Tag Archives: gratitude

Reading not writing

But the next best thing to writing is reading. Or maybe it’s the other way around; if I had not loved reading, I would never have started writing.

Stacked beside the bed:

A Book of Psalms (Stephen Mitchell)

The Book of Joy (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama XIV, Douglas Abrams)

The Book (Keith Houston)

The Darker Fall (Rick Barot)

Theory of the Lyric (Jonathan Culler)

Shifting the Silence (Etel Adnan)

Noise (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein)

Haiku 2021 anthology from Moonstone Arts Center

I love how the first three books all have BOOK in their titles. The Adnan and the Mitchell are re-reads that settle my soul while keeping my mind active and inquisitive. The Book of Joy has been surprisingly helpful to me so far (I am reading it a bit at a time while other things are going on).

Anyway, I can garden. We have had plentiful rain and now I have plentiful beans, basil, zucchini, carrots; numerous tomatoes cluster under leaves, so whenever they ripen we’ll have more splendid organic tasty produce. I will continue to pull out the crabgrass, wild mustard, pigweed, smartweed, etc. Culling, cultivating, collecting sunlight through my vegetables and through my skin (yes, I wear sunscreen–and a hat)…there are worse things in life than an inability to compose poems. And I can read, thank heaven. Reading poetry, and reading about poetry, provides plenty of joy.

One of the practices of joy mentioned in the Dalai Lama’s & Desmond Tutu’s book is gratitude. Fortunately, that practice has never been difficult for me.

under clouds /heat rises from soil /beans grow plump


Gratitude & Qigong

My mother is still living. I am grateful for that.

My mother and I get along well. In that, we are fortunate.

Furthermore, although she is an octogenarian, my mother is in reasonably good health. Another reason for gratitude.

Her interests are varied, and she’s willing to try new things. My mother has always been quietly innovative about life. She has pursued alternative therapies for health and emotional well-being, read difficult texts, studied disciplines and subjects that challenged her, traveled the world, lived in foreign lands.

Mostly, she has been a care-giver of one kind or another. This past weekend, I took my mother with me to a Qigong and Mindfulness retreat, thinking she could use a couple of days of restorative practices and a little time off from care-giving for others in order to care for herself. In addition to several hours of “medical qigong” (Yi gong), we learned some practices for spiritual qigong (Tao gong), got information about implementing a plant-based diet, observed a tea ceremony, tried our hands at Chinese bamboo brush painting, and followed a labyrinth path in a walking meditation. It was quite a significant conclusion (of sorts) to my recent weeks of thinking about consciousness as presented by various “Western” thinkers on the subject.

Yin-Yang

Kirkridge Retreat Center hosted the weekend. Kirkridge’s organization is dedicated to peace, compassion, and community–to the concerns of social justice and to individual healing. It is a peaceful place, located on a steep, wooded hill. The setting alone fosters a sense of restorative energy. Our teachers were excellent, informative, and full of grace. The meals were terrific. The crickets sang sweetly and the moon shone amidst the clouds. My mother and I felt grateful for the event, the weather, the place, the people, for the breaths animating our bodies and for one another.