Lessons in Gratitude Day 781

Posted on September 2, 2013 by mtchamblee

I am grateful to be back home, sitting on my bed in front of the fan, Honor lying in her bed across the room, curled up and sleeping. We are both glad to be home. I didn’t sleep well last night. Sometimes on the night before I travel I don’t sleep well, and I was aware as I was trying to quiet my mind to sleep that there were a lot of challenging thoughts coursing through it. I woke with some of the same thoughts, mostly questions that sent a rumbling undercurrent through the relative stillness on my surface. On my surface I chatted with my sister and my cousin as we had breakfast at the hotel in St. Paul, Minnesota this morning. But my mind was churning and my stomach was murmuring as I prepared to come back to this place.

I’m not sure what I went seeking or expecting from our time in Minnesota. I am more grateful than I can say to my sister Sandy for making it possible and easy for the two of us to travel together to reconnect with our cousin and aunt. The three of us talked of many things–old family history stuff, but also the challenges of extended family: about how our grandfather’s boasting about our father’s accomplishments affected my uncle and his children, about the impact of not feeling that approval so keenly wanted and so stingily offered. We talked about our current lives, the lives of our children. Sandy and I talked about the deaths of both of our parents and Denise talked about her father’s death and mother’s aging process. I felt a kinship with my cousin I hadn’t realized was there–not simply blood kinship, but more like being a kindred spirit: I could see parallels between her life and mine. I wondered if and hoped she is happy. When I hugged her goodbye it was the extra long hug of I’m glad we did this. We shall connect again soon. I love you.

As Sandy and I drove toward the airport, she declared that this had been a wonderful visit and that it was exactly what she’d hoped it would be, that she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do. I agreed with her that it was indeed wonderful, though I find as I return home that I have a lot of questions to which I don’t have easy immediate answers. Some of the questions have been percolating for a while now, and others were stirred during these past few days. I bring myself back, as I usually do, to the concept highlighted in Ranier Maria Rilke’s admonition to, “be patient will all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” It isn’t always easy for me to sit with questions; it demands a level of patience I don’t exhibit nearly as often as I’d like, though I actively and regularly work on it. Rilke goes on to say, “Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” I reckon I need to be able to live the questions, which to me means being patient with things as they unfold. It is in the unfolding that I actually live the questions and begin to gradually live the answers.

My intention is not to sound deep and esoteric with these posts, though it perhaps comes across as such. On evenings like this I know that I am discovering as I write, uncovering ideas, thoughts, feelings that have heretofore been unexcavated and unexamined. I am grateful for the time spent in conversation with my sister and my cousin this past weekend. It unearthed new questions for me to live into while also reconnecting me with old family stories told from perspectives I hadn’t considered before. These are all good things. I am grateful to be on this journey of gratitude. It continues to provide a space and open me up to think about important things. That I get to share those things with you who read these musings each day remains an additional blessing for which I am most heartily grateful.

Posted in Family, Gratitude | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 780

Posted on September 1, 2013 by mtchamblee

Today we spent another good day connecting with my cousin and aunt. Today I spent some time explaining to them what I had discovered about the family tree, looking at old pictures of kinfolk, and exchanging old memories. I learned a few really cool things about my cousin that I hadn’t known, including the fact that she was on the first women’s team to letter in a sport in her college’s history. And it wasn’t just any sport, it was lacrosse. Back in the day lacrosse wasn’t exactly a sport that Black women played at a historically black institution. So for an African American woman to letter in lacrosse at a historically black university was a pretty big deal. It reminded me that my various siblings, cousins, and siblings-in-law are themselves history-makers.

A lot of times when young folks (20 and 30-somethings) think about experiences of historical significance they don’t realize that these weren’t things that happened “back in the day,” long, long, ago, but happened in their parents’ lifetimes and in fact happened to their parents. My sister-in-law was in the first graduating class of women from the University of Notre Dame when they went co-ed back in the early 1970s. My oldest sister was the first African American woman to graduate number one in her class from Georgetown Medical School in 1980. And while 1980 was perhaps ancient history in young people’s reckoning, in the scheme of things it really wasn’t all that long ago. Or maybe it’s simply that I am getting older and what seems like only yesterday to me really was a long time ago. I mean does it mean I am old because I was alive Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington? Time is an interesting phenomenon.

