The Heart of Gratitude

Posted on Tue 11 15 by Lisa Sorensen

17 November 2015

Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.  ~ A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

The Heart of Gratitude

Life is fluid, ever-changing, winding and twisting in unpredictable ways.  Sometimes that’s exciting.  Other times, it’s scary.

Even though this is so clearly obvious, I often find myself wanting to lock in one kind of experience — one ongoing pleasant, happy, comfortable place.  Once upon a time, I actually had the notion that this was possible.  That if I worked hard enough and accomplished enough that this was how life would become.  I can chuckle over that naiveté now, perhaps a bit wistfully, but actually it was exhausting trying to arrange life and myself into a prefixed image of perfection.

As I wrote about last week, more and more, I’m able to surrender to life’s great spectrum of ups and downs, to stop being in contention with the nature of life and to let life be.  When I manage this, a layer of tension eases.  I’m more able to respond to what is with more presence, more elasticity and more caring.

Gratitude is helping me with this.  Oprah has advocated keeping a gratitude journal for years because she believes it’s so important.  She says,  ‘The cultivation of gratitude, plain and simple, is the way home—it is the thing that changes your life.’

I’m finding truth here.  And also power.  Although events beyond my control surround me constantly, my experience is something I can cultivate and curate.  Life is a creative project.

And, gratitude is a practice.  It’s a way of creating a satisfying and joyful life.  It’s not a feeling or an attitude only for the good days.  It’s a begin again practice, meaning I will forget, get off track, drop the ball entirely — and then catch myself.  And begin again.

Last weekend, I had a wonderful day on Saturday.  I went to the farmer’s market with my husband, on a terrific tandem ride with good friends, and pranced around the kitchen to the Dixie Chicks on loud while fixing a new recipe for dinner.  Circumstances and events created a state of ebullient happiness within me.

Sunday lurched into a whole different affair filled with worry, fear, wild broncos bucking in my chest.

I was not happy Sunday.  But I could find things to be grateful for.  Giving thanks for them did not fix the problems, but it did provide me with a cushion.

On the days when happiness feels out of reach, gratitude is a place of comfort.  Gratitude for this day.  For the text connecting me to a nephew.  For the glory of the last sunflowers of the season on my dining room table.  For laying down beside my husband at night in the shelter of our home.

Some days it can be tough, but it is this simple.  With practice, I’m finding it can become a compass that helps me navigate confusing times, a life jacket when seas are rough.  Gratitude provides resilience.

And, it does much more than that.

In her research, sociologist and author Brené Brown has found a strong bond between gratitude and joy.  That they are, in fact, inextricably coupled.  That joy resides in a sense of gratitude, and that both of them together help us live in a state of open-hearted well-being.

I’m finding this, too.   As I practice, I’m building a repertoire of connection to the good in my life.  I’m reminded to give thanks for the people and things that create joy for me.  I’m creating a network of good news that infuses and warms me, a leavening for both joy and satisfaction.

 

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Touchstone – Surrender

Posted on Fri 11 15 by Lisa Sorensen

13 November 2015

… the moment in which the mind acknowledges ‘This isn’t what I wanted, but it’s what I got’ is the point at which suffering disappears.  Sadness might remain present, but the mind … is free to console, free to support acceptance of the situation, free to allow space for new possibilities to come into view.  ~Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness Is an Inside Job:  Practicing for a Joyful Life

 

Surrender

 

The ritual of practicing surrender three or four mornings a week is affecting how I see the world and live my life within it.

Surrender is a word that is used in eastern philosophical traditions that has been  difficult for my rational, ‘western’ mind to get comfortable with.  It conjures up images of backing down, caving in, conceding defeat.  Deepak Chopra uses the word ‘accept’ instead.  And I was tempted to go that route, too.  Except there is something more complex in this word that has the capacity to make me squirm.  It’s tangled and fraught.  It forces me to admit there are things I cannot change.

For years, I’ve exhausted myself chaffing against world realities and wanting to be more than I am.  It’s crazy and crazy-making.

I cannot change the fact that ideological conflicts have become deadly, that human activity has degraded the earth, that my life will end.  These are realities that are hard for me to surrender to.

Surrendering to the realities of the moment, stepping out of contention with them,  doesn’t mean that I condone these things.  But it’s hard to be grateful when I’m chaffing against what is, needing the world or myself to be different.  This isn’t my best productive, satisfying living.

