Gratitude Links
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving.”
Over the years, I have often shared Dale Clem's book WINDS OF FURY, CIRCLES OF GRACE with people going through grief and loss. It is Dale's account of Kelly and his alternative ways of going on after the un-go-on-after-able loss of their 4-year-old Hannah in the 1994 Palm Sunday tornadoes in Alabama.
Now, I am making my way through Dale's new book 40 DAYS IN THE WILDERNESS: REFLECTION AND PRAYERS ALONG THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL - an account of his 6-week south bound hike through the Maine part of the AT. For sure it is an inner and outer, personal and relational, extreme physical and spiritual trek - a peripatetic (walking) parable of being a human being.
In the walk of life, grief and gratitude dapple our way. Grief both for what once was and what will never be. It is a long trip at best. But sooner or later, in dribs and drabs, without denial of the wounds of loss, there comes gratitude for the rugged real lives, and real people, we have.
Toward the end of the first week, despite the ruggedness of the trail behind and ahead, Dale realizes that it is as accessible as it is because of "...the many unknown hands of volunteers who worked on the trail building steps so we wouldn't have to hike only on rockslides. I contemplated how the hands of many who remain unknown to us save us from deeper toil every day." (p.82)
In the ever weird synchronicity of things, the same day, I read in another book about a little boy saying the blessing on Thanksgiving Day. He begins his prayer thanking the turkey, his mother for cooking it, his father for buying it, the people working at the grocery store where the turkey was bought. On to the farmers who fed the turkey, the people who made the feed, and the drivers who delivered the turkey to the store. His older sister whispers, 'don't forget about God.' Little brother...'Yeah, yeah, I'm getting to Him.'
It can go on in an almost endless regression and progression: those who built the roads and buildings...those who parented our parents. taught our teachers, mentored our mentors...those who put up with us when we are clueless to how un-put-up-with-able we are.
Some days I am a self-entitled jerk taking for granted efforts of people who save my bacon and ease my way. Other days, I am like poor me Eeyore or Stewart on 'The Big Bang.' Blessing counting can be sappy and sentimental. Or it can be a means of grace so not to miss the blessings we have... and can be.