Thankfulness (and it's not even Thanksgiving)

I've been reading the most wonderful book, given to me by my mom during a lovely, recent visit. It's called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and it's all about finding grace in the midst of life's challenges - even in the face of significant loss. The dare is to live fully, right where you are. Voskamp learns how to do this by giving thanks in the form of a daily list. Her goal is to reach one thousand things, and bit by bit, the gratitude she practices each day becomes internalized and develops into a fairly ongoing state of grace. A grace that heals her deepest wounds and puts a totally different slant on the life she lives. I still have much of the book left to read but so far all I can say is, Wow.

I feel so fortunate that books always seem to come to me just when I need them, whether it's a gift or something I pick up on the free table at the community center or the local food coop, or find propped open on a shelf at the library. For a long time now, I've been struggling to find my place in the world, trying to determine my right relationship to others around me, attempting to reason my way through it all but with little success. Voskamp's approach strikes me as fundamental and true. We are given just one life here on earth (at least according to my faith tradition) and since there's no way to know how it will all come out in the end, the only thing we can know with certainty is what's here and now. To identify and appreciate the small things, the insignificant things, is to be fully present to our lives in this moment. And if we're living fully in the here and now, we have no time for what I call the "couldawouldashoulda's". We all have them: the missed opportunities, the regrettable actions by ourselves and by others we care about, the "if only that story could have turned out differently." We may rail against God, against each other, against ourselves. Making us unable to see the small graces all around us right now.

In a nod to Voskamp and in an attempt to begin my own "one thousand things," below are a few images to help me begin this journey toward grace. Perhaps it will inspire you on your journey.