Coincidentally, I decided to spin the Random Number Generator tonight and landed on a post about time. (Of course, I don’t really believe much in coincidences.) So I am going to share this piece with you from Day 323 on June 1, 2012. Enjoy!

It’s incredible to me that today is June 1. The days now fly by with incredible speed to such an extent that I can scarcely keep track of their passage. I mark them each day by writing in my journal in the morning and my blog at night and the time in between is often a blur. And suddenly we’re nearly at week’s end again. Were we not just here a day or two ago? How is it that we find ourselves here now? Oh my. Given the week in its entirety,I have to conclude that it’s been a pretty good one. I am grateful for that at many levels.

As I sat thinking about how quickly the days and weeks are passing,I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes on time of which I always only remember the first part,“Time is too slow for those who wait.” I never could remember the rest of it,only the general concept that we each perceive time from different perspectives. In this day of instant information I simply had to go to Google to find the full quote by the writer Henry Van Dyke:

“Time is too slow for those who wait,too swift for those who fear,too long for those who grieve,too short for those who rejoice,but for those who love,time is eternity.”

(Of course Google also attributed a quote that was very much like Van Dyke’s to William Shakespeare, so who knows who really said it first…) Anyway, it seems that how we approach time is all about perspective. But these days so many people I talk to,even young people, all seem to be conscious of the speeding up of our days. When my twenty-one year old daughter says,“Where did the time go?” I shake my head and wonder where indeed?

The other quote about time that stood out for me many years ago occurred during one of the Star Trek movies in which a character says to Captain Jean Luc Picard, “Time is the fire in which we burn.” When I googled that quote it came up as being attributed to two people–one a poet and the other was none other than Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek series. In the film Captain Picard has the opportunity to live in an alternate time, one in which he could live out the life he’d have had if he’d made different choices. In the alternate timeline he marries and has children instead of leading the life of a starship captain boldly going where no one (they used to say “no man”) had gone before. He got the chance to experience things he’d been missing in his life–the connection to a loving life partner, children to nurture and raise, a quiet, contented life. In the end of course he remembered that he was a starship captain and returned to his “real” life of unattached, relatively solitary space exploration “seeking out new life and new civilizations.”

So what does any of this have to do with gratitude? Perhaps not much. Except to say that I am grateful for each day that God gives me on this planet. Some days I make good use of the time I’m given, and others I probably squander it, wishing I could get a do-over. I try to approach my days with the highest intentions possible–to do good where I can, to do no harm where I can’t, to live with as much integrity, compassion, and love as I can. To simply do the best I can with what I am given each day. I am grateful for the time I have with my children–the three of us living together again under one roof for the first time in many months and possibly for the last time in the foreseeable future as they continue into their respective futures and I into mine. I am grateful for times spent with my siblings, either in person or virtually. The times with family are among the most precious to me, and I find myself wishing I could have them much more often than I do.

I am grateful for time and the many ways in which it expresses itself. I am learning as best I can to live in the moment, whatever that moment happens to bring; to stop regretting past actions and decisions and fretting about futures I have no way of knowing will unfold. It’s not easy, this living in the moment thing, but if I can truly learn to savor the moments of my life I will really have accomplished something.

Posted in Gratitude, Time | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 779

Posted on August 31, 2013 by mtchamblee

Today we spent a wonderful day with our cousin Denise, who generously drove my sister and me all over the Twin Cities, though we spent most of our day in Minneapolis. We shared a lot of childhood stories, many about our family. I was reminded again of how fortunate I feel to have grown up with multiple siblings. My dad’s two brothers each had smaller families. And so we had to catch my cousin up on how each of our four siblings are doing, what they’re up to, and what their kids are up to. With the explosion of social media, especially Facebook, my cousin can follow some of my siblings and their kids, but it’s been good to receive as well as give some of the details and backstories to how everyone is doing.

We talked a lot about my father and her father. We analyzed for Denise what we thought about how our father’s life unfolded in the time after our mother died. As I listened to my sister talk about our father and I added my thoughts and comments, I found myself briefly silenced by an unexpected wave of sadness and grief. It always surprises me when something like that hits, but I remember that it’s not quite been three years since he died. It is in fact likely that my “daddy cells” are waking up–around the anniversary of my father’s death as well as the days leading up to his birthday I find myself inexplicably sad. Then I remember that the anniversary is coming up in late September and my general sense of sadness and blueness makes sense. I describe this phenomenon in the blog I wrote on my father’s birthday two years ago.) As I sit writing this evening, that feeling of loss is still with me.