But is surrender cowardly?  I don’t think so.  I’m actually coming to see it as a huge act of courage.  It’s the beginning of peace.  Serenity.  Gratitude.  These are places of shelter, and more than that, they are places from which to do the loving my heart wants to extend into.

A flower does not rail against what is.  It unfurls, opens its face to the world, and offers it small, glorious bit of beauty undaunted.

May I meet this moment fully.  May I meet it as a friend.  ~Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness Is an Inside Job:  Practicing for a Joyful Life

 

 

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Surrender

Posted on Tue 11 15 by Lisa Sorensen

10 November 2015

Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.  ~Eckhart Tolle

Surrender

It’s been raining here in Northern California.  Enough to puddle on the streets, wet the leaves into the earth, and drift snow onto the upper Sierras.  November, my favorite month in one of my favorite seasons because it includes a celebration of family and gratitude, has started off with a lovely reason to be grateful.

I believe gratitude is a powerful practice that enriches life satisfaction.  So, I’ve been exploring a stumbling block I’ve carried around for years that’s hindered my ability to be grateful.  Without realizing it, completely off-handedly, I’ve shunned gratitude in the way I’ve wanted the world, wanted myself, to be different.

Years ago, I had a yoga teacher who connected affirmations to yoga poses.  I hadn’t thought of her for a long time, but this year I began applying her concept in my morning sun salutations.  As I move into each consecutive pose, I bring to mind an intention that I’ve aligned with that pose.  Two of these have become particularly resonant lately.  Both of the poses are variations on bending over, fingers to toes.

In the first pose, I bend my knees as much as I need to in order to lay my chest on my thighs, to have my legs support the weight of my torso, so my back can relax completely with my head hanging over my knees, loose and free.  It’s not a pretty pose.  It’s about letting go in each vertebrae of my spine that I can.  The intention I’ve connected to this pose is to surrender to all that is.

In that moment, I acknowledge that there’s no winning the constant, covert fight against the things I don’t like about what is.  In this moment, I relinquish the battle, the pushing away, the denial or defense.

In the resultant peace, I find more space in my heart.

From here, it is easier to accept that life’s ups and downs are natural, that pain and joy are on the same wide and rich spectrum of the human emotional experience.

From here, I can open to meeting the world where it is.  To meeting myself where I am.  To letting myself be truly grateful.  Letting myself deeply love.

In the act of laying down my weaponry, I find an essential ingredient that might waylay additional hostilities.

Later in my series of poses, with my body warmed up and my back eased,  I do a more conventional version of the fingers-to-toes pose, and sink down, toward an embrace with the earth.  My intention in this pose is to surrender to the goodness of life.

This may sound like taking a step back, like a retreat from the first intention of surrendering to all, but it’s not that.

This is about intentionally welcoming the joy and beauty and kindness that I know are present everywhere.  It’s a reminder not to be so busy pushing away, catching up and carrying on that I overlook the wonder of life—the goodness, the miraculous, the stunning quotidian act of sunrise.

Surrendering, I can open wide, explore the moment.  Let my mind burst into a bigger awareness that notices the flames of peach and scarlet in the fall leaves, the gentleness in the face of a stranger, the comfort in a cup of tea with a friend.

These intentions, to surrender to what is and the goodness of the world, help me come into a fuller relationship with life.  In accepting the world and myself as they are in this moment, I can be more authentic, more creative, more present.

My husband pointed out the lovely symmetry here.  When I surrender, I have more space for gratitude.  And when I practice gratitude, it’s easier to surrender.

 

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Touchstone – The Heart of Community

Posted on Fri 11 15 by Lisa Sorensen

6 November 2015

Connection:  The energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued;  when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.   ~Brené Brown

Heart of Community

Day after day, I turn off the news, pierced through and discouraged by the reports of violence, loss, atrocity.  It is not the news I want to hear.

It’s cheap and easy to create drama and fear out of the world’s problems.  It’s much harder to face those challenges squarely, tease them apart gently and put our shoulders into rebuilding a better world.

I know it’s hard to do this, even on a personal level.  My hackles can raise at an opinion contrary to my own.  I can summarily discount someone I judge ‘conservative’ where I am ‘liberal’.  But, if I truly value community and not only society among the like-minded, I need to find the areas of commonality and connection.

Listening to the drone of ‘news’, it’s tempting to believe the worst about humanity.  Yet my personal experiences repeatedly belie that image.  My days are routinely bettered by others’ acts of kindness, by a generous smile when I least expect it, by the courage and caring of the world on 9/11, by a texted video of a mother and her children tickling, giggling, hugging.

