Expanding Gratitude

Every Wednesday I spend about an hour on the phone with a friend, or what people in Nonviolent Communication cirlces would call an empathy buddy. Each week we take turns speaking what is moving through our mind, heart, body and reflecting back what we hear. It is a practice of deep witnessing. We've been sharing in this way now for 4 years, having started just after attending our first intensive training.

Most calls we focus on one person's sharing while the other reflects. This morning my friend was the primary sharer, noticing places of deep grief and deep joy in her life, ways she is supporting others and finding support for herself. She commented on the complexity of being human, of being in relationship with other humans, and the sense of aliveness possible when we are willing to be in it all. The conversation brought us both to a place of reverence, honoring what is.

Being grateful for what is.

Turning toward what is.

Allowing what is.

Finding the gift in what is.

I am currently reading Braiding Sweetgrass, written by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who repeatedly invites readers to imagine, step into, and honor our interconnection. Reading this book, I am aware that even as I say over and over again in my work "The primary goal is connection," there are many connections that still feel fragile, tentative, waiting to be made between me and myself, me and other people, me and Creation. I believe gratitude is a primary path to connection. Kimmerer also writes about gratitude as a foundational connecting practice. Even though I have written a gratitude list nearly every night for the last 5 years, still my practice can be shallow.

Because of both Kimmerer's writing and my friend's sharing this morning, I want to practice expanding my sense of gratitude, allowing it to saturate my being. I want to practice extending my gratitude to include what and who frustrate me (how is this moment or this person teaching me?), what I see as my own shortcomings (how can this lack of skillfulness or capacity bring me into relationship with someone who has greater skill or capacity? How can I practice self-acceptance?), and in places of grief (what love is my grief pointing me to? How can I open my heart and co-create greater love in and for this world?).

As I consider these questions, let me share a few recent gratitudes:

I am grateful for three days in the car with my parents. I recently drove them from Texas to Kentucky and though not all moments were easy, I am so grateful that I was able to help make their trip possible. I am grateful for the sharing that happened between us along the way.

I am grateful to have had a small bit of time with them in Texas, experiencing and hearing stories of a place that is dear to them.

I am grateful for a recent toe-dip into relationship. I spent a few weeks getting to know someone and though we then parted ways, the gift came in connecting me to old grief I didn't even know I was holding. As it surfaced, I allowed myself to feel and to release some of that old stuff.

I am grateful for a friend who has just started collaborating with me, helping me to shape my work. She most definitely has skills I do not have. She also has the gifts of vision, insight, deep care, and enthusiasm for the work I'm doing.

I am also so grateful for you. I am grateful that you have chosen to be connected with me in ways that are sometimes fleeting and sometimes profound and long. I am deeply appreciative for times you respond to my writing, for times I get to work with you, for times I get to play with you, for times I get to learn from and with you. If we haven't yet connected in a personal way, I hope that someday we will. It is thanks to you that I can do the work that I do. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I could spend the day expanding the list. When I take the time, I notice that I have so much, so very, very much to be grateful for. I hope this is true for you, too.

Surrendering Our Hearts

On Ash Wednesday 2019, I was invited to share my reflections at church (based on Joel 2: 12-18, 2 Corinthians 5: 20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18). These were the words I spoke:

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Do not be like the hypocrites,” seeking external affirmation. In the first reading, we are told to “return to God with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning.”

I want to play with those words. Return to God with all your heart. Return all of your heart to God. Turn all of your heart in to God. Surrender.

I created this image shortly after speaking the words in this reflection.

With these words in mind, I offer an image: imagine a heart, perhaps your own. It is both broken and open. Broken open. Around that broken-open heart is another heart. And around that one, another. And another. All open, many broken in one way or another. The first heart, your heart, is nested in protection. Broken open, yet held with gentle care. The outermost heart is the heart of God, the heart of All, God’s heart that can hold the hurt that breaks us, God’s heart that can heal us, if we surrender our hearts to God.