I am grateful to have spent the day listening to my sister share some of her perspectives on our family. I am seven years younger than she is and she has seen and experienced many things I did not or was too young to appreciate. It’s interesting. I came to Minnesota in part to learn more from my aunt and cousin about my father’s brother and their early life together with their other brother and our grandfather. Instead, I was treated to learn more about my own family, as well as reconnect with some of my more poignant memories of my father. That was an added gift. Tomorrow we will hang out more with our cousin at the Minnesota state fair. It wasn’t exactly what I thought I was coming out here for, but it is likely to be a lot of fun. We shall see what other surprises might be in store for us during our time here. No matter how it unfolds, I am approaching it all with a grateful heart.

Posted in Gratitude | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 778

Posted on August 30, 2013 by mtchamblee

Tonight I am grateful for traveling mercies. My sister Sandy and I arrived in Saint Paul, Minnesota where we have come to reconnect with our aunt and cousin. This is a continuation of our family history “road trip” that began with our participation in the 2013 Chamblee Family Reunion in Gainesville, Georgia over the 4th of July weekend. I have spent the better part of my life asking about where we come from and who are “our people.” It has seemed that the more interested I’ve gotten and the more research I’ve done I have slowly lost all the people who could answer my growing list of questions: my grandfather on my father’s side, my father and all his siblings, my mother and three of her four siblings. I have questions, and those who have the most immediate answers have “crossed over” to the other side, wherever that is. So we are here in Minnesota to begin to ask questions and compare notes with our aunt–the spouse of my Dad’s younger brother–and her daughter, Denise, our first cousin. While we’re here we’ll also get to interact with Denise’s children, our first cousins once-removed. (I get all those first and second cousin relationships all mixed up.)

I am grateful for the connections to family. Someone asked why is it so important to figure out the answers to these questions, and I am challenged to find words to try to convey a concept that I feel in my bones. I need to know. There’s something inside of me that has drawn me toward this deep desire to know who I am not so much as an individual but as part of a collective. I come from a place, I descend from a particular people. They walked in places I can trace on a map but can only imagine their experiences. I have little fragments of their stories–handwritten names in a census book from the 1870s, army enlistment records for World Wars I and II, wills and death certificates–but I want to know them, to tell their stories. But unless I can channel them, their stories will be hard to uncover. I can sometimes feel the ancestors with me–not in a literal way, but in a very gentle, subtle invitation Come, know us, we are here.

I am a romantic, I know. It is actually a quality I like about myself, though it makes me a bit of a dreamer and I have to pull myself down from the clouds from time to time. I am grateful to be taking a part of this journey with on of my “big” sisters. My plan is to actually talk to our oldest sister and all five of my siblings to collect their memories of the stories they heard coming up. I will ask questions of Denise and her mother during our time here in Minnesota. And I will keep comparing notes with the “new” branch of the family tree I discovered a couple of years ago and was able to meet this past year. At the very least our children will all know some of the stories of their grandparents and the family line from which they are descended.

I am grateful to be here and appreciate the unfolding that is happening as I continue to walk this path with the ancestors. I look forward to continuing to explore and learn about the family. As I learn about them, I learn about me. Their story is my story, our story. And I am grateful for it.

Posted in Family, Gratitude | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 777

Posted on August 29, 2013 by mtchamblee

Today has brought the cool symmetrical day–day 777–when I contemplated bringing about the cessation of writing this blog every day. My guess is that I’ll get up tomorrow, or hit the 8:00 o’clock in the evening hour and the urge to log into WordPress will come over me and before I realized I had intended to stop writing I will find myself a paragraph into the evening’s blog. Anyway, my sister has encouraged me to keep writing until I reach day 800, which is a nice round century mark. A perverse side of me wants to stop on day 792 or some other random number, but even that is sort of arbitrary and silly. The truth is, when one has done something nearly every evening for 776 days, it’s kind of hard to think about not doing it anymore.

