Excavate with gratitude.
I've been learning to see gratitude as a garden implement in the soil of my life, one that I can use to improve that soil's condition. The improvement happens in two ways. First, gratitude combats the weedy, strangling growth of bitterness, resentment, and envy that always seem to grow, even (but perhaps especially!) when I deny that they do. Second, gratitude cultivates my sight for all that is true, lovely, and good in the real contours of my life. In the same way that soil can become packed and impoverished, the way we live our lives can become similarly hunched, packed, stuck in embittered ways.
Gratitude aerates, replenishes, and excavates the soil of our lives. It changes the focus of our attention, simultaneously improving the view simply by seeing what's actually there, but also by improving what's there too, wrestling out all that may choke or smother it. In other words, the "excavation" part of gratitude is non-metaphorical. Gratitude unearths -- exposes that which we overlooked, or forgot, or failed to see in a way that truly experienced the gift of life: a kind word, the sight of a passing bird, appreciating all the love that surrounds, sustains, and upholds us.
Recently our school district had a week-long "teacher appreciation" effort, with the most organized effort (that I could see) at the elementary level. With all the little sign-up sheets and emails coming at me, I was beginning to dread the week for all it was going to demand of me. But when our son started writing thank you notes to teachers, and I made an effort to find his teacher's favorite granola bar, I noticed how much both of our moods shifted for the better. After a full week of taking up the tasks of gratitude, I felt immensely satisfied for having "entered into" the spirit of the week, and noticed that my sight was improved because of it. I even sent a quick email to the dear room parent who organized our classroom's efforts, with such clear and cheerful instructions that served us so well. She was immensely touched to be thanked too. My attention was drawn up into the realities of care, sustenance, grace, and love that I had simply taken for granted, that I could only see as "one more thing to do." To be drawn up into gratitude was pleasurable, and the pleasures compounded as I entered into the efforts!
If God holds the world together with love, if God pays attention to this world, to us, then we all are always surrounded, sustained, and upheld, no matter what happens. That kind of sentiment (and it sounds sentimental, but I'd argue it isn't) doesn't sound like "enough" to our ears. It doesn't take away life's pain, our cantankerous, greedy, disorienting desires for something more than . . . this.
Well, what is "this" anyway? What is my actual life? Am I seeing clearly? Actually experiencing my life as it is and not against some future idealized state? I'll have to start digging into the facts of life right now, exactly where I am, digging with the shovel of gratitude, and see what gratitude helps me unearth.
I've also mentioned the Monk Manual here before, a product designed for flourishing and grounded in such sound teaching that I cannot stop crowing about it. (Non-commissioned crowing!) In an email packed with wisdom earlier this year, the founder Steve Lawson discusses why gratitude is an "underestimated urgent investment." As he says, we don't usually think about gratitude as an urgent investment, or as something that might take effort and even endurance.
Exactly the kind of work that a shovel might demand. Get digging!