veranda at Duke's, eating my just-fine buffet breakfast and watching people down on the beach and out in the water, playing.  

Waikiki looks like a living postcard most of the time with Diamond Head standing like a 1930s travel poster icon.  With things so bucolic and tender, you almost want to poke it to see if it might poke back.  

People living in the area the day Pearl Harbor was bombed felt the same way, felt that paradise was almost too much to be grateful for, that life was so simple and easy they wanted to make more of a ruckus so they wouldn't all nod off into a nap.  Then, the harbor was bombed horribly and everything changed in a day.  Thousands of men were killed, caught off guard and unable to respond to the Japanese attack.  This is the kind of thing you think of on Thanksgiving day in Honolulu if you stop for a second, pause between your tropical fruit and your cinnamon brioche french toast.

But, you also think about land and sea, air and fire, because they are all so palpable here, and they create an enveloping environment that feels very close to what you imagine peace to be.  How ironic that paradise was once bombed and sent up in flames when the pervasive value of its people was aloha.

Waikiki is a curious place to be when you are faced with questions about gratitude because so much seems idyllic for the visitor.  Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, a fiery form of mother nature, is a lady flowing with gifts and beauty here.  All of them relax you and fool you into thinking life is wonderful everywhere, just like it is here.  In Oahu communities, locals look out for one another and extend aloha to each other.  Our waiter at Duke's this morning told us, "This is a small island, and everyone knows each other, so you have to stop and say hello."

I'd be silly to believe that all is perfect here.  Humankind has a way of making its own self miserable even in places like Hawaii.  Drugs, alcohol, jealousy and territoriality mar the paradise that many strive to create.  But even sillier would be to dismiss the spirit of aloha in the island's residents, an age-old value of giving generously and extending a welcoming hand of friendship.  It is far more pervasive than anything else and underlies all the sweet memories visitors take with them when they leave.  For that I am very grateful today.  Aloha.  It gets down to love, all over again.  For the grateful heart is the one that extends love to the world.

What Matters

Now that Halloween is in the rear-view mirror, the long slow slide to Christmas has begun.  I'm thinking it's going to be okay if I keep on keeping it simple.

First of all, let me explain one thing.  I think of the year in terms of being on a big looping circle, like a roller coaster.  It begins an uphill swing starting on the winter solstice and reaches its apex at the summer solstice.  After that, as the days get gradually shorter and shorter we descend, so to speak, toward the winter solstice once again.  Upswing, then downswing.  It's my visual, and I'm sticking with it.

Here in California, the big circle idea is overlain with the peculiar and unique weather pattern of the California coast, where summer is cold, late autumn is warm and dry and winter generally very mild.  Late winter and early spring both throw storms around and we get wet.

Today, like yesterday is warm, bright and, well, pretty.  It feels very pleasant.  It doesn't feel like Christmas is coming.  Instead, Easter should be coming.  It's that pretty.  But, Christmas really is coming and friends are talking about changes.  No one is talking about giving big gifts or going shopping.  They're talking about making gifts, being outside where the biggest gift waits for them every day.  No one is taking life for granted.  Maybe it's the election, but the feeling is we've skimmed by a tough spot and need to hang on to what's important.  Most of all, friends are looking at each other with appreciation.  Just because we show up day after day.  It's not a bad thing, this thing called love.  

Life is pretty tough sometimes, and it's complicated.  Showing up for a friend, plain and simple, is what Christmas might be about this year.  Giving of oneself, expressing gratitude.  They're free to give and priceless to receive.  

 

What Choice Is There?

This is a test and only a test.

Someone ripped off my debit card number and started charging purchases against it.  Card's now frozen, so those debits will be stopped, but it's on me to dispute the charges that I didn't make.  No new card until I do that.

Awesome.

Now, what was I saying a few days ago about gratitude?

I found myself taking the usual angry and fearful approach to the situation we are all so familiar with.  You know it ad nauseum.  Wait a minute here, I thought to myself.  Learn your own lesson.  Think and learn.

So, what does this teach me?  The concrete answer regarding watching out for my security, monitoring my use of my money and debit card goes without saying.  You need to be careful and keep both eyes open for theft, for sure.  The deeper thing it teaches me is that I do have a choice in how I react, how far I spread anger and bitterness.  Or not.  It presents an opportunity to understand myself and what my actions create in the world.