I am tired this evening, my friends. That is not unusual. Many nights over the two and a half years that I’ve been writing this blog I have been tired. I have been scared. I have been lonely. The thread that is woven throughout these 776 days has been that through it all I have been grateful. No matter how bad things felt: financial distress, emotional meltdowns, depression, grief and anxiety. I experienced the gamut of emotions through the thick of the drama in 2011. But no matter how challenged I felt, those days I wanted to crawl into my cave and stay there, when I really wanted to give up but had no idea what giving up even looked like, I dragged myself up searched for the blessings that were present even in the midst of it all, and wrote of my gratefulness.

Today has felt mildly challenging; there are just going to be days like this, and while I don’t enjoy them, I also know they don’t last and their impact on me is much less than they used to be. I am grateful for simple things tonight. Among them, the willingness to find the goodness, to search for and find the humor in various situations. When everything seems to be going nuts around me, I am grateful that I find things to laugh about, the more ridiculous the better. Sometimes I run across something so funny that I’ll watch it repeatedly, howling until tears pour out of my eyes and run down my face. Other times, I’ll find something that is so poignant that the tears that pour from my eyes are because some person’s random act of kindness or humanity is spotlighted and put on display before the world. Tears are agents of release for me: heartaches and pains that I didn’t know I was carrying get released through tears of laughter as well as tears of sorrow. I am grateful for them both.

I have much to be grateful for, many accomplishments to celebrate, battles won, obstacles overcome. These days when I run into a little hiccup in something I’m trying to do, I try not to get too bent out of shape about it. There’s a benefit from having lived through truly difficult days–given all the challenges I faced a few years ago, I am much less fearful about what could happen than I used to be and the issues that bother me are minimal. No matter how challenging things are from time to time in my current life, I’m grateful for where I am right now on this day, in this moment.

I have no idea right now where I’m going to take this blog in the days and weeks ahead. I’m simply going to allow it to unfold as it will and see where it takes us all. I know that sometimes these 500-plus words turn out to be just the thing that someone needed to hear, and that is why I keep writing. That and because sometimes these 500-plus words turn out to be just the thing I needed to hear myself say. And for that I remain exceedingly grateful.

Posted in Gratitude, Overcoming Challenges | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 776

Posted on August 28, 2013 by mtchamblee

It has been very moving watching to coverage of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington today. I was 6 years old on August 28, 1963 and I’m pretty sure I didn’t have much of a clue of what was going on except that Daddy was away from home. My sister Sandy, in writing this blog the other day talked about her desire at the time to go with Dad to the March. She was all of 13 years old, and while she had a much better understanding of what was happening than I did, she was perhaps still a little too young to fully grasp the significance of all that was happening in those days.

Years later as I was interviewing my dad for my family history project, I ran across an old scrapbook of my grandfather’s (his father) that was full of pictures and newspaper clippings from the March. Included among the photos was a picture of my grandfather seated on one of the buses and several other photos from the March itself. It must have been a remarkable day. I don’t remember my father having more than a few pictures of the march, though I’m sure there are probably some tucked in the remaining pictures from the old steamer trunks where he and my mom kept such treasures.

I am grateful to my father and my grandfather, and to all those members of my family who marched, protested, wrote letters, went to meetings and engaged in all manner of intentional activity to bring about justice and equality for all people. And while my father spent a lot of his time and energy focused on Black people, he also helped to organizes strikes and other actions against a local company in South Bend that was discriminating against and not Mexican Americans.  In all of the digging I’ve been able to do in my family history (with the aid of a very knowledgable genealogist) I discovered that my great grandfather had also been active in local politics. It is pretty impressive to think about this because he was descended from a slave mother and a white slaveholding father and was raised at a time when a number of legal restrictions were beginning to be placed on freed African American people. In spite of all that my great grandfather became a successful businessman, as was my grandfather after him.

I come from a long line of social justice warriors. When I think of that I realize that in some ways I was destined to do the work that I do, that no matter how I might tell myself that I “accidentally” ended up working for racial and social justice. One doesn’t do anything for 30 years and call it an accident. I’ve only marched a few times in my life (including one my father helped plan after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968) and I haven’t spoken in front of large groups of people like my father did. My work for “justice” has been quieter, more behind the scenes, and much more understated. But as I look back through my career and at my “life’s work,” I feel like I can stand beside my father, my grandfather and all the men and women down through my family line and know that I too have done my part and struck my own blows for freedom and equity.

