11-19-00 Being Grateful for Simple Things

[Guest guest]

Emerson Center for Spiritual

Awakening

Redwood City, CA

Dr. Susanne Freeborn

 

11-19-00

Being Grateful for Simple Things:

Ordinary

Grace

 

Join me in affirming:

Something wonderful

is happening to me right now. It is this thing called life. Life is

in my mind. Life is in my body. Life is in my affairs. I

receive it-I share it-I am it and I accept it. Just the way that it is

and just the way that it is not. Thank you, life. Amen.

By Rev. Peggy Bassett

" Terton Sogyal, the Tibetan mystic, said that he was not really

impressed by someone who could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into

water. A real miracle, he said,

was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.” Sogyal Rinpoche, P. 120, The Tibetan Book of Living and

Dying.

" I have learned this one thing, that in

whatever circumstance I am in, therein to be grateful. " This was

written by the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:11. He was in a rat-infested dark hole of a prison when he wrote

this. Here is the big question,

how might we be grateful when life appears most dire? Here is a little poem I received in my daily emails:

 

BE THANKFUL

Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire,

If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don't know something

For it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.

During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations

Because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge

Because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes

They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you're tired and weary

Because it means you've made a difference.

It is easy to be thankful for the good things.

A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are

also thankful for the setbacks.

 

GRATITUDE can turn a negative into a positive.

Find a way to be thankful for your troubles and they

can become your blessings.

Anonymous

So let’s talk about how we can do that. Dan and I had a very challenging year. His only brother died. My mother died 2 weeks later. Dan’s work, and our financial

situation, seemed to be drying up.

There were no good jobs for architects in Monterey County it seemed. And

so we moved away from a place that had been our home longer than any other

place we have lived. How is it

that we are so very happy?

Meister Eckhart said, " If there was only

one prayer you could give, one prayer, it should be 'Thank you,

God. "

Gratitude is more than good behavior or

stuffing it when the difficulties inherent in life arise; it is the means by

which we demonstrate the true nature of our heart, giving thanks for what we

once took for granted. We can say, " Thank you, God, for healing this

situation,” We can say, " Thank you for being there. Even when everything seems to go wrong

in my life, I can still feel your Presence.”

Caddy of Findhorn in Scotland says,

“Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into

your life and into the lives of all those around you.” When we do this in the face of

adversity, how could anyone fail to be inspired? Let me share a condensed version of a true story from

Ordinary Grace, a book we are using in our Tuesday Night class:

Amy and Peter Barzach were parents of two

wonderful children, and infant and a 3 year old. Jonathan and Daniel were

happy and healthy and life was perfect. Peter's family had emigrated with

only a couple of suitcases filled with old clothes, first from Russia to

Israel, and then 2 years later to Connecticut. They were Jewish and had

lost everything when they left Russia because they were considered traitors,

even though both parents had been successful: the father an award winning

athlete, the mother a highly ranked engineer. Peter was the only

member of his family that spoke English, having studied it in 5th grade.

Both Amy and Peter had overcome some major obstacles to become

successful, met, married and after a time, began a family. Amy

worked part-time as a Corporate Vice President and Peter spent 6 months of the

year representing his aerospace company in Russia. Then Amy noticed that

baby Jonathan was suddenly having difficulty raising his head. She took

her sweet baby boy to the Pediatrician who sent him to a Pediatric

Neurologist. By the time she returned home there was a call on her

answering machine that said the Neurologist wanted to see them the next

morning. They went through 6 weeks of testing that confirmed their

Pediatrician's initial devastating impression. Baby Jonathan had a

particularly virulent form of spinal muscular atrophy. They went through

4 more months of doctors, medicine, hospitals, and tears.

They were unable to do anything to help

Jonathan. Imagine! It became clear to them that they beautiful boy

would die. During these times their friends and co-workers had rallied

around them, the mothers of Daniel's nursery school classmates made him

lunches, he was taken to movies and other outings away from the hospitals by

other friends, gourmet meals were delivered for those times when they were able

to be home together. When Amy called a Borders bookstore to find books

about childhood grieving for Daniel, the employee who helped her sent Daniel a

Paddington Bear and a card showing a child slaying a dragon. The love and support that each member

of the family needed welled up around them.

When Jonathan died, he was nine months old on

January 5, 1995. During grief counseling a hospice counselor told them

that someday they would find a way to use their considerable skills to do

something that would have great meaning and give a lasting legacy to Jonathan's

short life. The Barzach's donated Jonathan's organs, but that didn't seem

to be it. One day they drove past a lumber company that had a piece of

playground equipment, a boat with slides attached. Suddenly they

remembered Carissa, a 5 year old with a milder form of the same disease that

had killed Jonathan, with her chin quivering on the verge of tears, watching

the other children play at the park on equipment she could not use. They

decided to build a special playground where all children could play

together. Not just accessible by wheelchair, but wheelchair friendly, fun for children

with special physical challenges as well as their able-bodied friends.