Of course, I don't like the inconvenience of this, and I have nothing good to say about a coward who steals from people, except one thing:  I do not choose to jump in a pit of ugliness with them.  I say, let their bad juju be only theirs, their negative karma only theirs, not mine.  I can clearly see I must choose.

So now that I have contacted my bank and the corrections are being put in place, I am going to make a nice dinner and enjoy this fine evening and think about all the people I love and admire in the world and imagine blessings and beauty surrounding them all.

I am looking around the room right now.  It's a good room, full of colors and things I like.  The sun is just setting over in the west and neighbors' voices are murmuring outside.  It's peaceful here.  The whole day was fine and I choose to keep it that way.  Free will is that amazing thing that we have inside us.  It's tested in situations like the theft of money from my account, no doubt about that, but the truth is I am grateful I noticed the test instead of rumbling down the ugly road of anger any further than I did.

The Gratitude KISS (Keep It Simple Sweetie)

Here and there today, I noticed wilting flowers, bird poop, and potholes in the road. That dismal little list hardly accounts for the things I am grateful for, which makes it odd I recall them at all.  It makes me realize something, though, about what I am most grateful for.

In the long intervals of time briefly punctuated by those odd little details, I savored a mellow cup of coffee, meandered along a long line of vendors' tents and tables at the farmers' market, took a leisurely nap, and saw George Clooney in The American at our movie theater here in Pacific Grove.  To top all that off, I had dinner out at a local cafe and a stroll home on this soft late-summer night.  It was a very relaxed and enjoyable day, beginning to end.  That's a fine list of delights to be grateful for, indeed.

I could leave it at that and say good-night, but I keep feeling a sense of gratitude and appreciation for...my existence, I guess.  Just that simple?  I think it goes deeper. 

I appreciate the fact that bird poop and potholes do not rivet my attention, that the world I am privileged to enjoy is beautiful, bountiful and peaceful.  I am not obsessed; I can discern between reality and delusion. I cannot begin to tell you how immensely grateful I am to be able to think clearly about that, to say that coherently, to understand that it is profound.

I work with people who are mentally ill, some of whom are completely undone by a speck of red, believing it is blood and that they will be contaminated.  I work with those who are continuously and forever engulfed in the sound of fierce condemning voices interrupting their every thought, day and night.  I work with people enslaved by drugs and alcohol and those preyed upon by abusers.  They teach me to keep things simple, to appreciate what I have and to enjoy a laugh at any opportunity.

I am healthy, can solve my simple problems, have no complaints to speak of.  Chalk it up to the luck of birth.  By whatever force, I am free to live peacefully.  I am not perfect, and I am very deeply grateful -- almost to an extent that cannot be expressed -- for the ability to notice little things and keep them in perspective.  Surrounding my gratitude is relief that I am fine.  All I need I have, and that's the simple truth.

Gratitude in the Face of Random Acts

An Amish woman was killed in her buggy, rear-ended by an SUV.  Who are you?  There is a woman who is threatened with stoning in Iran.  Who am I?

What happens within us when we learn these things?

Buddhists believe that all of what happens everywhere affects everyone and everything. Nothing is foreign; it is all of us, all the time.  There is no other-ness.  Our life force and spiritual energy is interconnected.  We are assaulted and cheered, encouraged and oppressed by things that happen everywhere.   

The most difficult teaching of the great religions is that of gratitude, especially when it relates to our enemies and the oppressors in life.  We may be joyously grateful that lively music fits our mood perfectly, but can we be grateful that a loved one has died or mayhem is imminent?  Why do spiritual teachers ask us to do that?  What's the sense in it?  

Gratitude is a very difficult concept in the face of evil, makes much more sense in the realm of beauty and love.  The truth is, if we can be grateful for the oppressor, we are more accurately ourselves as defined by them, and we become better aligned with what is good and true in the world if that is our intention.  But, this is not simply a statement like:  "Wow, they are so horrible, and I in comparison am an angel."  More in truth it is:  "I understand myself more clearly, and it is very certain that I must never become or be part of evil and destruction."

It is far simpler to hate hate-filled people and love love-filled people, but it really is just easy and teaches nothing.  It is said that to know your enemy is to know yourself, and I say it is because you are forced to define your self very clearly when faced with clearly awful things.