(This is Part 1 of a series.)
"In everything give thanks," goes the saying in the Bible.
In my opinion, this is one of the most profound truths ever uttered, and encapsulates a great deal of whatever it is I imagine I've learned in this lifetime.
In everything give thanks. In everything give thanks.
Give thanks to this world for existing in the first place.
Give thanks to God for existing. Without God there would be no universe, because the universe is not a hair's breadth separate from God. How fortunate that God/the universe exists rather than doesn't exist.
Give thanks to yourself and myself, that "you" exist, that "I" exist. How fortunate that there is this pretend-duality on the surface of the oneness; it allows us to play and have drama and have the whole human experience, which wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Give thanks to the sky and the trees and the rocky streams and all of wonderful, riotous nature, which of course is no other than God either. What a beautiful form of the absolute is nature, with its red-breasted robins and its willows and its grains of sand and its magnificent oceans.
Give thanks to life on earth, that our existence is populated with this wonderful thing we call life, that organic life has arisen in the universe. Give thanks to the universe as we give birth to our babies, life beginning anew again and again.
Give thanks to the universe as we die in despair or joy. Death, our friend, clears out the rigidified, the calcified, the brittle so that life can continue to flow and weave and be reborn. Death is our greatest ally, our benefactor. It is God itself, hidden behind a veil.
Give thanks to light, and to darkness too. I love them both. Light is so beautiful, with its colors and hues. And night is so beautiful with its absence, its rest from the brightness of colors and hues. And then the next morning, we can get up and appreciate them again.
I love "you," except when I don't. I finally had to forgive myself for not being loving all the time. Even though I wanted to be, I couldn't. Ironically, when I forgave myself for not being able to be loving all the time, I felt more at home in the universe. Perfection is inhuman; imperfection is the real perfection. Imperfection isperfection. Reality is perfection, the ultimate goodness.
Give thanks to our lovers, friends, husbands, wives, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, business associates, neighbors, acquaintances, enemies. I give thanks to you.
Give thanks to good deeds and bad deeds, to clean politics and dirty politics, to greed and altruism both I give thanks. Greed gives rise to the free market, which fills up the grocery shelves every night with the most wondrous things, and altruism corrects the excesses caused by the unbridled free market. I give thanks for both.
Give thanks that everything has an opposite, because the excesses created by any quality can be and is ameliorated by the correction of the opposite.
Give thanks to the spirit of human nature, that at the level of apparent-choice we humans are sometimes willing to undertake long odds to bring about some great but seemingly-impossible outcome. I bow to all victors, and all those who linger in defeat too. I've been to both places many times, and I've come to love you both. Victory is so sweet; defeat is so deep.
Give thanks to love and joy and gratitude. Give thanks to pain and sorrow and fear, that make it possible to appreciate love and joy and gratitude, that make it possible to even have them in the first place. From our heart, we can give thanks.
In everything, give thanks.
In everything, give thanks.
In everything give thanks.
(This is the end of Part 1. Go to Part 2.)
—jim sloman, 7.23.03 for 12.4.03
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