I am grateful for my ancestors who paved the way for me so that I in turn could do so for someone else, for many someones. I’m looking forward to one of these days being able to turn the work over to the younger folks and I can go and sit down someplace and rest. Until then, tomorrow will find me up and at it again with renewed determination and a grateful heart.

Posted in Family, Gratitude, Life Purpose, Serving Others | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 775

Posted on August 27, 2013 by mtchamblee

I am grateful tonight for being able to take a nice, long exhale. I’m tired enough that I decided to spin the wheel and see where it landed. The past week has been a pretty good for writing original posts. When I’m unusually tired or preoccupied it’s harder for me to muster the energy for original posts. I continue to contemplate the future of this blog. At it’s height two years ago I averaged about 200 readers, which was not bad given that I’ve never done anything to promote it per se. But these days, the number of page visits has diminished significantly, causing me to consider how I want to move forward. At one point I thought I might cease writing altogether–I would do this on day 777, because I like the symmetry of it (my sister hated it, lol–yes, I said “lol…”) or I would choose day 800. Given that I am only two days away from day 777, I think I’ll go with 800, thus buying myself more time to figure out what I am going to do.

Well over a year ago I printed out the first 200 days of the blog with the intention of organizing it into a series of themes that would become chapters of a book. The first 200 days translated into over 300 pages of text. You can imagine what 800 days will translate into should I decide to pursue the idea. Even with repeat posts (which I’ve only started doing over the past several months) that’s still a lot of gratitude. So we shall see what happens as I approach day 800. One thing that has not changed, and that is the level of gratitude I feel for each person who has taken a few moments out of their day to read one, some, or all of these posts. We’ve grown together over these 775 days, and I thank you for joining me on this journey.

And now, please enjoy this post from December of 2011 (Day 168 as selected by the RNG wheel):

Today was a long, pretty good day. Normally I would be working at the food pantry, however I was at a job interview for most of the day. I’d spent the past few days getting ready for it, and as is often the case, after all the build up and preparation, once the event is over total exhaustion sets in. Today is no exception. I am whipped, but  do want to take a few moments and bask in grateful reflection before I retire for the evening.

I’ve been in thought recently about how everything is relative. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at a doctor’s office where they did an echocardiogram (basically a sonogram of my heart) and some other diagnostic tests because of some issues I was having. As they were doing the various tests I must confess to being less concerned about my heart and more concerned about how much they were going to charge me for the tests. I was keenly aware that my health insurance probably wasn’t going to cover all of it and maybe only a little of it. When I finished all the testing and had talked to the doctor, he told me he wants me to do a stress echocardiogram–a sonogram of the heart while walking on a treadmill to see how the heart does under exertion, I guess. When he suggested it I of course heard “cha-ching”in my head, and actually laughed out loud (yes, lol) when he said I could get it done more cheaply at another doctor’s office versus going to the hospital for it. His “more cheaply” was $950 versus something over $2,000.

We subsequently learned that my high deductible, low premium insurance would cover a portion of it, so instead of $950, I could get it done for only $385. And so did I want to go ahead and schedule that for this Friday and get it in before Christmas? Um, no. When I asked the doctor if I should be worried about my heart, he said not really unless the discomfort I’ve been feeling suddenly gets acute, which he thought seemed unlikely. So, like many people with no insurance or not-so-great insurance, I will put off the next set of tests until after the holidays. I was reminded once again at how fortunate I’ve been over all these years to have insurance coverage through my employer. Even though it took a big bite out of my paycheck each month, I didn’t have to delay procedures. But here’s the everything’s relative part: I have insurance that is covering part of these tests and will cover some of the prescription costs, etc. It might not be the great insurance I used to have, but I am still nonetheless one of the lucky ones.

The other day someone asked me what was the worst case scenario if I didn’t get a job soon, and I realized that unlike so many people in this country, I have resources, people, to fall back on who would not let me be homeless. I have by no means exhausted my options for finding work and bringing income into the household. I am not in danger of starving or, at this moment at least, even being hungry. Sometimes my “problems”seem so large to me, but relative to how things could be, they are not that significant. I walk through life with the expectation that things are going to work out on my behalf. So many people with fewer resources, smaller networks of support than I have face the very real threats of hunger and homelessness and chronic hopelessness borne from years of struggle and neglect. Their “worst case scenario” is a lot different than mine.

