Tonight is a perfect one for offering simple gratitude. I’ve been thinking about some of the small things that I am grateful for and so here they are, in no particular order.
First, I am ecstatically grateful at the impending arrival of autumn. I turned off my air conditioning on Friday and have slept with the windows open throughout the house every evening since then. It’s supposed to warm up in a day or two, and even if we experience the inevitable “Indian summer” over the next few weeks, we are in fact headed inexorably toward the fall. This is my favorite season of the year–the cool nights and crisp, bright, colorful days, the sight, sound, and smell of falling leaves, and pumpkins and hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick in it…all signs of the season.
That said I am sad that soon the strawberries, blueberries, and melons, so plentiful and inexpensive during the summer will all but disappear, or will increasingly come from outside of the United States and much more expensive. In the regard, summers lease indeed has all too short a date. I am grateful for the sweet and crisp treat of watermelon that I enjoyed for dessert this evening. I was shocked to still find a few at the grocery store, and though I thought it unlikely to be very good at this late time of the year, it turned out to be quite lovely. A simple pleasure to be sure, but a pleasure nonetheless.
I’m grateful for warm and comfortable clothing. As we move from warm to cooler to cold weather I become increasingly aware that those who are homeless living without shelter are about to enter the hardest time of the year. As the cool autumn rains turn into the cold winter snows I am aware and keep in my thoughts and prayers those who find themselves without shelter. The other week I was writing a letter of complaint to my landlord who is raising my rent $50 per month. It has been challenging to keep up with it where it was, so an additional $50 each month is nothing to sneeze at. And yet, although I strain financially at times, I could make different choices and ease the pressure on myself. I am fortunate and privileged to be in a position in which I have choices. I am grateful for that.
I am grateful for having had access to the education and opportunities I’ve had in my life. Because of choices and sacrifices my parents made I and my siblings were able to go to college, and because I was raised with an ethic that an education was important, I worked hard in school and eventually completed three degrees. Those degrees have opened doors for me that have not opened for folks who for various reasons did not or were not able to pursue advanced degrees. I have been incredibly blessed by the opportunities that have presented themselves throughout my life; I continue to be amazed and surprised at some of the places in which I sometimes find myself. I am looking forward to see what the next phase of my life will bring. I’m going to hold on tight, it’s likely to be a wild and interesting ride.
Over the next few days I’m going to be deciding where I want to take this blog, what I want to do with it. I am grateful to those of you who read it faithfully: your number is very small. Still, I’ve not done this for any particular degree of notoriety; this blog has almost always been about what I am learning and how I have grown in the process of illuminating those things for which I am grateful. You will, of course, be here as I ponder and decide what I’m going to do with this blog: I’ll either quit over the next few days or weeks, or I won’t. And I won’t know until I decide. Writing this blog has become a discipline for me, a bit like having a meditation practice. It’s what you do. It provides an organization, a framework, a structure for my life, which sometimes feels formless and unstructured. So we shall see what happens. I am going with the flow wherever that leads me and in that process I will continue to offer heartfelt gratitude.
