Fill Your Heart With Thanksgiving

May you count many blessings in your thankfulness today and EVERYDAY.

I found this poem in a book I have been referring to lately for inspiration, meditation and refelction, copyrighted in 1974 that I bought for my Mom around 1998 in a used book store in Reston, Va. It proves that deep truths never get old or go out of fashion. Perhaps we just have to remind ourselves of them more often in this time of harsh media and materialism.

Fill Your Heart With Thanksgiving

Take nothing for granted,
For whatever you do
The joy of enjoying
Is lessened for you –
For we rob our own lives
Much more than we know
When we fail to respond
Or in any way show
Our thanks for the blessings
That daily are ours…
The warmth of the sun,
The fragrance of the flowers,
The beauty of twilight,
The freshness of dawn,
The coolness of dew
On a green velvet lawn,
The kind little deeds
So thoughtfully done,
The favors of friends,
And the love that someone
Unselfishly gives us
In a myriad of ways,
Expecting no payment
And no words of praise-
Oh, great id our loss
When we no longer find
A thankful response
To things of this kind,
For the joy of enjoying
And the fullness of living
Are found in the heart
That is filled with thanks-
Giving.
Helen Steiner Rice

Mind Mapping Results

In one of my workshops, we did an exercise with Mind Mapping or Clustering and below are my resulting poems from this brainstorming, word-association like, technique.

Clustering or Mind Mapping - This is a technique similar to brain storming. A key word or idea (prompt) is written in a circle in the middle of a page. You draw a line form that first circle to the next circle in which you write the first word or image that the prompt triggered, then continue circles outwards with the words and images that this line of thought produces. When a new line of thought starts, draw a second line from the key word and develop that one out until it dries up and start on a third. There may be sub-branches or clusters as you a develop a more complex concept or memory. Continue this process until you have exhausted all the ideas that the prompt word triggers. When you go back and analyze the lines of thought produced you will more than likely find rich material for a personal story, a poem or a developed narrative.

Choose two of the following words, do a mind map for each then try and write a poem from the results.
Bridges, The Moon, Friendship. Mirror

MIRROR
The mirror reflects me
But who am I?
Is the refelction accurate?
Do I like it?
Is it what others see?

The mirror reflects me
But who am I?
Am I what you see?
Am I what I see?

Perhaps I'm what I feel.
Perhaps I'm what you feel.
Perhaps I'm all of these and yet none.
The mirror refelcts me
But who am I?

BRIDGES

Build me a bridge
Hang it over this gap
that separates me from
...from the other me.

Build me a bridge
help me cross it
get over the precipice
to the safety of the distant shore.

Build me a bridge
to other people, other villages
to close the gap
that separates us and keeps us from freedom.

Build me a bridge
to replace fighting lines
to burn away hate
to lead us to the middle common ground.

Grass

The whir of a lawn mower wakes me at 10am on a Saturday morning, the smell of fresh cut grass wafts in with the light breeze through my open window. I don't open my eyes or even admit I'm awake, I just lie here, concentrating on my senses: the crisp cotton sheet caresses my arms, the summer smell of the grass brings images of vast green lawns, lush and inviting, my bare feet walk over the carpet softness, the lawn mower whir stops and the whisper of the breeze makes the wind chime play its familiar tune. The smell of freshly brewed coffee now wanders up stairs to stir me from this dream, the insistant tinkling of my mother's spoon stirring her coffee is the alarm I have been waiting for to pad my way into wakeness and Saturday's summer chores.

A Stranger in a Strange Land

Maggie Rose from marginalviews posted a piece this week about her countdown to going home, how she misses it and her adult children, and the feelings of being a stranger in a strange land. It opened something in me that I seem to have just needed to express, so I share some of the thoughts and musings it awakened in me.

-------------------------------------------------
As a fellow ex pat I go through what you are going through frequently, but my children are not yet adult, they are born and bred Spanish, so it is my parents, my brother and his kids I long to see. But my parents are in a place I will not get to for a long time yet (I hope) and my brother is not in my home town. So I long to go home to a time, place and feeling of love, family camaraderie and security that does not exist anymore. How the question "is it a past time you long to go back to?" stabbed at my heart.

On being a stranger in a strange land, I am that here, but last evening on an outing to a dance event at the local Casa de Cultura in town I kissed in greeting many of my spanish friends, said hello to another handful of faces I know from one facet or other of community life here. But I am the American outsider. When I visit the US after 20 years away, I do not have a community feeling anywhere (no doubt I would if I lived there for awhile...) and with my changed perspective on the US and its values, I am the American from Europe outsider. So I often feel a stranger in a strange land on both sides of the 'puddle' as they say here. I long not to have to explain myself, or traditions and customs, to not have to be careful to say the wrong thing in the wrong way or the right thing in the wrong way.

But this is my path, and mostly I give thanks for it, for it has shown me happiness and offers abundance of many kinds, but I do cross these areas of shadow from time to time. Perhaps it's the approach of Thanksgiving and Christmas, that brings a bit of darkness to the path this month.

On an enthusiastic note, I must tell you that there are about 7 of us American women married to Spaniards, and we get together every month or two and it is with them that I do not feel a stranger nor do I have to explain myself, because they feel the same. SO for the first time in the 6 years we have been meeting we are doing a joint Thanksgiving next Sat. (Nobody can get Thursday off work here, obviously.) And I am so excited about sharing that day in a warm family, group atmosphere, where the traditions need no explanations, the kids are at the kiddy table off to the side, the men talk about sports and the women are a supportive, chatty group in the kitchen and around the table. We will be 32 in all. Thank goodness another woman is hosting it in her huge house, not yet fully furnished.....Truly I can't wait! It reminds of the anticipation I felt when I was young and we joined with our distant cousins and grandparents, or when I'd come from school for big hugs and gatherings at a bountiful table!

Thank you for provoking this Maggie, it feels better now.