The long months of the pandemic have not only been an unfamiliar experience for many, but have often created a profound feeling of weariness, lassitude, and lethargy for many, as well as a sense of sadness and irritability. As many of you know, I have an interest the root meaning of words. I came across a definition of lassitude as a condition characterized by lack of interest, energy, or spirit. The word itself has the same stem as the word “late,” which also relates to the sense of weariness, slowness, or sluggishness.

The word “lethargy” comes from ancient Greek and means inactive through forgetfulness. In Greek mythology, lethe was the river of forgetfulness, where one’s past life was lost to memory. And Plato spoke of knowledge as remembering. The word alethia, is literally, non-forgetting, and has evolved into its meaning as truth. It is similar to the word “revelation, which from its latin roots is the removal of a veil. As the song, Amazing Grace, voices it. “I once was blind but now I see.” It strikes me that when we hear something that strikes us as profoundly true, it is less a matter of discovering something new but of becoming aware of something we always some how knew but perhaps did not realize. One of the most gratifying moments in many years of teaching came when an adult student said to me. “You put into words what I always somehow knew but couldn’t say.”

In ancient Greece, too, a contrast was made between physical sight and spiritual insight. It was reflected in the legend that Homer to whom the authorship of The Iliad and The Odyssey are attributed, was blind. A blind poet sings of the journey of Odysseus, a blind seer warns Oedipus of the danger of uncovering a painful truth, and Oedipus himself becomes wise only after he is blinded. This thought is continued as well in the Shakespearian play, King Lear. Like Oedipus, Lear only realizes the meaning and importance of love after he is blinded.

We can also recall the essay on folk tales by G. K. Chesterton who says that we have often forgotten our name, forgotten who we are and the experience of wonder, evoked by the folk tales, can help us to remember our true self. Wayne Muller also speaks of the inner voice of our true self.
Neither my pain nor my confusion can stop the relentless companionship of this true and faithful voice. Something more vital, strong and true lies embedded deep within me. Sometimes I barely see it, can’t quite touch it. Then I experience a starry night, a forest after a rain, a loving embrace, a strain of sweet and perfect melody–and that is all it takes to remind me who I am: a spirit, alive, and whole. It helps me remember my nature, hear my name.

All these rambling thoughts come down to the idea that the lack of energy, the sadness, the irritability, and even perhaps the depression we may feel, can cause us to lose sight of, to forget who we truly are. Muller says that we must be careful how we name ourselves “If we believe we are a thief, we will act like a criminal. If we think we are fragile and broken, we will live a fragile, broken life. If we believe we are strong and wise, we will live with enthusiasm and courage. The way we name ourselves colours the way we live. … We must be careful how we name ourselves.”

What this means, in our perspective, is that deeper than all weariness and much else, there is our sacred self, a being of intrinsic worth, a value that remains, even when we cannot feel it. Whatever else in life happens that can push us toward forgetfulness or veil this conviction for us, it is essential to cling to this sense of worth, even as if to a life raft.

How do we do so? I find it a continuous struggle. Henri Nouwen whose vast writings on spirituality, were rooted in the conviction of the “belovedness’ of every human being, found this to be a lifelong struggle, one that involved a lengthy period of depression. Parker Palmer is an author from the Quaker tradition which hold that there is “that of God,” an inner light in every human being. Yet he also experienced three profound periods of clinical depression, which he wrote about in a book, Darkness Before Dawn: Redefining the Journey through Depression.

Certainly, speaking with a wise and caring counsellor can be helpful as can a limited dependence on medication where there is a chemical imbalance. Yet the hope that “this too will pass,” the recognition that this experience that this experience will pass can also be helpful. We may also recognize that we may for a time lack the energy required for activity, and allow ourselves for a time to be in that space. At the same time, solitude, friendship, and social involvement are certain ways of responding to a whole variety of different life situations.

Solitude is quiet time by oneself. Its simplest traditional expression is simply to attend to one’s breathing in its three movements of breathing in, pausing, and breathing out. It can also be helpful to read something that speaks to us. This is not a reading to devour information, but a more reflective process in which we let the words we read sink into our heart and soul.

