My Gratitude List

Every Thanksgiving I try to make a Gratitude List. Here are 10 from today's list.

• Warm toes in socks hand knit by my sister, a double blessing of love and warmth

• Crisp, cold, clean air in my lungs

• Snow crystals sparkling in the sun

• A day book-ended with a brilliant sunrise and a spectacular sunset

• Everyday music of the teapot whistling, a bird chirping, a child laughing

• Feasts of color: crimson pomegranates, diamond snow, cerulean sky

• The feeling of firm strength that comes from physical exercise over time

• The similar feeling of strength in my spirit that follows climbing a mountain of emotional, relational, or spiritual difficulty

• Loving touch from the hand of a person I love

• Waking anew to the knowledge that my life is a story that has an author. He writes purpose into the story and someday, a satisfying happy ending.

Sunrise

I am thankful that the dark night is followed by the sunrise!

My Happiness Habit: Hungry for Excellence

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

I remember reading an anecdote years ago about women in London during the hard years of World War II. (I think it was in a book by Karen Mains, but I can't find it. I'm sorry.) In the midst of food rationing, sending their sons to fight and not knowing if they would ever see them again, nightly bombings, volunteering, and doing everything they could do to help the war effort, these women also reserved time to arrange flowers. They would gather once a week and make flower arrangements. It became a very high priority in their lives. Even bombings and news of tragic deaths were not allowed to interfere with the time set aside for flowers. They were starving, not for food, but for beauty. In the midst of so much pain, fear, ugliness and loss, gathering weekly to create something beautiful with flowers fed their souls' needs for the good.

I have always sensed that there is something inherently necessary about great music, visual art, poetry, dance, drama, stories... Such things are not usually deemed practical or useful, but great art supplies a fundamental human need. Our thirsty souls need to drink in things that are lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise.  My theory is that during our most difficult seasons of life, seasons when we are bombarded with disease, or tragedy, or painful relationships, seeking out the excellent and beautiful becomes imperative.

I am not in a particularly dark season, but I think I'll go now, turn on some George Winston, and read something by Emily Dickinson anyway. 

I would love to know what writer or musician or artist living or dead you turn to when you need a dose of something excellent. Perhaps your favorite will become my favorite too!

By the way, I tried to loosen the controls on posting comments on this blog. So, if you tried in the past to post a comment and weren't able to, please think about trying again. Thanks!

The Pose of Tranquility

For a while now I have been doing yoga stretches every morning. I turn on PBS, and there is this lady who slowly and calmly twists her body into all sorts of impossible poses and positions. I was intrigued at first, because judging from the skin on her neck, and the fact that she talks about her granddaughter, she is around 60 years old.  Judging instead from her strength and flexibility and how straight and slender she is, I would guess her to be in her late 20s. She looks positively elegant as she twists herself into poses with names like the pretzel and the plow. I am pretty sure that I do not look elegant as I try to follow her lead. I think it would be really nice to look the way she looks when I am 60ish so I do yoga stretches with Priscilla every morning.

This morning, she led me and whatever other students she has in PBS land, into "the pose of tranquility". It goes like this. You lay stretched out straight and slowly raise your legs until your they are over your head, parallel to the floor, with your knees just over your forehead, your bottom in the air. Then, you gradually raise one arm at a time over your head, and rest your hand lightly on your shin, still without moving anything else. You balance there for a while, absolutely still, weight resting on your shoulder blades, legs over your head, stomach tight, your hands resting lightly on your shins, breathing softly. Tranquility is kind of challenging.

This morning I wrote a quick list of all the things on my mind. I was surprised at how many concerns were buzzing around my head. None of them were big, earth shattering, urgent crisises. These concerns were like the fruit flies that somehow found their way into my house this fall. Tiny, but annoying.

Until I started listing them in my journal, I didn't realize there was a whole swarm of fruit fly problems buzzing around my head. I didn't realize that I was really quite tense because of them. As I prayed over my list, I was reminded of the scriptures that tell us to "be still", "cast your cares on the Lord", and "be anxious for nothing".

These admonitions are the scriptural version of the yoga lady's pose of tranquility. Just like the yoga pose, the spiritual pose of tranquility sounds easy, but it isn't always.

Over the months of twisting myself into pretzels and plows with Priscilla the yoga lady, I have noticed that I really have gradually become stronger and more flexible. I suspect that maintaining spiritual stillness is like that too. As we slowly and patiently move ourselves into positions of trusting God, and being still, we grow stronger, calmer, and more flexible.

I am going to keep coaxing my reluctant self into both poses of tranquility.

My Happiness Habit: Whatever is Lovely

Whatever is lovely...think about these things. Philippians 4:8

I think these qualify.

My Happiness Habit: Hunting for Food for Thought

In my elementary school cafeteria there was a poster that proclaimed "You are what you eat!" I stared at my standard issue lunch and pictured myself becoming what I ate. There was "pig in a blanket, Beth", me, stretched out helpless, swaddled in soggy bread dough. Then I pictured "soggy canned green bean Beth", green dread locks sticking out of my head at every possible angle. I shuddered. It was a very spooky poster.

"You are what you think about" could be closer to the truth.  Greasy junk food for the brain is easy to find.  The moment I flip on the news, a smorgasbord of deceitful, dishonorable, unjust and impure things to think about is laid out for me to chew on. Finding nutritious, healthy and delicious food for my thoughts is more of a hunt.

Hunting for something pure to think about drew me to memories of my childhood. My mom suffered from environmental allergies. She was allergic to plastic countertops and floors, car exhaust and smog, sugar, and chemicals in food, among other things. A dose of diesel tainted air would level her for days. Things that were not pure made her severely, physically, ill.