Turn all of your heart in to God “with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” There is much to lament in our world. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, xenophobia, poverty, ecological devastation, sexual abuse, addictions, the school-to-prison pipeline. So many people lack access to clean water, clean air, adequate medical care, adequate educational opportunities, adequate housing. No doubt there are other things to add to the list. There is much to mourn and yet instead of mourning, we may allow our emotions to go only as far as anger, with our resulting actions rooted in something other than love; we blame whoever we perceive to be the problems. We mistake people for problems, even as we accuse “them” of doing the same. We may not allow ourselves to weep and mourn, because we’re fearful that we will be consumed by grief if we turn our hearts in to God. Instead of allowing our hearts to be fully nested in God’s, we may shrink our hearts, close them a little tighter every time we judge people as “wrong,” “stupid,” “heartless,” every time we call them names and mock them as we direct our righteous anger at them. As we determine who is right and who is wrong, we may seek the approval of other righteous folks, and refuse to engage in connection with those who we believe clearly don’t get it.

Maybe we engage a little, volleying accusations back and forth online or on the streets or in “dialogues” that are actually just talking at or yelling over. But these engagements aren’t connecting. They create distance between us, and keep us hanging in the painful, but sometimes also powerful, feeling of anger.

A nonviolent communication activity that I love to lead takes people through ways of responding to difficult messages. When we receive a message of shame and blame, we have four options: we can shame and blame back; we can direct the shame and blame toward ourselves; we can offer empathy and understanding to ourselves and/or we can offer understanding and empathy to the other person.

The movement from shame to empathy is profound. Sometimes as people go through the exercise, they wonder aloud if it’s ok to express empathy and understanding for a person with a perspective they find deeply problematic. Because we live in a shame and blame culture, we may think that if we don’t immediately express our righteous indignation, we are abandoning our values. And yet, if we are clear on our values, and those values include compassion, hope, love, kindness, humility, it is vitally important to practice them precisely in those places where we are sorely tempted not to.

Going to Palestine gives me many opportunities to try. On my first stint with Christian Peacemaker Teams, I started doing something that, when I remember to practice it, helps me turn my heart into God. In times of relative calm, when I am around Israeli soldiers, I repeat these words in my mind: “I do not hate you. I wish you peace. I wish you love. I wish you joy. I know you are more than what I see you doing.” This practice is not easy. It is exhausting. Sometimes my stomach churns and my head aches as I do so. As I let these words play in my mind, I also try to meet the eyes of those to whom I offer these wishes. Sometimes our eyes meet for a few moments of connection where I am not a CPTer and they are not soldiers, we are just human beings. What I know about those moments is that my heart experiences both breaking and healing simultaneously. I experience our interconnection and deep sorrow because the connection I feel is not the norm in that context. It is a fleeting moment of stepping out of hypocrisy and into integrity. Turning my heart into God.

I created this image in October 2015. It was one of the first heart images I ever drew.

When I am willing and able to sink fully into God’s presence within me, the response from the soldiers is often also more humane and human. Perhaps they are sinking into their divinity, too. When I stand fully armored in anger and righteousness, the response is one of equal or greater defensiveness: posturing and flaunting power, just as I, too, am trying to do. And yet, my truest power comes when I take my armor off, when I stand in a humble posture of trust in God.

I want to end with an example of someone who knows a far harsher reality than I. In the midst of the civil war in South Sudan, Bishop Paride Taban turned his heart into God and transformed his weeping and mourning into connection and joy. Instead of choosing righteous anger in response to the war, he chose to create the Holy Trinity Peace Village, “where individuals and communities can interact without threat or fear… People from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds learn peaceful coexistence there” (from Choosing Peace, edited by Marie Dennis) To stay grounded in the spirit of reconciliation and peace, Bishop Taban offers 28 words to say every day. Today, I offer his words to you. I invite you to say these words daily, to explore them, and to practice them:

Love, joy, peace, patience, compassion, sympathy, kindness, truthfulness, gentleness, self-control, humility, poverty, forgiveness, mercy, friendship, trust, unity, purity, faith, hope, I love you, I miss you, Thank you, I forgive, We forget, Together, I am wrong, I am sorry.

During this Lenten season, I invite you to let these words sink deep into your heart. Tears of weeping and mourning may wash over you.  I invite you to let these words reach the place of deepest connection within you, where your heart is reconciled to God and all of God’s creations, and let that connection guide your action with and for yourself and others. During this Lenten season, I invite you to surrender your heart to God.