Grace at the Lake

I didn't want to go.

In fact, if I could have reverted to my small child self...I might have had a tantrum and just refused to move.

Another week-end.

Another soccer tournament.

I am over it.

I should know better.

I got into the car on a Friday night and began a three hour trek into the mountains.

My 12 year old grabbed the cell phone and made a comment about how I needed a better phone.

What?

She complained about the car we were in.

She didn't like my music.

I didn't like her vibe.

As I sat in traffic, I fumed.

I couldn't take one more millisecond of the ingratitude.

I lost it.

Like a surveyor, I reminded her of the topographical lines of her life...the deepest blessings coming first...

Did you notice that you're healthy?

That I'm healthy?

That we have a car to drive?

That we have gas in the car?

We have the amazing ability to spend a week-end playing soccer?

You have a mom who is willing to devote a week-end to soccer?

That we are together when so many moms and daughters don't get that chance?

As I assailed her with her blessings...

the boomerang effect took place.

Hey, Beth, are you listening to yourself?

Stop your complaining and start noticing.

As we meandered at dusk through the mountains, the reset button was pushed.

We stopped for dinner and we both took a deep breath...

we inhaled the scent of the pines...

it was going to be okay.

We had a soccer game at a high school where giant pines surround the field.

I tripped over a giant root and noticed extra large pine cones...

the sky was a shade of blue that made me consider paint colors:

Cobalt

Cerulean

Cornflower

True Blue

Azure

After some weeks of fires and smoke near me, the color of the sky was a long lost friend.

We had a break and some time until the next game.

Some moms had rented a cabin together so they invited the team to hang out there.

We walked into a welcome where the team cheered when Caroline came in.

She had been injured in the game - a serious bonk to the head - and her team, in that moment,  let her know that she mattered.

I could see her body relax...comfortably finding a spot at the big table to paint a few paper flowers.

Parents were tracing flowers, cutting flowers, making paint and paintbrushes available to anyone -

it was an anthill of effort.

The flowers were for our coach, who had lost his mother during the week.

The hand-painted flowers would be a perpetual bouquet for Coach Mike...

a way for 12 year old girls to say:

We see you going through this hard thing...we are so sorry...we are sending love and friendship.

I was so humbled watching these mothers (and fathers) showing their daughters how to love someone through something hard.

I picked up a tracer and a pencil and swallowed hard.

These parents were strangers to me...

but they were mothering my daughter...

right in front of my eyes.

Their love was better than any ice pack.

She was given the gift of thinking of someone else...

the gift of doing good with paper and paint.

Together, we were reminded that it is so often the simplest acts of kindness that last.

After another soccer game, we had the grim consideration of dinner for 40.

How would that work?

What restaurant would serve us?

Instead, another group of moms opened up their cabin...and told us all to bring a little something.

Something turned into quite the banquet.

Moms know how to feed their people.

The girls devoured bowls of pasta, while the adults ate tasty tidbits and watched with wonder more flowers being painted...the designs getting more intricate and beautiful with each effort.

The cabin was at the edge of Lake Tahoe and so the team wandered down to the lake...the girls swam and the sun did its downward dance...gilding the sky...reminding us that this ordinary holiness...this beauty of light...tattoos our world every day for the briefest of moments.

Against the backdrop of waves and feet buried in sand and a chill in the air and a purplish dusk, a group of moms talked about family and the challenges that go with helping our girls grow up...we talked writing and teaching blanketing over the real messages of care and love.

One mom echoed what we all were feeling:

how grateful she was that her daughter was surrounded by these moms (and dads)

...she called it a clan...

a tribe...

an echo from the times when grandmothers and aunties and cousins and others watched over the little ones and made sure it was all as it should be.

In that last little breath of light before the dark, my heart was full.

She was exactly right.

This team has traversed the territory of strangers on the sidelines and moved to a higher plane:

 a community that cares.

It was seemingly effortless...but it wasn't.

It took one mom to consider the coach and find a way for 12 year olds to deal with grief.

It took another mom to open her cabin.

It took moms and dads to buy food and take the time to make food and create 

a space that welcomed everyone.

It took coaches who had loosened their control on the team for something organic to grow.

It took problem solvers to figure out seating and clean up and all sorts of other glitches.

It took effort.

There, at Lake Tahoe in the middle of a soccer tournament, grace was in abundance.

I didn't have a cabin to offer...

I brought very little food...

I didn't bring art supplies or any ideas.

I pretty much was on the sidelines just watching the miracle unfold.

I guess I'll be the recorder.

When's the next tournament?

Down The Rabbit Hole of Gratitude

Our world is messed up.

Seriously messed up.

We have a president that openly lies...few call him on it.

So truth becomes "fake news".

Down is up.

Refugees are shut out.

Immigrants pushed to the shadows.

Public schools are on notice...maybe they don't need the money that they have...maybe they can donate to a private school in the name of "choice"...another false narrative.