Almost whenever and wherever, if I’m willing to open up my heart to the hearts around me, I find community.

 

Heart of Community

 

 

 

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The Heart of Community

Posted on Thu 11 15 by Lisa Sorensen

4 November 2015

I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort, where we overlap. ~Ani DeFranco

The Heart of Community

One World Trade Center

I’ve just returned from a trip to New York City where I was graciously welcomed by an intimate group of women who have been friends for decades.  Their warmth enfolded me, nourished and supported me, making me instantly at home in an unfamiliar environment.

They showed me the sights, as only locals can.  I soaked up stories of their years in the city, threaded behind them through thick crowds in subway tunnels, met their friends, felt the grace of their voices singing beside me in church.

In this secure, comfortable position, I was nonetheless an outsider.  And so in a good place to notice the layers of community we create.  Partners.  Friends.  Neighbors.  Congregations.  Those with whom we share a passion or a cause.

We are tribal by nature.   The need to connect is innate to humans.

Tribalism had survival value in terms of providing food and protection.  It continues to provide thrival value.  Community expands my understanding of others, inspires me to work toward an objective, opens the door to a new city.

Yet, I’ve spent a lot of years resisting a place in the human community.  The atrocities committed against ‘others’ crumpled my heart, buckled my knees, and locked parts of me into angry condemnations.

I wanted to belong.  But not to this species.

My heart hardened in ways I didn’t think revocable.  Hardened to caring what happens to our planet.  To the persistent agony of atrocity.

But I want to be a part of.  Not apart from.

At the 9/11 memorial and museum, I came face-to-face with agony and atrocity.   I saw the faces of firemen climbing into the burning towers.  I heard the voices of plane passengers calling loved ones they suspected they would never see again.  The woman I was with had friends in one of the towers, and I walked beside a section of the stairs down which they narrowly escaped.  I stood beside the building’s shrapnel, massive steel columns twisted and frayed.

I was torn apart by the horror of that day and then torn open further by the heroism and courage that exceeded even the magnitude of the terror.  The actions of the few extremists were so clearly outnumbered by the groundswell of courage, compassion and heroism from the larger community.

I can’t make sense of such unfathomable acts.  But, I do know how often I have despaired, feeling utterly powerless in my wish to shine some glint of light that could help guide the future toward clean air and a healthy place to live for every race and species.  I wonder if it is this desire to belong to a community, a desperate yearning to be a part of something meaningful in a world that seems to be spinning off its axis, that is the basis of suicide bombings, genocide, terrorism.  If so, I can relate to that much.

The heart of communityMy acts of outward violence are small and personal, usually aimed inappropriately at my husband.  Yet, without much provocation, I can be intolerant inwardly.  I can judge and exclude, find the differences rather than the similarities, cherish a preconception rather than extend toward a broader understanding.

I can’t stop atrocities or agonies, but I can work to change my inner acts of intolerance and violence.  I am working to be sensitive to the ways that I set myself apart from others.  I want to let down the perimeters I’ve been defending.  And open back up to caring, even if it hurts all the way down to the bottom of my heart.

I have a long way to go on practicing and living this.

New York City is an alive and vital mélange.  A stewpot.  In Queens, 170 different languages are spoken.  I’m so glad to have been there with friends.  Grateful for the opportunity to see life through a thousand different lenses.  For the moments of opening wide to such a diversity of focus and filter and framework.

Standing proud in the harbor is the Statue of Liberty.  She is gorgeous and strong, holding up her beacon that celebrates freedom for the oppressed and the inclusion of all.

 

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Touchstone – Listening In

Posted on Fri 10 15 by Lisa Sorensen

30 October 2015

Listening In

Emily McDowell
chronicling the human condition since 1976

 

Silence can become contagious.  Simon and Garfunkel spoke to this lyrically in their classic song ‘The Sound of Silence’—

…The words of the prophets are written on the bathroom walls and tenement halls…

But the power of speaking up is contagious, too.  I’m encouraged and bolstered by the kind of honest dialog that occurs in a respectful and open environment.

The experience of the free-write class I took and my friend’s account of the listening/speaking exercise reminds me that each of us has an underground that is rich and alive, affecting how we perceive and respond to experience.  It reminds me that we are more than we admit or know.  And so are the people we love.

Quiet supportive listening can be the open door to getting to know who we and our loved ones really are.

When a mother picks up her child, asks ‘what happened?’, and listens earnestly to her child’s account of the mishap, she is using this power of attentive caring.  This, with a tender kiss on the skinned knee, is a magical balm.