Jonathan's Dream was born. There was a

long list of amazing things that happened, but within a year, there was a

groundbreaking. Amy's skills as a project manager and Peter's financial

expertise combined to fuel the project. They got money from a variety of

sources. Russians who only earn $300 a month donated $100! Land was

donated by their Temple, materials were donated, volunteers from all walks of

life worked together to construct Jonathan's Dream. There is a tree house

designed by little Carissa and her friend Vanessa with a sign that says

" Carissa & Vanessa's Tree House.” There is a baby Beluga Whale in honor of Daniel's soulful

inspiration to show his brother the Whale just days before he died. The

playground is constructed of recycled materials that contain no splinters so

each and every surface can be crawled over without hazard.

Amy and Peter transformed their grief into an

extraordinary place and brought light into the darkest experience of their

lives. The goodness that arose in the people and organizations that

supported the realization of their vision is so very profound, a community came

together and honored a tragedy in a way that brings life to all of their

children without exception and serves now as a model for other

communities. Jonathan's Dream is now a well-used playground and a model

that is much studied and is being duplicated.

Kathleen Brehony, the author of Ordinary Grace writes:

" We come into life expecting loss.

We begin with loss--separated from our mother's protective heartbeat, from the

security of her womb, and from our sense of oneness with everything--as we are

plunged into an unfamiliar and uncertain world. Life's expected losses carry a potent

mythology--an acceptable story. We hope that, if everything goes

according to plan, we will live to a ripe old age. We anticipate that we

will outlive our parents and have to say good-bye to them; after all, most are

twenty or more years older than we are. If we are wise, we understand

that everything is impermanent and that during our lives we will lose

everything--our looks, our intelligence, our possessions, our careers, our

relationships--as we move down the path to our own inviolate mortality.

It is as the poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote: " So we live, forever

saying farewell. " But we don't expect the death of our child.

It shatters our innocence and causes most people to rage at the heavens....

" The word grief comes from the Latin gravis, meaning " to bear. " Gravis is the root of the word gravity, which aptly describes the

heaviness and depth of the wrenching pain left with the Barzach family by

Jonathan's death. Grief seems to have a singular power to bring out the

dark side of people. Significant losses can cause us to feel so out of

control about life that we refuse to trust others, to believe in God or in life

itself. Reeling and spinning through the shadowy underworld of sorrow

causes many people to become bitter, disenchanted, and--worst of all--hard-hearted,

closed emotionally and spiritually to the light of hope. Think of people

you know who have closed down after a loss: the friend who will never love

again because he was betrayed; the relative who refuses to associate with the

family because of a past hurt; the person who hold everyone at a distance

because he or she has suffered great sorrow.

" We often describe grief as " being

brokenhearted, " and it is an accurate image. But it is precisely

this broken-ness that

creates new spaces for light and love to enter...This is like the loss that

plunges us from the everyday reality of our comfortable, familiar lives into

the shadowy underworld of sorrow--what St. John of the Cross called " the

dark night of the soul. " It is a moment that opens us up to ordinary

grace and allows us to put things back together differently, as the Barzach's

have done.

" Look at all the smaller stories within

this story. "

This story began with a wish that came from a broken heart.

There was a transformation of anguish into kindness and concern for other

children. " Their devastating loss signaled a decision to embrace

life, not to retreat or withdraw into their pain, and initiated a majestic call

to celebrate and honor the spirit of their tiny Jonathan. At the moment

of their decision, grace flowed like a river. "

" Ordinary grace helps us understand that

God and Spirit are present in the shadows as well as the light. The

German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart must have agreed, for he wrote, 'God

shines in the darkness where every now and then we get a glimpse of Him.

More often, God is where His light is least apparent. "

Being of service takes the focus off ourselves and looks for how we

might help others. When we feel grateful, we naturally want to share

ourselves and our good fortune. Then we find that being in service only

increases our gratitude and joy. When we can do this very same thing in the

depths of life’s deepest anguish, when we can engage in the deepest alchemy

that life has to offer, this is when we know that we have grown in Spirit.

“I am alive in Spirit, Spirit is alive in me,” we chant

together on some Sundays. This is

a time to know gratitude for simple things; Love is such a simple thing. Love knows no bounds nor does it

require that life or anything within it be different in any way. It allows life’s difficulties to

surface to find the divinity hidden within each experience. May we appreciate this divinity in all of

life together.

The word " appreciation " means to be

thankful and express admiration, approval, or gratitude. It also means to grow or appreciate in

value. As you appreciate life, you

become more valuable - both to yourself and others.

The

Hidden Power of the Heart, Sara Paddison

Thank you for being here today!

 

 

 

 

© Dr. Susanne Freeborn   Page

1        11/21/00