Friendship can also be helpful: a friendship which is rooted in mutual trust and expressed in open conversation from the heart. It is a matter of mutual speaking and listening from the heart, the core or centre of who we are. Author Sam Keen writes: “Strange as it may seem, self-knowledge begins with self-revelation. We don’t know who we are until we hear ourselves speaking the drama of our lives to someone we trust to listen with an open mind and heart.”

In addition, we grow as well through some activity of outreach in which we do something for others. Even small acts of kindness can count for a lot. So too can involvement in some kind of organization that deals with something in which we have a personal stake or interest, such as Amnesty International or Doctors without Borders. At the same time, as I learned from my brother Mike, the basic gift we have to offer is our presence, being there and being all there for one another. Upon that presence, but not replacing it, can be built the possibilities offered by our particular gifts and interests, as they are able to respond to the present situation and conditions in which our life is currently lived out.

May you find within yourself both acceptance and strength, and a continual recognition of your sacred worth, despite any persisting weariness. And may learn to extend your presence, wisdom, and caring in ever wider circles.

Norman King, March 20, 2022

We have spoken many times of the notion of home, and that it essentially means being at home to ourselves and so able to be at home to others. It is not so much a physical location as a place at the very core of ourselves, regarded as sacred, and where there is a sense of safety, belonging, and outreach.

Some thirty plus years ago, I was able to stay with my mother during her last days. She spoke of wanting to go home. She was in the hospital at the time and I asked her if she wished to be able to conclude her life at her apartment. She said then that she wanted to go home to George, her husband and my father, who had died the previous year. Home for her was more than anything the person with whom she had spent over fifty years of her life.

It has struck me since that time that our home is with those that we love and who love us. Our home is in the heart or core of our own self and of those who have entered our heart or whose heart we have entered.

Miriam Therese Winter, musician and theologian, has an article I have quoted before, called “Music the Way Home.” She says that home is not just a place outside us, but is a metaphor for a place within us. “It means to live from the inside out. To do so is to be at home.” She adds that “wholeness, healing, integration is what the inner journey is all about.” It happens when, instead of a divisive dualism, our inner and outer selves and the world within us and around us are in harmony. For her, it happens, however fleetingly, through music, which shares our journey into ultimate meaning. “When we embrace music as a healing presence, we are already home.”

Her words echo those of Eva Rockett, who has written that the beauty of music can reach behind all our defences and touch the core of the condensed self. What they seem to be saying that our home place is our inmost core or centre, the place that no wound can touch, the sacred self, of which we have consistently written. Music, meditation, friendship with its intimate and open conversation, and any expression that reaches to our core or allows us to get in touch with our core, brings us home.

This sense of home is echoes as well in the spiritual, Going Home, whose melody is inserted into Dvorak’s New World Symphony. The spiritual speaks of a place beyond fear, with family and friends, and adds that “it’s not far, just close by, through an open door.” Besides suggesting a physical place beyond cruel enslavement, it suggests a place within. The door is to our inmost soul, where Meister Eckhart and Howard Thurman tell us that no wound could ever reach. This vision is also expressed in another spiritual, I’m Trying to Make Heaven My Home, and in the African American folk tale, The People Could Fly.

A similar perspective is found in the writings of Joseph Campbell in his portrayal of the hero. The journey of the hero consists in leaving home, struggle and victory, and return with a gift. For Campbell, this journey is one of inner rather than outer geography. It involves leaving one’s present level of growth and development, a struggle especially with our fears and hostilities, and arriving at a new level of understanding and daring.. It is a quest essentially to become a whole person who lives from his or her inmost core. The gift is the gift of our self , our inmost self and our whole self. It is the gift of our presence, our wisdom, and our compassion.

Many years ago, I jotted down a definition of the hero or heroine. “The hero is the person who ventures beyond his or her present stage of growth and development to a new and purified level of thought, feeling, and activity, by struggling with their fears and hostilities; so as to discover and live from their true and inmost self, and to share this wisdom and compassion with others.” In briefer words, we might say that the hero or heroine is the person who comes to be at home within themselves and are then able to be a home for others, a safe place as well as a place of challenge, a place of belonging and of outreach.

