November 19, 2010
Common Roots Cafe
Minneapolis, MN

Lately, more and more of my journal entries are beginning with the words “Dear God.”   Not the God from any religion, but rather the God of every religion.  The God of spring that pushes the tulips through the flattened and thawing ground.  The God that made the birds of paradise and leaf-cutter ants.  The God that I saw through the eyes of each of my children upon our first meeting.  The God that silently encourages me to continually learn and become who I am meant to become.  The God that has sent me human angels when I’ve needed them most to help point the way along my path.

Sometimes the “Dear God” is followed by the words, “Please help me figure this out because I’m out of ideas.”  Other times it’s “Dear God,” when my fear of losing what I love most has brought me to my knees, and I just need to release the fear to something bigger than me.  But a lot of times, the Dear God is to express gratitude for all of the luck and grace of living this crazy life.  And because I want to change my mind from a space of lacking to a space of grace.

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present — love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure — the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.” –Sarah Ban Breathnach

It is a normal, human (and unfortunate) tendency to focus on what is not going right in our lives and what is missing than what is going right and what we already possess.  Why?  I don’t know.  But I can tell you that I have spent more of my life thinking about what I am missing than relishing in what I have.  It’s a precarious line to balance the things we want in life–to spend time envisioning and creating what we want with the canvas we are given–and to stop to appreciate what we have along the way.

What if we flipped our thoughts, consciously changing the direction of our minds by spending more time thinking about what we are grateful for?  It’s a simple awareness that can be brought into a sharper focus through our writing.  Instead of thinking, “I hate waking up early,” I can flip the thought to, “I love that first cup of coffee in the dark of the early morning.”

Life is just more poetic when we realize all that we do have.

Why not spend some time thinking about why we are lucky right now?  For example, begin with all of the little things that are actually great big huge things like our sight, our hearing, our ability to walk.  Without those things we take for granted, we would spend the rest of our days wishing for them.

“If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.” — Rabbi Harold Kushner

Being mindful and aware of our gifts, talents, comforts, and abilities—all of which we have right now—is a powerful medicine.  Conscious gratitude counteracts depression because it shifts the focus from thoughts of what is going wrong to thoughts of what’s going right.  Numerous studies are showing that it literally makes us healthier—mentally and physically—to be thankful.

Imagine if we began our day writing five things that we are grateful for.  What do you think would happen in your life?

Writing Exercise: “I am grateful for…” Write everything that you can think of that brings you comfort, happiness, and life as you know it.  The little things and the big things.  Challenge yourself to keep the pen moving for ten minutes—see how much abundance exists in your life right now.

I realize the irony of this entry.

And yet.

I must ask.

Imagine (if we can anymore) that all electronic devices were turned off for one week.  No TV, no Facebook, no blogs, no Internet, no cell phones or iphones or whatever phones.  Gone.  Off.

How much time would open up?

What would you do with that time?

Technology is always billed as time-saving.  I beg and plead to differ.

I have been sucked into the vortex of Facebook and looked up an hour later with nothing to show for the time spent except less time for things like writing or drawing or walking or reading or talking or planting or creating or cooking or thinking or stretching or running or riding my bike or staring out the window with a cup of tea or staring at a candle or cleaning my house or sorting through stuff to give to the Arc or writing a letter or volunteering or playing Polly Pockets with Lucy or making a fort with Oliver or playing Backgammon with Paul or walking to the coffee shop and shooting the breeze with that guy Mark who moved here from Michigan or making soup or playing the guitar or learning an instrument or making a paper crane or painting a room or writing a poem or taking a bath or looking through a magazine or reading the paper or sewing that patch that I bought at Target in the dollar section on my denim shirt with the hole in the elbow.

If I could, I would write a manifesto urging the citizens of the modern world to unplug and stop looking at their iphones while we are having a great conversation in a really cool bar in northeast, dammit.

But I have to go pick Oliver up from school and I seriously have about a million other things I’d rather do than sit online any longer (see above).