When I was about 3 years old my parents moved out of the city and built a home in the mountains where Mama could live far most of the toxins that made her sick. I grew up in an environment that was full of purity. The air was clean, the crystal water came directly from deep underground to our tap.

I remember blindingly beautiful clear winter mornings after a snow. The whole world sparkled like diamonds. Majestic 14,000 foot Mount Evans presided over the landscape like a king.  I would go outside on my way to catch the school bus, gasp as the icy air hit my lungs, spread my arms wide and spin around in a little dance of joy, as though I could capture the beauty and save it in my heart.

I think heaven will be like that. All the evil and the toxins in this dark world will be removed and we will breathe clean air for the first time. It will be pure delight.  

Philippians 4:8 says "whatever is pure...think about these things."

My Happiness Habit: Whatever is Just

Occasionally I run across a really good story; a story full of redemption, a surprise hero and things worth thinking about. Like most good stories this one starts with something bad.

A young woman named Jennifer Thompson was raped. She identified a man named Robert Cotton as her attacker. He was sentenced to life in prison.

A couple of years into the sentence, a man named Bobby Poole was housed in the same cell block as Robert Cotton. Poole began bragging that Cotton was doing time for him since he was Jennifer Thompson's true rapist. Cotton fashioned a knife intending to kill Poole. His dad encouraged him not to become a man who deserved to spend his life in prison. He told his son to put his faith in God instead.

Years later, DNA evidence in the case was examined using technology that didn't exist at the time of the original trial. It proved that the real rapist was Bobby Poole and not Robert Cotton. Cotton was released from jail after serving 11 years, and that's when the story gets really interesting.

Jennifer Thompson was in anguish over her own crime. Unintentionally she had stolen 11 years of an innocent man's life. She knew there was no way to give back those years, but she wanted to do what she could, so she arranged to meet Robert Cotton face to face.

They met in a church. She apologized and he forgave. They talked for hours about what had gone wrong. They talked about DNA and faith. Miraculously, they actually became friends. The man whose face had haunted Jennifer Thompson's nightmares for years, became her role model of forgiveness. She determined to forgive her real attacker.


15 more years have passed and Cotton and Thompson remain friends.

 "Ron just calls to make sure I'm doing OK," Thompson says.
 "He is an amazing human being. He has been a real good teacher for me."

Together they have written a book entitled,  Picking Cotton and they work together for reforms of eyewitness identification procedures.

It is a story that is just worth thinking about.

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just...think about these things. Philippians 4: 8

I gathered information for this post from the following web sites.
http://truthinjustice.org/positive_id.htm
http://nersp.osg.ufl.edu/~malavet/evidence/notes/thompson_cotton.htm

Only Once in Forever

Halloween night, right at sunset, we were grilling brats for dinner. The kids were impatient to get outside to trick-or-treat; every 10 seconds they were demanding help for with this or that. The table needed to be set, I'm pretty sure that the phone rang too... But for just a few minutes my husband and I chose to be deaf to it all.

We ignored the kids, (I confess, I ignored them much more stubbornly than he did), the table, and the brats got a bit blackened. We were transfixed, frozen in place, watching the astounding art being painted in the sky. Unique curls of cloud caught fire ever so briefly. By the time I snatched my camera, they were mostly gone.  Fortunately, my husband was a faster snatcher than I was.

"I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given - it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral."       Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, p. 58

I don't want to be so spoiled by the remarkable gifts God gives everyday that I become ungrateful. That sunset, with those clouds and those colors won't happen again, no matter how long this earth lasts. God unveiled that masterpiece only once, for a brief moment. I don't want to ever become so responsible, or important, or busy, that I forget what it is to be alive in this world.

The Twilight Zone: The Obsolete Man

Our local PBS station had a Twilight Zone marathon last weekend, in honor of Halloween.

I remember watching reruns back when I was a teenager, even back then the technology and effects were outdated, but the story lines were intriguing.

My family and I snuggled in to watch a few episodes of marathon Saturday evening. One episode gave me an especially creepy feeling. Listen with me to the narrator introducing the show.

You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future; not a future that will be, but one that might be.

This is not a new world: It is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advancements, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: Logic is an enemy, and truth is a menace.

(Camera switches to the convicted man) This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State, but will soon have to be eliminated, because he's built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in the Twilight Zone. 

Mr. Wordsworth, a librarian, is tried and convicted by the "state" of being obsolete. He is obsolete because the society no longer has books. The state official conducting the trial explains that librarians are obsolete, just as ministers of the church are obsolete because God does not exist.  The librarian resolutely insists that God does exist and that thinking is important. He is sentenced to die within 48 hours, but is given the choice of where, how, and when he would like to die.

Mr. Wordsworth chooses to die in his own room by a bomb blast at midnight. He asks for the state official to visit him in his room and for the execution to be broadcast. His requests are granted. The scene shifts to the librarian's room just before midnight. The room is cluttered with books. He has arranged for the door to lock trapping the state official in the doomed room with him.

As the librarian calmly prepares for death by reading a cherished Bible he has kept secret for many years, the state official grows increasingly agitated and fearful. Psalm 23 is read - the official sweats. The proverb "A fool says in his heart there is no God" is read - the official, wrings his hands. Finally, the official screams, "in the name of God let me out!" The librarian calmly says "In the name of God, I will let you out." The official runs out, the bomb explodes, and the point is made.

I watched with the uncomfortable feeling that now, about 50 years after the story first aired, we live in Rod Serling's future. I am afraid that we are increasingly becoming a society eerily similar to the "state". I pray that we will be able to maintain our minds and a grip on truth.