The story of Hansel and Gretel gives two examples of homelessness and a final example of at-homeness. At first the children are cast out and deserted. They are then are shut in and threatened with being swallowed up. They are first locked out and then locked in. These are images of rejection and of smothering. Both situations are forms of homelessness, of not belonging. Home, in contrast is a place where one can come to, be in, and leave from, without being locked in or locked out, rejected or devoured. It is a place of safety, belonging and outreach.

In the story, the children, wander for a time through a dark forest and a period of lostness, punctuated briefly by the beauty of a bird’s singing that reaches deeper than all their sorrows. Then they find an abundance of treasures in the house of the witch. In effect, they are realizing their own inner worth and gifts that are deeper than any fear or hostility. They can then share these with others.

It seems that many people in our society suffer from homelessness, a far greater number than those who lack a physical home. It is very easy in our present world to be caught up in externals, to be captured by fear and its expression in hostility. To that extent we are homeless, away from our real home, our inner sacred core, and limited as a result in our response to one another. Bring Him Home is a beautiful song from Les Misérables. Beyond survival and safety, it suggest a fulness of life informed by love.

May you grow to be more and more at home to yourself, comfortable with who you are, recognizing your sacredness, honouring and developing your gifts, and sharing yourself and your gifts with those closest to you and the wider world as well.

Norman King, March 6, 2022
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In the Greek myth of King Oedipus, as portrayed in the play by Sophocles, there is a moment when a plague ravages the city. Oedipus vows to discover the cause and exile the person responsible. Tiresias, the blind seer, after much prodding, reluctantly says to Oedipus, “You are the man.” Oedipus gradually discovers the truth of this statement and exiles himself.

Among the many insights of this play, there is the hint that what we look for outside of ourselves, turns out to be within ourselves. The real exile is from ourselves. In a later play, Oedipus affirms that the only response to the errors and sorrows of life is a profound love. What seems to be involved here is, at first, a gradual process of self-discovery, that invariably carries some degree of pain. The best response to this unveiling is seen as a love that reaches beyond oneself.

Perhaps this ancient story helps us to understand freedom as the gathering and gift of self. We have spoken of how our personal story is shaped by many influences, how we need to uncover the script we are actually following. We then need to try to situate our own story within a more universal story, one that tells of the unfolding of our own worth and that of all that is. This is, in effect, the story of our gradually becoming free and finding the fulfillment of our freedom in the gift of our sacred self to something beyond that self.

A common view of freedom, repeated to me over many years of teaching, is the ability to do what we feel like provided we don’t hurt anyone. The difficulty with this approach is that, first of all, it fails to distinguish between what we feel like on the surface and what we really want. The first is obvious: if we feel hungry we like to eat, if we feel tired, we wish to rest, and so on. But what we want from our inmost core takes years to discover. It is a slow and often arduous process to uncover who we are and what we truly want to live for. We move beyond the scripts imposed upon us by family, society, or culture, to this deeper awareness only through times of solitude and with the help of intelligently caring others. And, of course, the naming of experience is helped by images and stories and other art forms. As spiritual writer Thomas Merton once expressed it, we may find that we have climbed the ladder but that it was against the wrong wall.

The second difficulty with this common approach is that it sees our freedom only in opposition to and constrained by others. It looks at life in a context of rivalry, of “us” and “them,” where others are viewed primarily as limitations and even enemies. It fails to recognize that the support and challenge of others is essential to our freedom; that the worth of others implies responsibility to them; that freedom is situated within a relational, communal, and social context. In brief, can we be free without friends?

Theologian Gregory Baum states simply: “love … gives freedom.” “Only as we are loved by others, only as we share in community, do we come to accept ourselves. We discover our worth as persons through the love of others and our share in the life of the community. … The love and care [persons] receive from others create the strength in them … to come to greater self-knowledge, to assume wider responsibility for themselves, and thus to become more fully human.” (A counterpart of this view is that hatred negates freedom; it is a prison.)