Yesterday the staff at the cardiologist’s office went out of their way to help me find lower-cost ways of getting the necessary tests done. They worked hard on my behalf, recognizing that I, like an increasing number of their patients who’d lost jobs, needed their help. I was not embarrassed by openly discussing what I could and could not afford, but was merely aware that I was experiencing for the first time what is the daily reality for some people. The fact of the matter is that, while things are challenging for me, I am still really fortunate. It was humbling in a way to be there in the doctor’s office with my financial business hanging out there in the hands of total strangers–humbling, not humiliating. I felt in an odd way like I was in solidarity with others who lack the means to get good health care. But my reality is still different from theirs, and I won’t pretend that until this year I haven’t benefited from class privilege.

Because I am so tired, I am not articulating yesterday’s experience and its impact on me very well. Perhaps as I continue to digest it in the days ahead, I will be better able to talk about it clearly. The bottom line for me is this: I have been very fortunate to be able to have pretty much whatever I needed done medically and paid very little for it. I am grateful for the jobs that I’ve had where such things were provided. I look forward to having those days again, and when that happens I believe I’ll go into them with a much deeper appreciation for the many blessings that I have.

Posted in Gratitude, Health and Wellbeing | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 774

Posted on August 26, 2013 by mtchamblee

Tonight I am celebrating the birth of one of the best people I know: my brother Alan (or Corky, Coco, Gus, etc. the many nicknames by which he’s been known over the years.) I am grateful for the relationship we have developed in our 50-plus years together.

My big brother is three years older than I am. Growing up he was, among other things, my chief tormentor, which is as it should be with big brothers and younger sisters. It was he who got me to try things I had no business doing (like smoking, drinking, and swearing), and got me and our younger sister into all kinds of trouble. He would do things, break things, take things and in all ways imaginable wreak havoc, and then when Mom would asked the four of us (Corky, me, Ruth and our other, older brother) who did it, we all knew it was Corky, but he never ‘fessed up. Subsequently we all got punished–Mom’s reasoning was that it had to be one of us so if she spanked all of us she’d be sure to get the perpetrator. So what if there were three innocent people who also got punished. Of course for a time, Mom had to be a little more creative with our spankings because Corky decided to steal and hide the belt she usually used to whip our behinds. That was when I was convinced that he had truly lost his mind. Amazingly, in spite of our repeated punishments because of his refusal to own up to his many transgressions, none of us ever dimed him out to Mom. We all just took our lickin’s and kept the whodunits to ourselves.

I must take a moment to say that we were very old school back in those days. When you misbehaved, you got your butt spanked. While some of my siblings might not necessarily agree, I think we all turned out alright in spite of periodic spankings (or what most of our family and friends called butt whippins.)

Camping Days--Left to Right: Me, Mom, Corky, and Ruth Sometime in the 70s

In high school it was pretty cool having a brother who as a senior during my freshman year was best friends with all the school jocks and heartthrobs. I also knew I never needed to worry about anything during our school years, because if anyone ever decided to bother me, I knew he had my back. He could pick on me, but no one else had better try. We had an understanding back in our school days: I’d do some of his homework for him, he would watch my back. And that worked for a while, until Mom caught on.
In spite of all the sibling battles and aforementioned torments, my big brother grew up into an honorable, terrific man. He now ranks right up there with our “little sister” Ruth whom I have described in this blog as one of the best people I know. I am remarkably blessed to have such wonderful people right in my family.

I had always known my brother to be someone I could count on no matter what was going on. He was a “go-t0” guy whom I would call, often about car issues as he has a knack with motorized things. But at various points throughout 2011, my year of challenge, he showed up in so many ways, always encouraging me and lifting my spirits when things got hard. And when the time came for me to move from California to the East Coast last fall, he flew out west to drive me across the country. (I recounted parts of our road trip in this blog, beginning on day 444 on September 30 through October 2, 2012.) Over the course of three days, my brother drove almost the entire 2200 miles from the East Bay of California to South Bend Indiana. I think I drove for a total of about 2 hours on one of those 12 to 15 hour days on the road. Over the course of the entire trip, he never allowed me to pay a single dollar for gas, lodging or food. It was as if he had put me and all my troubles on his back and was carrying me.