 

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Listening In

Posted on Tue 10 15 by Lisa Sorensen

27 October 2015

The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows. ~Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Listening In

 

This morning I lay in bed waking up slowly to the sounds of the earth.  The Northern Flickers have moved back into the canyon where I live as they do this time of year, flying down from the higher elevations of the Sierras to winter in the foothills.  The have a distinct call, piercing and strong enough that it arrows like a warning through the trees.  They also have another call, soft and intimate, like a baby’s gurgle or a mother’s lullaby.  That one you have to be lucky to hear, for it sinks into the duff of fallen leaves like raindrops, soft and quiet.

I’m being struck this week by the power of listening.

A couple of things have brought this home.  A friend, who is a hospice physical therapist, described a training exercise used to hone skills that are helpful in his caring profession.  Participants pair up to take turns listening to each other for 4 minutes.  The person listening sits quietly, without interrupting or interjecting, without questions or nods.  Their entire job is to simply be there, attending.  Four minutes is a long time.  Long enough that the person speaking often winds up off the known road, veering from the well-trod path.  My friend described how a person can be brought to tears by finding themselves wandering in territory that is customarily off-limits, potentially into grief they had been unaware of carrying.

I’ve been experiencing something similar these last few weeks in an online free-write class.  Three mornings a week, a beautiful, inspiring writing prompt has appeared in my email and the ‘assignment’ is to write, without stopping, for ten minutes.  Those ten minutes are inevitably an adventure.  There is a clear starting place but the path forward is obscure, the destination completely unmapped.  After we write these unplanned, uncensored words, the group of us shares with each other;  seven of us exposing what are often tender or raw places in this way.  We read each others’ words, not to critique, but to support the journey, and to bear witness.

These places of free-flight sharing have a sacred quality to them.  Venturing into them requires stepping beyond normal expectations of personality and proficiency.  It needs to be safe.  Day-to-day life doesn’t usually have space for this.

Yet, at times, I need it.  I need to both speak from and listen to these deep, earthy places within us.  It connects me to myself and to others.  It connects me to my humanity, and to everyone’s.  It makes me a better person.

That’s something I can always use.

It’s an immense privilege to have someone share their unguarded thoughts and feelings in this way.  And there is relief, joy, power in having my soft, mysterious places heard and acknowledged.  It can be a cleansing, a release of weight.  A sliver rising to the surface where it can be tended and healed.  A memory, a bright sparkly jewel, uncovered.

I think it takes uncommon conditions to create this kind of opening even with our loving partners and closest friends.  It is not a place to dwell regularly.  However, I’m passionate about helping co-create the safety and acceptance that engenders meaningful communication.  And a step further—space that can attend to an exposing of a person’s native soil, the roots that feed the day-to-day experience visible above ground.  Exactly like the roots of a plant, I think my underground thoughts and understandings affect how I relate to the people and circumstances of my life, the nutrients I perceive, the support I feel for growing up, reaching for sunlight.

99% of the life contained in healthy soil is invisible to the naked eye.  Perhaps listening in is a way to connect to it.

 

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Touchstone – A One Time Only Offer

Posted on Sat 10 15 by Lisa Sorensen

23 October 2015

“Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.  ~Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Touchstone One Time only Offer

It’s so easy for me to lose sight of the fact that every moment is an adventure, with opportunities unlike any other.  And too much of the time, I’m living this now as a rehearsal for some future ‘now’.

So, this week I’ve been loving every time that the thought ‘a one time only offer’ popped into my head.

This tiny refrain reminding me that each moment is singular and sufficient, fleeting and unique helps me a lot.

….helps me bring my wandering mind back and notice the clouds in the sky.

…helps me, smack dab in the middle of it all with life in a whirl around me, draw in a steady, whole breath.

…helps me check in —is the action I’m taking reflecting what’s important to me?

…helps me dig into things I’m not sure I want to do because when I check in and find I do want or need to do that thing, then I can bring myself fully to it.

Right now, the afternoon breeze swings the open laundry room door gently to and fro, the wind chimes ring softly, bringing me into touch with my surroundings, reminding me again, this moment, this is a one time only offer.

 

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A One Time Only Offer

Posted on Wed 10 15 by Lisa Sorensen

20 October 2015

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh.  “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting to-day?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.   “It’s the same thing,” he said.

                               ~A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

One Time Only Offer

I have a new mantra this week:  One Time Only Offer.

It’s reminding me that that’s what life is.  What today, and each and every day, is.  What this moment, and every moment, is.