In other words, we do not start off free, but we become free. The process of becoming free requires a progressively deepening understanding of self, of our deepest needs, longings, and hopes. It also requires an ever expanding vison of life. Our freedom is as deep as our understanding and as wide as our vision. It also requires what we might call a progressive inner wholeness, a harmonization and reconciliation of the complexity and conflicts within ourselves.

A good example is the Morley Callaghan story, All the Years of Her Life. A young man is rescued by his mother from the consequences of his petty theft at the drugstore where he works. As they arrive home and she sits down with a cup of tea, he notices at last her fragility and age, and a sense of personal responsibility for his own life finally dawns on him. The story concludes: “He watched his mother and he never spoke, but at that moment his youth seemed to be over …It seemed to him that this was the first time he had ever looked upon his mother.”

In another story, The Little Business Man, Callaghan tells of a 12- year-old boy who goes to live with his aunt and uncle, after the death of his parents. His uncle is totally pragmatic and Luke turns for companionship to an old dog. When the uncle realizes that the dog is now half blind, he decides that the dog is “useless” and that it is time to get rid of him. The boy, Luke, rescues the dog and makes a “practical” arrangement to keep the dog. The story ends with Luke’s realization: “He vowed to himself fervently that he would always have some money on hand, no matter what became of him, so that he would be able to protect all that was truly valuable, from the practical people in the world.”

Becoming a free person, then, involves a deeper self awareness, including a recognition of diverse influences, inner conflicts, and what has been called our shadow side. It also requires the development of a sense of self-worth. Otherwise there is a tendency to deny difficulties within ourselves and project then on to others. There can also be near endless futile attempts to prove a worth that a person never really believes. It can result in a life that is driven rather than unfolds from within, that seeks scapegoats for its unhappiness, and ferments with unfaced fear and hostility. The counterpart is a sense of worth that acknowledges that we share all the negative emotions, that we experience limitations, failures, and even betrayals. But these to not do not take away the underlying sacredness and are compatible, with growth to maturity, loving relationships, a sense of compassion, and a real joy in living.

We mentioned before how a young child will ask, “Where did I come from?” We said that the child is not asking for a biology lesson, but a story in which he or she is the main character and welcomed into the family or care-giving group. The child is really asking–as we do throughout our lives: “Am I important and do I belong.” This, I believe, is our underlying human quest: both to have a sense of our own worth and to find a home, a place to belong, a place to share and give ourselves. It seems that we cannot become free without a sense of our sacred worth. Yet, along with that sense, there is a profound yearning to take that valuable self and give it to something or someone beyond ourselves.

This again is an understanding of freedom ( more accurately of becoming free), as the gathering of ourselves into our hands in order to give ourselves to what is worth the gift of our whole self from the heart. In this understanding, freedom is not the avoidance of decision or commitment. It is rather the possibility of commitment, of gift of self to what is worthy of that gift. In this sense, freedom is expressed and fulfilled not in refusal, but in the very gift of one’s self.

This journey, in awakening solitude, in trusting friendship, and in social responsibility, would seem then to be the path of freedom. May you come more and more to understand and name all that is within you, both darkness and light; may you ever deepen your sense of your sacred worth; and may you offer that valuable self to what is truly worthwhile.

Norman King, February 27, 2022

I listened this week to an interview with the late John O’Donohue, who was a poet, philosopher, and theologian, who spoke, among other things, of the importance and necessity of beauty, and of tuning in to the inner landscape of our being. He referred to the phrase of Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French writer, who said: “In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.” This expression calls to mind what we have often said: that the experience of beauty can be a healing force in our lives. It can at once heal us while at the same time unveil our need for healing.

It is fascinating that our experience of beauty, perhaps in music more than anything else, blends joy and sorrow together inseparably. What is truly beautiful can bring tears to our eyes, and it is striking that tears well up within us in times both of great joy and of great sorrow. Perhaps both tears and beauty reveal that there is a place of unity in us prior to and beyond the separation of joy and sorrow.
It is a place within us that is deeper than the surface realities that weigh upon us every day. It is an intimation of an inner depth and beauty, a sacred worth, that, because of the endless demands of every day life, we so easily fail to recognize or be in touch with.

Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, whom O’Donohue refers to often, has written: “There’s a place in the soul where you’ve never been wounded.” He also writes: “There is a place in the soul that neither time nor space nor any created thing can touch.” G. K. Chesterton, essayist and story-teller, has commented on how we suffer from amnesia, we have forgotten who we really are, and even “ at certain dead levels of our life, we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awe-filled instant we remember that we forget.”

These writers all call us to remember who we really are, a sacred being of immense worth, with a vast and rich inner world to which we have become unfortunately become a stranger. It is our real home, and often, in this sense, we have become homeless. The experience of beauty is a call to return home, whether that beauty takes the form of music or story or film or painting, or a human face that is loving.

O’Donohue comments along these lines that our biography is not our identity, that the outer trajectory of our life does not fully express our inner reality. “It often seems to me,” he says “that a person believes that if they tell you their story, that that’s who they are. … And you look at a beautiful, interesting face telling a story that you know doesn’t hold a candle to the life that’s secretly in there.”

He recalls as well that the Greek word for beauty is related to the word for call or calling. In a similar way, we have written before that beauty is the opposite of possessiveness. In possessiveness we take something into ourselves, we try to own something, even a person. But what is beautiful at once speaks to what is deepest within us, and at the same time call us out of ourselves in a blend of respect, admiration, wonder, and appreciation. If we experience another person as beautiful, we can never treat them as a possession that we can grasp from outside.

O’Donohue writes that in the presence of beauty, you are being called. “And I feel that one could write a wonderful psychology just based on the notion of being called — being called to be yourself and called to transfigure what has hardened or got wounded within you. And it’s also the heart of creativity” In a similar vein, I think that the word vocation, literally a calling, need not be regarded as a demand to fulfil something merely external. It can rather be seen as what we are called from within to live out from our deepest and truest self. It is not a command barked from outside, but a pressing invitation from within. It is not a telling us what to do, but an unveiling of who we are, which can flow into our life.

It is not at all egocentric, but rather a call to how we are to be present to one another, to discover, develop, and share our particular gifts with one another and our world.

A related point O’Donohue makes is on the necessity and value of friendship. He describes it as a bond in which we feel safe, and able to be who we truly are with another. I recall a young student once describing in class the experience of loneliness as the experience of having no one with whom you can be yourself with defence or pretence. A gratitude-evoking experience I once had was someone telling me that I was a safe place for them.

We all need a safe place, whether it is in the solitude of our own sanctuary or the caring heart of another, where who we are, our whole interior world, can be discovered and can unfold, not only for ourselves, but for others, and for the world in which we live. This is the world of nature on earth which is our home. It is also the world of wounds to be healed, where so many have yet to realize that they are more than their wounds, and where their suffering is transformed rather than transmitted.

May you more and more discover and live from the inner world of your sacred self and its beauty, and become a healing presence for yourself and for all who come within the circle of your light.

Norman King

February 13, 2022

This past week I heard an interesting interview, made some years back, with Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, who died on January 22, 2022. The On Being program included comments from two other persons who were greatly influenced by his practice. One was a police officer, Cheri Maples. She recalls that, after some experience of his teaching and practice, she was called to respond to a domestic situation. After she was able to have the mother and young daughter leave safely, she spoke with the father. He broke down and sobbed, and a week later she met him again and he told her that she had saved his live. She commented that she then started to realize that what she was dealing with in this and so many other situations was misplaced anger, because people were in incredible pain.

Her words recall those of spiritual writer, Richard Rohr, who says that pain that is not transformed is transmitted. In his words: “If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter. This is the storyline of many of the greatest novels, myths, and stories of every culture. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbours, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children. Scapegoating, exporting our unresolved hurt, is the most common storyline of human history.”

