Gratitude: Joy to the World. Post #4
Acknowledgments
Today, a bright fall morning, I was lying on the floor of my living room and enjoying looking up into the branches of a tall tree outside the window. Suddenly I had an insight relating to the book, and I put it on paper. Forty five minutes later, I found I still felt like lying under the tree to relax, as I’d originally intended, when it struck me that it must have been in some kind of relationship with this tree that the insight had occurred. It wasn’t at all clear to me that I would have had it in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, or at my writing table. In fact, I tend to doubt that I would have. Gazing up at the tree had somehow put me in a relaxed, gently searching frame of mind which had produced the result.
And later in the morning, this thought elaborated itself further to me while jogging and watching the hot disk of the sun glowing roundly from behind the mist: How often do we fail to notice all that is quietly there for us, supporting and allowing for the things we do? Had I ever acknowledged the sun? The sun that gave birth to all the heat and warmth we know and provided the clay of this earth from out of which was created the amazing complexities of our bodies and brains? I have done nothing by myself – ever.
Copyright Paul Martin 2005 all rights reserved
Today, a bright fall morning, I was lying on the floor of my living room and enjoying looking up into the branches of a tall tree outside the window. Suddenly I had an insight relating to the book, and I put it on paper. Forty five minutes later, I found I still felt like lying under the tree to relax, as I’d originally intended, when it struck me that it must have been in some kind of relationship with this tree that the insight had occurred. It wasn’t at all clear to me that I would have had it in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, or at my writing table. In fact, I tend to doubt that I would have. Gazing up at the tree had somehow put me in a relaxed, gently searching frame of mind which had produced the result.
And later in the morning, this thought elaborated itself further to me while jogging and watching the hot disk of the sun glowing roundly from behind the mist: How often do we fail to notice all that is quietly there for us, supporting and allowing for the things we do? Had I ever acknowledged the sun? The sun that gave birth to all the heat and warmth we know and provided the clay of this earth from out of which was created the amazing complexities of our bodies and brains? I have done nothing by myself – ever.
Copyright Paul Martin 2005 all rights reserved
posted by Paul @ 8:19 AM
24 Comments:
I had inspiration how the sun touches us when I was reading Silly Adventure Blog and here you are talking about the things that run by us without us taking attention to them..How true and how many aspects that passes us
The Sunshine Wrap
Its good to know
On a rainy day
When everything seems
So cloudy
I unwrap my heart
My tears shall fall
In every droplet of tears
I bid farewell to pain
Its good to know
That after the rain
The sun appears again
Evaporating all the gloomy clouds
Sunshine will wrap my heart
Blossoming into a smile
I’m alive
Copyright 2005 nasra al adawi
Beautiful thought. The sun is a life-giving thing, and the trees are your muses. They are deeply connected. I guess that's why the Greeks paid so much tribute to Apollo.
Imagine, too, how all the air that we breathe has pulsed through leaves and the tiger's breath. We've breathed ocean waves, volcanic dust, even someones ashes drifting over from India. Air, water, and sun, such infinite bestowals. I, too, have been consoled by trees.
your post today is full of gratitude. joy to the world as you say.
am very happy and grateful today too. have a smile on my face. so are alot of people around here.
joy to everyone ISA
Iamnasra: The things I've felt most grateful for are the most elemental and the most widely available. Just being alive, as your poem mentions, is something for which most of us can be grateful.
Sirbarrett, thanks. Nature does seem to be a powerful source, for many people, of a feeling of unity or connectedness to a greater reality. I've also read references to nature as the "hem of God's garment," and poetry written from a Christian perspective that links God and nature.
Bonita: Absolutely. Have you happened to have read anything by Thich Van Hahn - I know I've got the first and last name right, not positive about the middle. The interconnectedness of all things is a big theme in what I've read of his. (He's Buddhist.)
Doshar: Yes, and it's a kind of "time warp" for me. I first wrote those paragraphs in a journal I was keeping probably close to 20 years ago.
We owe our life to the Sun/Son. :)
Kathy: But we owe a lot to puns as well...
'I have done nothing by myself - ever.'