I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my brother, not just for his help during that rough patch in my life, but for the many lessons he taught me more by his example than in words. He has not had a great deal of material wealth, but he would literally give me the shirt off of his back if he thought I needed it. He is a husband and father to three terrific kids, the youngest of whom is a sophomore in college. He thinks maybe when she graduates he can finally think about slowing down a little bit. I have to believe he’s earned it. I am grateful for my big brother and am glad to dedicate tonight’s blog in celebration of his birthday today. I love you, bro.

Four of Six: Me, Ruth, Sandy and Corky, May 2013

Posted in Family, Gratitude | 1 Comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 773

Posted on August 25, 2013 by mtchamblee

Tonight’s Lesson from Guest Blogger, Sandy Chamblee. Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today I am commandeering Marquita’s Gratitude Blog.  I don’t say that I am guest hosting it because she did not ask me to write it; I told her I wanted to do so. I am grateful that she knows me well enough not to be insulted and loves me well enough to give me this opportunity.

I am grateful for so much in my life that it’s difficult to choose just one or two things.  Still– since I got up this morning to get ready for church and, as I sat through church, a couple of things have stuck in my mind for which I should be particularly grateful. I am grateful for the civil rights and diversity and inclusion work that ties me back to my parents and moves me ahead into the future alongside my sister, Marquita (Terry or Tay to me).  I also am grateful for the strength, patience and stubbornness that keeps me going on this journey through the many times when I don’t see how I can continue (and keep my calm and sanity) and really want to stop.

For the last few days I have been mentally noting the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech and the March on Washington. Since I have been nursing a sore throat for the last week and have apparently given it to my husband, Al, I found that I had a credible excuse for not taking the subway down to participate in the march.  At the same time, I found myself feeling guilty.  When I asked my sister, Terry, whether she planned to attend, she said no and reminded me of two points. First, she hates crowds, as do I, and, as she reminded me, after the marchers go home to their lives and cease to focus on and spend their time advancing the goals of civil rights, diversity and inclusion, we spend every working day on those goals.  We don’t stop.  Our march continues–for her as the Director of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Multicultural Education at George Mason University and for me as the Chief Diversity Partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, a law firm here in DC. And so, based on Terry’s well-founded dispensation, I  released my guilt and heaved a grateful sign of relief.  It was ok if I didn’t attend the March yesterday.

Over the last few days, I have reflected back 50 years ago, as my father left for the first March on Washington in 1963, refusing to take his three older children who asked to go too. I thought about what courage it took for him to leave his family (my mother and 6 kids) and get on a bus to experience God only knew what. That same courage kept him working toward the advancement of African Americans and other people of color, and Latinos in South Bend, Indiana, when he could have focused only on his comfortable career as a doctor and his avocation as our father. Some of us resented having to share our father with this cause; others of us simply accepted it as his passion and as what he perceived to be the right thing to do. I guess that I have never questioned why my father spent so much time and effort on civil rights, and thus away from us. It was just a reality for me, a reality for which I was very proud and am very grateful. He modeled behavior for me that I did not realize that I was absorbing. And he has given me a strength that I did not know I would need, and for which I am also grateful.

I am also grateful for the career I share with my younger sister, Terry–she is not a lawyer like I am, but we are both diversity and inclusion leaders in our separate realms. Inclusion is a passion and a goal and hopefully a reality that we strive for every day of our lives. I am so grateful that I do not walk this path without her. She is my sounding board and my inspiration. She is the person I can call ranting on my way home from work, railing about some misunderstanding, perceived injustice, or sometimes just the slowness with which things change. She is the one who just lets me rant, tells me to pull over to the side of the road before I run off the road into a ditch (helllooo– we don’t really have ditches on the streets of DC), or just talks me down off the ledge and calms me down. Often, because of her, I continue to work on inclusion for another day. I feel less alone in my quest.

So, the bottom line is that I am grateful for the example of my father and mother (past) and my sister (present). I am grateful for my own strength, courage, patience, stubbornness, and fortitude that come from my family both past and present.  And I am grateful for the opportunity to serve beyond my own comfortable circumstances and beyond my own comfort zone. Finally, I am grateful for this chance to express my gratitude.