I once read an interview with a man in his nineties who was asked the secret of his long life. When he realized that the person was not just looking for a cliché reply, he answered thoughtfully: “I have lived with my pain.” In other words, it seems that he recognized and faced the amount of suffering in his life without the need to inflict it, however unconsciously on others. Our pain can be perhaps visualized as something that blows through our life, whether as a gentle breeze or as a roaring gale, depending upon its kind and intensity.

Being in touch with any sorrow in our lives can be a source of openness and understanding of the sorrow of another. A person can them become, in the expression of Henri Nouwen, a “wounded healer.” Conversely, a medieval mystic, Mechtilde of Magdeburg has written: “When my loneliness becomes too great, I take it to my friends.” One response to suffering can be, not to inflict it on another who becomes a scapegoat, but to entrust it to another as a kind of gift. Instead of a story of scapegoating, it becomes a story of trust. John Shea, who writes on the meaning of story, has said; “Any sorrow can be borne provided a story can be told about it.”

Part of the process of growth lies in caring rather than hostility, in awareness rather than ideology, in a deep-seated hope rather than a naive optimism or a cynical despair, in a sense of humour rather than an angry bitterness. It involves being in touch with and naming our experience as authentically and accurately as possible. This may often take the form of a story entrusted to another. A key element here is learning to listen to one another, with the “ears of the heart,” as the Rule of St. Benedict expresses it. This is a process of learning to tune in to our own real feelings and to tune in to those of another. It is learning to respond from who we are rather than react from the surface.

In various ways and degrees, we can all say, “I hurt.” It lies deeper than but may be disguised or vented outwardly by anger, bitterness, cynicism, or destructive action. If we are in touch with our own pain, we may be far less likely to inflict it on others. One essential level of awareness is to recognize, even when we cannot feel it, that our worth does not depend upon the absence of pain or even the absence of mistakes.

Thich Nhat Hanh uses the term “mindfulness” to express this level of awareness in the face of sorrow. “When you are mindful, you are fully alive; you are fully present. You can get in touch with the wonders of life that can nourish you and heal you. And you are stronger, you are more solid in order to handle the suffering inside of you and around you. When you are mindful, you can recognize, embrace, and handle the pain, the sorrow in you and around you, to bring you relief. And if you continue with concentration and insight, you’ll be able to transform the suffering inside and help transform the suffering around you.”

He stresses the importance of living fully in the present and that attention to breathing is a means to this awareness. As we have said, attention to one’s breath is a basic form of meditation in Eastern and Western traditions. We have also mentioned that breathing is not just a private activity but is a relation with the earth, a participation in the whole ecosystem, and a sharing of all who have breathed the same air in ages past and present. It is also the basic experience that we are alive and that it is good to be alive, that life is a precious gift, that our life and we ourselves are a precious gift, even though it sometimes hurts. If we are able to arrive at a sense of gratitude for our life and all life as a gift, we are moved towards gratitude which flows naturally into compassion. In this regard, the Dalai Lama has said: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Spiritual author Wayne Muller has written: “Your challenge is not to keep trying to repair what was damaged; your practice instead is to reawaken what is already wise, strong, and whole within you.” He tells the story of Maria, abused by her father as a child, who continued to ask, “Why me?” He invited her to drop the “why” and simply repeat, “I hurt.” Then she began to feel and to weep the pain in her heart. This, he says, was the path to healing. She was able “to feel the deep healing that came from gently surrendering to her deepest feelings—not listening for the explanation or the blame or the injustice.” He adds that “both joy and suffering are threads that run through the entire fabric of our lives. To acknowledge this reality can free us from the need to find targets to blame.”

May the pain in your life never become too severe and may it find always a path to healing and compassion for yourself and others.

Norman King, February 6, 2022

I heard an interesting broadcast from the BBC World Service this week. It featured the response of a Buddhist nun, Dang Nghiem, to a man who felt he had been used by those he was in contact with and felt drained and lacking in love as a result. She spoke to him about the importance of caring for self. This gives us enough energy as well as the desire to reach out as a kind of overflow rather than a deprivation. As an image, she says that to be able to give a cup of water generously to another, we need a pitcher of water within ourselves.

