Appreciating What Is

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Day 1: A – Z Challenge – 2015

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Thanks, Universe. You Rock…

Thanks, wise world. Thanks, clear stars, leaping fish, full tummy.

Thank you for the mundane and crazy and unimaginable and new.

Thank you for yellow petals juxtaposed against a cathedral of desert sky.

Thank you for hot showers and hair color and birthday cake and lemon poppyseed muffins.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”― Dalai Lama

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Thanks for true friends and sangria and fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, pulled from a tree I carefully nurtured and watered in my arid backyard.

Thanks for song sparrows and desert wrens and grackles poking their heads out of the saguaros where they nest. Thanks for kale salad and green chilies and indoor plumbing. Thanks for library books and slippers and the sound of cats purring.

Thanks for the scalding glance of an old lover and the memory of his touch. Thanks for the promise of joy and surprise and solace.

Thanks for loss and grief and sadness; it makes it possible to recognize victory and relief and shazam-like synchronicity.

Thanks for the sound of a baby’s giggle and a goat’s baaaaa. Thanks for the conversations of elephants and whales and wolves.

Thanks for the beauty of the crescent moon and the sound of the night unfolding its wings.

Thanks for the music that gushes from all life.

Thanks for ideas and mysticism and great unknown, unfathomable spaces in life. Thanks for black holes and black swans.

Thanks for life and death and the ‘buckle-up-bumpy-ride’ between when we land here and when we go.

Thanks for words and images and the inscrutable (yet perfect) poetic line.

Thanks for dogs who love without conditions; thanks also for contrast (like assholes whose care only comes with a hefty price tag). The yin and yang.

Thanks for the blazing lessons of this life; thanks for the kind (and sometimes not so kind) teachers who volunteered to kick my spiritual ass.

Thanks for my mother whose presence is a balm. Thanks for my father’s kiss and the way he visits in my dreams when I need him most.

Thanks for both my brothers, even the one who sort of hates me for no reason. Thanks for their kind hearts and good intentions and imperfect souls.

Thanks for my sisters from another mother. You know who you are.

Thanks for the life I’ve built and the life I envision. Thanks for open doors and open conversations. Thanks for the ocean and sea birds and the smell of salt and kelp.

Thanks for possibility and silence. Thanks for chanting and prayer and drumming and dance. Thanks for moments of clarity and total confusion.

Thanks for this beautiful mess called life.

Thanks for everything I am and everything I will ever be.

OXOX

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