So much to be thankful for
11/25/2008

So much to be thankful for

Here in Santa Barbara, in the United States of America, it's easy to forget how good we have it.  Ten days ago, more than 200 Santa Barbara families lost their homes in a carelessly set fire.  Yesterday, my husband lost a job that would have carried us through the recession.  Across the country, millions of people have lost their homes to foreclosure, and millions more have lost their jobs, or their health insurance, or face an uncertain future due to the global crisis we're in.

Yet it takes only a moment to look at these photos from the NEED magazine website to realize, still, how lucky we are.  How very few of us live on the streets, or come from generations of life on the very sharp, fragile edge of existence. http://www.needmagazine.com/gallery/index.html

Whatever the future holds, we will have Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year.  One of our sons and his friends will be with us, and our other two sons are alive and well.  One of my sisters will eat at our table, and I will talk on the phone with my parents and other siblings, my niece and nephews, my 94-year-old grandmother.  All of us housed, clothed, fed, healthy, alive.

I read this poem on the schedule of Yoga Soup, a local consciousness studio, and wanted to share it with you:

My friends, let's grow up.  Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.  Or, if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.  Look:  Everything that can be lost, will be lost.  It's simple--how could we have missed it for so long?

Let's grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings.  But please, let's not be so shocked by them.  Let's not act so betrayed, as though life had broken her secret promise to us.  Impermanence is life's only promise to us, and she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.  To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild.  And her compassion is exquisitely precise: Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth, she strips away the unreal to show us the real.

This is the true ride -- let's give ourselves to it!  Let's stop making deals for a safe passage:  There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.  We are not children any more.  The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.  Let's dance the wild dance of no hope!       -- Jennifer Wellwood

Or, rather, let's remember how precious we are to each other and cherish all that currently passes through our fingers...gladly passing it on so that others, too, may eat, be warm, and feel cherished.