I guess my larger point is this: we all need a space in our lives where we can connect to ourselves, our spirits, our essence.  We all need this every day.  A space where we can breathe, think, dream, understand, seek inspiration, vent, and let go.  And this space is not within the cyberworld, but within ourselves.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. -Joseph Campbell

So here is your homework/writing exercise for the week:

Take yourself on a date to the coffee shop, or wherever else you can be alone with your journal and thoughts.  For ten minutes, write about what makes you feel alive.  Begin with the words, “I feel alive when…”  For example, I feel alive when drinking that first cup of coffee in the quiet dark of my house before anyone else is awake.  I feel alive when bundled up and riding my bike along Minneapolis’s parkways in the chilly November air.  I feel alive when I’m having tea with a friend.

When you are done, after you marvel about how much you wrote in such a small space of time, tune your awareness into how you feel after merely ten minutes unplugged, with just yourself and your thoughts.  Look carefully at your list–for how many items on your list are you plugged in?

We are each in charge of our lives and how we spend our time.  When we expand our awareness of how we are spending our time versus how we want to spend our time, we have an opportunity and impetus for change and growth.  As far as we humans know, this life, these moments are what we have, kid.  We must make the space in our lives to connect. With ourselves, that is.

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. -Joseph Campbell

I’m on the back end, the good end, the end where there is love and relief and peace, of Hurricane Krawczyk. In other words, Paul and I just declared a truce and came back to center where we belong after a two-day impasse.

It began the way all of our arguments begin–a breakdown of communication, a lack of appreciation, at the end of a blessed yet tiring day.  Someone says something that pokes at the nerves and heart.  The other person issues their rebuttal.  I can’t believe he said that.  He can’t believe I said that.  You aren’t listening to me.  No, YOU aren’t listening to me.  Listen to me!  No!  You listen to me!

We each wanted to be heard.  But neither of us can hear anything over the noise of hurt feelings and raised voices.

My journal, however, has no choice but to listen.  Like a super cheap therapist.  If it could, it would nod with empathy and say, “Tell me more.”

But sometimes I have to rip the page before I can see a perspective other than my own.

It was a five-page rant in my journal that came after a (small) can of V8 juice was hurled through the air in our kitchen.  Propelled by my arm.  In an explosion.  Not unlike a human volcano.  He ducked.  Lucy’s eyes peering over the counter, bearing witness to her mother’s tantrum.  And I don’t write this because I am proud.  In fact, quite the opposite.  After an episode like this, anger immediately steps out of the way to make room for shame.

Before my arm threw anything else, I banished myself to the Treehouse, let out a crazy-person scream, and wrote furiously in my journal with a few swear words in big capitol letters, ripping a hole in the page.  In the midst, in the eye of my storm, after I had drawn it all out in my righteous indignation, I was able to catch a glimpse, a tiny unintentional peek, into the perspective of my best friend, my beloved, and my momentary pain in the ass husband.

While whipping crap across the kitchen in front of your daughter doesn’t help (at all), writing does.  Because the truth of all of us humans, every single one of us, is that we each want to be heard.

Last night, after a half-assed and steely attempt at resolution, I lay in the bathtub seeing that we were both struggling in a raging river, unwilling to reach out and help each other to the shore.  Though I had built a stubborn wall around myself, I wished that I would just reach out and grab his hand and his heart and say (sincerely), “I am ready to listen.”  But I wasn’t quite there yet.  However, I had enough wherewithall, thanks to the insight gleaned through my writing, that I knew I didn’t want to stay where I was.  I knew my true desire was not aligned with my actions.  I wanted my best friend back.

“Your life is the fruit of your own doing.  You have no one to blame but yourself.”  -Joseph Campbell

When I got out of the bathtub and crawled into bed next to, but not touching, Paul I extended an olive branch.  It was kind of a brittle, weak branch, but nonetheless.  “I don’t want us to be like this.  I am sorry that we are fighting.  I am sorry about the mean things I’ve said.”

“You never say you’re sorry.” he replied.

But in the middle of the night, a thaw occurred.  He reached for my hand, his gentle warmth melting into my skin.  Together, we pulled ourselves from the raging river to the safety and peace of the shore.

We humans learn.  We keep learning.  We fall down.  We get back up.

Thank God.