This is a beautiful line and rings very, very true. It speaks to my own theory of our connection with God. I think everything is connected and all is God and therefore this line makes perfect sense to me.
p.s. Just read the overview of your book and I would definitely like to read this when you get it published.
What is interesting to me in your overview is that this sounds very similar to what I went through with the counselor I worked with for two years after my first marriage fell apart.
She helped me to reach a place in my own understanding of God and my relationship with 'him' that, as you describe in your overview, is joyful in day to day life, and a rock in hardship. I truly feel that in a time of hardship I will be able to survive (in a healthy way - as opposed to scraping through as I did before) because of this relationship. I know how to both survive as well as thrive and that to me is a corner stone of mental and spiritual health.
Okay, I'll stop posting long comments on your blog now... :P
awesome post Paul!
We all fail to realise the entire depth of the support we constantly get from nature and even ppl ard us...
** I have done nothing by myself – ever.
Loved that line...tells it all...
Thanks Paul! :)
Keshi.
we have an instinctive, primal need for its heat and light.
i do my best thinking when i run:).
Keshi and La Coloratura, thanks. That last line each of you refer to is something that I personally continue to feel very strongly.
La Coloratura, as to long comments, don't worry about it, that's definitely the general style on this blog! Thank you for taking a look at the firsthandfaith site and glad it resonates with you.
Gulnaz: We have to have that, that's for sure...
Rhein: Nice to hear from a kindred spirit on this. When I could still run, I found few runners who were really into the mental/spiritual aspects.
You nailed it, Paul. Our meetinghouse has large, multi-paned windows that look out on old-growth trees. Looking out at them in the stillness of silent worship induces a separate set of perceptions; An oak tree, shoulder to shoulder with its cadre of silent compatriots, leans from the wind, its ancient boughs offering a slow benefaction while a chorus of cicadas swells and recedes. These are things that I rarely notice, while tuned in to the experiences of daily life.
G-Fish: Sounds like a great meetinghouse, thanks for the "picture" of it.
peace ~ sellam ~ shalom
it is the month of fasting for my family, and bunches of others. I believe it is also the begining of the Jewish, "High Holy Days", tho I don't know that much about them.
Anybody that is celebrating that or Ramadan I wish them peace.
I really can't do without quiet, I think it is a human necessity. You know I am fasting from food and drink at the moment, which brings a strange sort of stillness to the body, after it adjusts a little... But, I always periodically make sure that I get a proper diet of silence and listening in.
As I drive to work, its been foggy, especially as I approach the Connecticut river. With the rise of the morning sun and the reflection of the moisture it really has an other worldly feel. It is funny how our perspective affects our preception of reality. I see it as the sun is "rising". And yet, we know it really is just the earth turning towards it. How marvelous it is to be alive. What a wonder! Alhumduallah. Praise belongs to God.
thanks Paul!
Kevin, thanks for a beautiful and descriptive comment.
Such a nice post Paul. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Thanks for sharing a part of your life, and happiness, and blessings.
and thank you for your generosity.
my sincere acknowledgments
God bless.
Thanks Asiansmiles, glad you liked it.
Hi Paul--You describe a wonderful leisurely moment. I think Joseph Pieper would have approved.--Nancy
Thanks, Nancy.
Nancy outlines the concept of leisure that she refers to in a post to her blog, which is on my blogroll under Spirituality -"Just Thinking."
Sometimes the beauty of nature just strikes you out of nowhere. I can identify with what you have written here.
A, thanks, and doesn't surprise me at all that you'd relate to something like that. I think nature touches on both our esthetic and spiritual sensibilities.
I have done nothing by myself – ever.
The trick is to compare your perspective looking up at that tree to every other perspective of which you can conceive or that is related to you by others and, whilst seeing all of the others, integrate them into an understanding or comprehension of the reality which exists to make different perspectives possible.
You've overlayed perspectives by your self. You've seen countless parts of reality by your self. You've decided what is real - sometimes correctly, sometimes not - by your self. There is no one else in your skull to do it for; regardless of all your knowledge and memories of others acts and words. You think by your self.
If you hadn't, there would be no "your self" to exist for others to know or not.
I am quite glad that you do. I choose to integrate your perspectives frequently Paul; whether you know it or not. (And now you do! LOL!)
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