Another CBC program that same afternoon spoke of the importance of having some meaningful purpose in our life, something that reaches beyond ourselves, beyond the level of mere fun. He spoke in terms of thinking of what is the legacy we leave for others from our lives.

Both remind me of a CBC program I heard years ago, The World of the Child. One speaker from the field of education, John Holt, observed:  “I think the social virtues are overflowing, they are surplus. People have enough kindness for others when they have enough kindness for themselves–otherwise not. … My very strong feeling is that if children are allowed a growing up which enables them to become adults with a strong sense of their own dignity and competence and worth, they will extend these feelings to include other people.”

In an article on folk tales, called The Logic of Elfland, Writer G. K. Chesterton observes that the core of Beauty and the Beast is that something must be loved before it is loveable. At the end of the article he comments: “The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful when in my stockings were the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?”

Many times, I have come across the emphasis on gratitude as absolutely fundamental. It certainly ties in with a sense of self-worth. So too does resentment tie in with a sense of hostility to others rooted in hostility to self, however unrecognized. As Chesterton suggests, the basic gratitude is a gratefulness for birth, that is, for being alive, for the gift of life. The experience of joy is essentially the experience that life is good, that it is the basic gift from which all else flows.

One friend, living in a dangerous situation once told me how when he went to bed at night he was grateful that he had survived the day, and when he awoke in the morning he was grateful that was still alive. Another friend, who was very difficult as a child, used to say jokingly that he was grateful his parents let him live.

In different ways, there is an underlying recognition that life itself is a wondrous gift. To have emerged from a universe, to be on this blue planet, and to have years to unfold from within, are quite remarkable, and are essentially gifts. They come to us without our forethought or decision. Yet for too many, life may be chiefly experienced as a burden or injured or snuffed out all too soon. At the same time, those who appear to have little are sometimes most filled with gratitude and the joy of living.

I remember once going up Mt. Edith Cavell in the Rocky Mountains. Because of the altitude, the air was thinner and breathing become a little more laboured and therefore noticeable. With that experience came a profound sense that it was good to breathe, that it was good to be alive, and that we are part of a vast world. The very fact of breathing means that we are part of a whole ecosystem, that we do belong to the earth and to the universe. It is fascinating that in both Eastern and Western traditions, the basic form of meditation is attention to one’s breath.

Spiritual author, Wayne Muller, recalls moments that evoked gratitude: “I experience a starry night, a forest after a rain, a loving embrace, a strain of sweet and perfect melody–and that is all it takes to remind me who I am: a spirit, alive, and whole. It helps me remember my nature, hear my name.”

In this light, the question that arises is how do we take care of ourselves? How do we feel enough at home with ourselves that we feel the freedom to reach out, to be caring to another or others, without feeling drained or deprived. It is not easy to approach a balance here. It is usually difficult and a slow process to feel at home with ourselves and have a deep sense of our own sacred worth, which is a precondition for being able to care for others as an kind of overflow.

One approach is simply to take time for ourselves, even if doing nothing but sitting quietly, and coming to recognize that much of our busyness may be less a matter of productivity than of flight or fear. Just simply noticing, appreciating, being present to ourselves can be ways of nourishing our soul.

Generosity perhaps only flows from and presupposes gratitude. It can be helpful to take time to think of what we are grateful for, beyond and deeper than any bitterness or resentment. There is a marvellous Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy is complaining about her life to her brother, Linus. He suggests that when she feels this way, she should count her blessings. That sets off a negative reaction in Lucy until she finally asks him to name one blessing. He answers: “Well, for one thing, you have a younger brother who loves you.” As she goes weeping into his arms, he makes the aside comment” “Every now and then I say the right thing.”

Other approaches might be things we have mentioned before. These include trying to get sufficient rest and some form of mild exercise. Other possibilities are a walk in a natural setting, a time for meditation or reflective reading, conversation with a friend.

May your more and more come to appreciate with gratitude the gift that you are to yourself and to others, and the particular gifts that you have and can share. May you more and more learn to live in the present moment, and experience that moment with a gratefulness that overflows naturally into generosity.

Norman King, January 30, 2022