Posted in Gratitude | Leave a comment

Lessons in Gratitude Day 772

Posted on August 24, 2013 by mtchamblee

Today was a meteorologically gorgeous day. I love when I can have my windows open all day, particularly in August. And sleeping with the windows open at night is a wonderful thing. I will sound like a broken record if I lament yet again my amazement at how the time has flown by and that summer is over. I am slowly coming to grips with this: last week when I went to the grocery store they were no longer selling cherries and as I sit munching my cool, crisp watermelon this evening I am keenly aware that this summer treat is also soon to go, though I am hoping it will go into September, which is just around the corner anyway. A friend recently quoted the sentiment we share with William Shakespeare when he declares, “And summers lease hath all too short a date.” Indeed, it comes and before you know it, it’s over.

Tonight I decided to spin the wheel and post a previous blog. This morning I took advantage of the lovely weather to take on a patch of weeds in a bed in my yard. A couple of hours into it, I had been eaten by mosquitos and wore myself out. One of the bites caused my arm to swell up and is itchy and aggravating. (I’m grateful for hydrocortisone cream!) So I am grateful to have a wonderful piece about compassion that I shared in November 20111. Enjoy!

I have been learning about compassion–formal learning, as in studying the concept of compassion as taught by Buddhist teachers. Of course I have been learning about it, thinking intentionally about it for a long time. I have been living compassion more fully over this year, though I like to believe that I have been a compassionate person and held loving concern for my fellow beings for most of my life. One dictionary defines compassion as, “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others,” and compassionate as, “feeling or showing sympathy and concern for others” I am not sure about the pity part, but certainly concern about and wanting to help alleviate the suffering of others rings true for me.

I am grateful for the compassion that others have shown toward me throughout my life, and more recently in particular. It’s been interesting being on the receiving end of compassion and kindness. As one who has fancied herself a caring and giving person, it’s been different being seen as one who is suffering and in need of support. I often do not use the word suffering to describe what I’ve experienced, partly because my misfortunes are so less dramatic and traumatic as others face on a daily basis. But I don’t think I would have understood as much about compassion had I not found myself in the challenging circumstances of the past several months.

Now, I did not sit down at the beginning of 2011 and say, “I want to learn more about compassion in part through experiencing grief, loss, and ‘suffering.'” I did not plan to have the proverbial rug (several rugs actually) pulled out from under me so that I could become a more sympathetic, empathetic human being. And, I’m not saying, “Okay good, lesson learned, now it’s time to recover what I “lost”–a significant relationship, home, job, etc.” I’m also not saying that I want to deepen my understanding of compassion by experiencing more hardships and suffering. I guess what I am saying is that when we face misfortune of any kind–from small, relatively insignificant annoyances to excruciatingly painful, life-altering difficulties, we have choices about how we approach them from a mental, emotional, and spiritual perspective.

My hope for myself is that I can face life’s inevitable challenges with as much grace, equanimity, and nonresistance as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I still find myself annoyed by bad drivers, rude people, potholes, shopping carts with bad wheels, etc. And depending on my mood when I encounter them I can get downright cranky and ill-tempered. And when I receive news about the latest job I didn’t get or application that was rejected, I still fall into a hopeless, helpless, “why me” pity party. But the duration of the party is much shorter and my irritation with all those small annoyances vanishes more quickly.

Suffering happens to us all. It has provided me with an opportunity to allow myself to be cracked open and vulnerable, to learn compassion for myself and others. I have struggled, but I have  exercised the muscle of perseverance, sticking with it, hanging in there whether I’ve understood what was happening or not. I’ve mostly shifted from “Why is this happening to me?” to “Why is this happening to me? Really. What is the lesson in this?” Again lest I portray myself as this totally deep, wise being, I want to be clear that the unenlightened me sometimes wants to answer, “The lesson is that sometimes life just stinks.” The partially enlightened me sometimes says, “I give up, what is the lesson in this? ‘Cause I’m not getting it.” The more enlightened me knows that giving up can be a very good thing, letting go of struggle and resistance and just being present with what’s happening. This is the one who also knows that recognizing the suffering in me connects me intimately with the suffering of others and deepens my compassion for others.

I am learning; I am developing grace and equanimity. It’s taking time, but I’m getting it. While I am a bit reluctant to say I am grateful for the suffering and challenges I’ve faced throughout much of 2011, I am at least willing to say that I’m grateful for the learning that’s come from them. And while I would like for a few things to shift and have life get easier for me sooner rather than later, I will continue to approach my days with a sense of gratitude and compassion.

Posted in Compassion, Gratitude | Leave a comment