There's no choice when they won't let you in...

except for maybe Historically Black Colleges - touted as the originators of choice by the woman running the Department of Education - who never worked in a public school.

The Environmental Protection Agency...maybe that should be optional.

Maybe not everybody is equal.

Freedom is negotiable...show your documents as you exit your domestic flight.

Let's watch Republicans change 230 years of precedent when it comes to the Supreme Court...
like Veruca Salt, THEY WANT IT NOW, DADDY!

Those Trump-Russia ties are only in your imagination.

Along with climate change.

And what about the immigrants...taken from schools and courthouses, placed in detention centers...
where and for how long?
No one can answer.
No one knows.

It is disgraceful.

As you can see...the world is upside down.

Deep breathing, long walks, fervent prayers aside what is a person to do?

Since books are my happy place, I hunkered down into The Book of Joy - a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

It became the salve of my heart.

My haven.

Something I carried with me wherever I went.

I've lived a grateful focused life since I began the practice of writing down
5 things as a project for Lent...in 2003.

I have many many journals filled with those moments of gratitude.

It's a part of the way I see the world now.
Embedded into almost every interaction with others, every small moment with my kids, every ordinary chore like washing dishes or even washing my hands.

I think...hot water, soap, the ability to squish my hands together under the running water, the gift of clean hands to prepare a meal...and away I go. Finished with my chore and filled up with gratitude.

It's a life changing vantage point.

*****

So, reading The Book of Joy, I nodded knowingly when both the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu kept circling back to the importance of gratitude.

I got this.
This is something I am good at...
Gratefulness 101 = A+

Only those two don't teach the beginner course on gratitude...they move it deeper...they nudge you further down the road.

You can get your PhD in it if you hang out with those guys long enough.

Like anyone really great in their field, both of these men offer their wisdom freely.
They share.
They work to get the word out.

No price of admission.

If you read The Book of Joy to the end, you will get to their "Joy Practices".

Mental Immunity
Morning Intention Setting
Overcoming Obstacles to Joy
Cultivating the Eight Pillars of joy
Rejoicing in your Day
Relationship and Community - The Greatest Joy

It was here where I tumbled down the Rabbit Hole of Gratitude.

Under Humility - A Lojong Practice - I found what my heart needed that day...
and it has helped in this upside down world every day since.

The book asks you to:
"Reflect on all the people who are responsible for your life."

At first, I was simplistic...thought of my mom and dad and moved on...
to this:

"Think of your parents who gave you life, your teachers who taught you, the people who grew your food and who made your clothes, the countless others who are responsible for your having the life that you have each and every day. Now think of all those who discovered and created all of the things we take for granted, the housing, the crops, and the medicines that keep you alive. 
Think of all the ancestors, who had to live and survive, so that you could be born, who braved enormous hardship so that you could have the life that you do. 
Now think of the family and friends who give your life meaning."

That one paragraph stopped me cold.

In all of the years that I have been keeping a Grateful Journal, did I ever stop and thank the people who came before me?
Or the inventors, the designers, the researchers, the creative artists who have influenced my life?

Not really.

If you stop and try to thank all of these people it can be a rabbit hole of amazing.

It goes like this...step into a public restroom.

Consider:
Who came up with the idea and effort and work to place this restroom here?
Who actually dug the pipes?
Who invented the pipes?
Who mined the copper?
Where did that come from?
Who designed and created the place that collects the water that flows through these pipes?
Who designed the tile on the floor?
Who made the tile?
Shipped it?
Laid it?
Who designed the sink?
The faucet?
The paper towel dispenser?
The toilet paper??
(thank you!)
The blow dryer hand dryer?
The soap?
Who created the first window?
What about the lights?
The actual structure of the building?
Who were the people who worked on my behalf to build it?
Who funded it?
Was it a city?
Who founded the city?

On and on it goes...

Literally, you can get lost in the gratefulness.

This "humility" as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu describe it is mind blowing.

In those moments of consideration,
you see the interconnectedness of our world...
you see the beauty of hard work, creativity, persistence, boldness,
ordinary mankind finding a way to make things better.

If you have gotten down in the rabbit hole with me,
you can imagine what it feels like when you enter a grocery store.
Lately, tears have sprung to my eyes as I stop to look at the produce and consider the many hundreds or thousands of people who have been working so hard on farms, in food production, in food companies, in advertising and grocery stores just to bring me this food.

How about a coffee store?
A library?
A road?
A sidewalk?
A park?
A building?
A garden?

Trying to come up out of the rabbit hole...and into daily life gets harder and harder.
It's like Alice says when looking through the looking glass:

"Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn,
"if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you."
-- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There

I've seen a unicorn.

Or have I?

Like Einstein notices...each of us gets to choose:
either everything is a miracle or nothing is.

Today, I choose miracle.
Ordinary miracle.
Ordinary holiness.

So many gifts freely available down that rabbit hole.
Try it.
Let me know what you see.