Counting our Blessings

I see with bemusement as I look back over my past 3 posts here that my "new idea" for this post echos the themes of the past 3.   Well sometimes we must look at things from many angles to get something.

In the work of Joanna Macy she starts with Gratitude and then goes into grief for the world, then seeing with new perspective and then into taking action. In a couple of previous posts I have written about the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference, by Eileen Flanagan about using the Serenity prayer to try to discern whether something is a thing we can change or a thing we must accept as is.  And in last month's post I talked about the significant difference in happiness of when people "compare up"  vs when they "compare down".

Today I was reminded by a friend that when we live fighting the reality of the experience we are having, fighting the injustice of it, the way in which it is not what we wanted or dreamed of, that we make ourselves unhappy.  (Similar to comparing up, glass half empty or not having the wisdom to know what we cannot change and must accept.)   My friend reminded me of his own amazing discovery of how to actually be happy while literally in prison for decades.   It starts with gratitude, counting your blessings and being truly happy for what you do in fact have.   In the comparing up mode we discount our blessings seeing them as "normal" and "as it should be" - thus not of importance or value.

All this begs the question of what is in fact changeable.  It is possible to live as if everything we encounter just is, and we have no personal power and must just endeavor to be happy in an injust and immoral society.  I would argue that that way of living is as much a cop out as deciding to me miserable by fighting everything happening in our lives.   It would seem to me that when we can ground in gratitude and learn to be happy there is a slack from which we can see what step might be before us for justice and try to take that step.   If we can take actions for justice from a place of non attachment then we are either devastated or ego stroked by our outcomes.   We are just faithful.

Many years ago a friend wrote me around Thanksgiving time that she was playing the "Thanksgiving game" on a daily basis.   This was a woman who was in grave danger of loosing her eyesite entirely, but she was noticing what to be thankful for each day.   I notice another one of my Facebook Friends, a climate activist is posting something she is grateful for each day.  These are inspiring examples to me of people remembering to count their blessings.

Easter Eggs and other Prayers

I have struggled for years to have a daily (well nightly actually) prayer practice.   Although for years my daughter and I have said prayers allowed with each other - saying first thanks for that which we found to be a blessing in the day and then saying prayers for each other.  But I have wanted something more than that.  Recently at a public meeting a man well known for his work for social justice shared his daily prayer practice.  I was very touched by it.  It inspired me to once again focus on this.

Another thing which made me focus on this is that as a therapist I have read the literature about health and happiness.  The literature is pretty clear people who have religious lives are both happier and live longer.   And happier people express more gratitude about life.  (Literature also says 50% of happiness seems to be inherited...just an uptick we are born with.   For some of us this is NOT good news because we know what we inherited!  However, only 10% is circumstance the rest is considered to be in our control and the attitudes we hold towards life.)   So I have been trying to get serious about my attitudes!  I realized wistfully that unfortunately, I learned nothing about gratitude from my parents.  Its not that they were grim miserable people. But they were private about their spiritual lives, so if gratitude was part of their inner life I don't know.   But outwardly they were task oriented - please and thank you were not big words in my family and there was also a rather prominent tragedy in my childhood and that took focus certainly away from gratitude.

But I'm very aware of the deep and meaningful gratitude with which many people I know live.  A friend of mine got out of prison after spending 30 years behind bars.  It was amazing to watch him hug a tree for the first time in 30 years, pet a cat...how a pine cone on the side walk could turn him to tears.  It was a very poignant and powerful reminder to me that I have taken for granted the small joys and beauties of life.  This same friend sent me this link one day called gratitude:   I encourage you to watch it.  It is certainly also a powerful reminder of all that we overlook.  So I decided I was going to look for the blessing in my life.   At the moment I decided it I was feeling rather down, and thus felt like it was going to be a hunt.   The image popped to mind of an easter egg hunt...hidden just barely peeking out beautifully colored and decorated eggs, put there with love.   I shared this image with a worship sharing group I belong to and several indicated that they too wanted to look for Easter Eggs.

So that was the first part of the nightly prayer practice.  Step two was about looking at the bad, but in a new way.   The happiness scientists now say we can teach children optimism.  This involves teaching that the bad is temporary and the good is permanent.   We still have to look at the problems of course.   A client of mine had encountered in some other kind of therapy this very magical question to ask when we feel everything is terrible.  The question is:  How could it get any better than this?  Of course on first glance this seems ironic or even sarcastic.  But if you stare seriously at the question you begin to realize that it is an invitation to bring our imagination to seeing our way forward and up. It helps us begin to project a better future.  So my second prayer stop is to review one upset of the day and apply this question.

Like many I have read Jampolsky's Love is Letting go of Fear..where he says among other things we are either in love or in fear.  I know the truth of this, and I'm not proud of the fact that too often I am in fear.  Although I know that fear is what brings me into "God who?" (mentioned in other blog posts), and I know that the best thing for me to do with fear is to bring God right into it -to give my fear over to the Almighty. This has been the hardest thing for a scared brain to remember.  So my prayer step is to ask myself: am I in Love or fear?  And if I find I am in fear to then bring that fear to the All Powerful One.

Step four is the old familiar pattern I shared with my daughter of offering prayers for others.  I say my prayers for those in my life whose struggles I am aware of - asking for healing of their hearts or bodies, to find right work, for Americans to make good choices about Climate change or choose wise national leaders.  Ask for those who are lost or lonely to find direction, etc.  Ask for courage for those who are carrying a leading, etc.  I have been taught to focus on visualizing the desiring and not on the problem.  ie not to ask that someone's unemployment will end, or even that they will find a job, but to say thank you for the job having arrived in their life now.  To ask that something will is to keep it in the future tense.  My prayers are worded to place them in the present tense.

I have been very influenced by Wayne Dyer as I have mentioned in other blogs, especially what he has written about living with intention.  Interestingly, our happiness scientists also say that living with purpose and with a sense of efficacy increases our happiness.  Dyer refers to some research that says that what we go to sleep thinking about sets sort of "marinates" while we sleep.  So I have wanted to end my prayers and my thoughts with positive intentions for the next day.  So I first review in my mind what I am doing the next day, and then I set certain intentions - to see and speak that of God in my clients, to express love in the world, to notice beauty, to notice the people in the grocery store as real people, etc. 

So here it is my nightly journaling prayer ritual:  

It begins with listing 3 to 5 Easter Eggs = the blessings of that day.

Then I write one thing which upset me and ask the magic question:  "How could it get any better than this?" (and answer it of course)

Third I ask myself: am I in love or fear?   I turn over to the Comforter whatever fears I identify or ask the Holy One into the fearful or terrible place in my heart.  And if I am somehow resistant to that I ask My Holy Parent for the willingness to turn the fear over.

4. Prayers for others
Finally, I set my intention for the next day, and hope that I will both fall asleep and awake with that positive thought in my mind.