It’s really easy to feel like a lot of my moments just don’t count.  I’m not on a front line, a rifle hanging in my arms, my life hanging by a thread.  I don’t work in an emergency room handling a barrage of decisions that save people’s lives.  I don’t rock climb or balance on a tight rope where constant focused presence is required for survival.  I live an ordinary life.

But still, in my ordinary life, I don’t think there are ‘ordinary’ moments.

Yes, I get lulled into thinking this moment is exactly like so many others.  Doing the grocery shopping, waiting in line at the bank, picking up the living room, doing my morning yoga.  All repetitive.  Where’s the specialness in all that?

A few days ago, during the same trip into town I make five or six times every week, preoccupied with appointments ahead and arranging everything on my list to fit into the schedule, it strikes me that this day, this familiar drive — it’s a one time only offer.  I open the car windows.  I feel the cool air breeze in.  I look up and see the pine trees are glistening a bit, sparkling from the rain that fell last night.  I notice how everything feels a little cleaner, fresher, than it’s felt in months.  And I think — I almost missed this.  This drive.  This moment.  All this.

My planning and scheduling evaporate.  There’s a relief in bringing my attention to what’s right here right now.  Sensing the air on my skin, my shoulders ease.  I notice the colors creeping into the trees.  I draw in a slow deep breath.  I feel… joy.  Like it’s been right there all along.  Just waiting, patient and willing.

I know it’s this simple to be mindful, and yet I forget.  Or I slip into it and then right back out of it, quick as a butterfly flitting by.

The thing is, planning and arranging are important.  Organizing and thinking ahead helps things work out more smoothly.  I like that.  But I can also get caught up, spinning around in a loop of mental busy work or worry.  I can get so fixated on lining up my ducks that I lose track of what’s here and now.   The here and now steps me right out of that recirculating thought.  It opens me up to my surroundings, my body, the truly current events.

Sometimes, I don’t want to think that every moment counts.  I don’t really want to be reminded that there are no guarantees.

Because there’s a lot of other things I count on.  I count on my husband to come home at the end of the day and love me.  On my friends to want to share laughter and sorrows with me.  On the money in my bank account today mostly being there tomorrow.  On life as I know it continuing in the foreseeable future.  I don’t want to be vulnerable to the fragility of all this.  So I focus my attention on those ducks, strategizing and ordering, trying to prevent any of these things from going haywire.

Except, in big ways and small, moments will deliver surprises.  In good ways.  In challenging ways.  In stunning, overwhelming, miraculous, discouraging, unexpected, exultant ways.   Which no amount of arranging will fend off.

My best container for this so far is that I can plan for and anticipate the future, and I can count on is what’s in my hands and heart right now.  Here, in this moment—this One Time Only Offer.

It’s an offer I don’t want to miss!

Repeating this mantra is helping me wiggle deeper into my present moments, touch the opportunity presented and cup my palms into the life saturating each one.

 

 

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Touchstone – Creating a Bullseye

Posted on Sat 10 15 by Lisa Sorensen

16 October 2015

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.  ~Rumi

Creating the Bullseye

From early on, my parents raised me to think of other people and put them first.  To be practical and sensible about my desires.  As a woman, to not stand out in the crowd.

As I explore creating a satisfying life, I find these well-intentioned messages have dumbed down my awareness of my own dreams.  I’m accustomed to tuning out my own voice and going with the flow.

But creating deep satisfaction with my life requires I pick up responsibility for myself, for my contentment, for addressing my own yearnings.

So, I’m ready to try letting go of some of those messages.  To listen inwardly and honor the small voice that is still patiently, persistently, giving me clues about things I want to explore and ways to lean more fully into my moments.  Giving more space and shape to these urges feels awkward and unbalanced, like arranging my body in a new yoga pose.  It’s a dynamic process of groping for and stretching into that leading, growing edge.

I don’t know precisely where I’m going.  I can’t see how these venture will turn out.  Those messages I received were all intended to help me chart a known course with safe, reliable results.  Many of those routes are still guiding me in good directions, but there’s also small side roads, unmarked, unpaved and not at all well-lit, that call out to me.  Here, see what’s down here, they call.  Come this way, they beckon.

I’ve a hunch that walking off the edges of my known maps might lead directly into some challenging territory.  Yet, my small voice is undaunted.  She pipes up cheerily as my feet head across the uneven terrain, already straightening into the spicy scent of bay in the crisp fall air and humming along with the babble of the river moving within.

 

 

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