Gratitudes by Beth Bartlett

After several stressful and demanding weeks, I had five days ahead of me with no responsibilities except to my dog, who gives as much if not more than he gets.  I had a long drive ahead of me, but it was the peak of the autumnal bouquet that filled nearly every moment of the ten-hour drive. Plus, I was headed to my soul’s resting place.  Only an hour into my drive I could feel the tension in my bodymind melt away.  I actually felt lighter.  The spaciousness of the days ahead emptied me of every bit of negativity and in its place — gratitudes. 

This was not the practice of recognizing and writing down three things I was grateful for at the end of the day, something I have practiced as a discipline off and on for many years.  It was instead much more spontaneous and spirit-filled. Throughout the day the gratitudes simply arose in my being.

The audiobook I was listening to filled me with appreciation for all the people in my former workplace who had done all the unseen work for the decades I had worked there – the ones who did the bookkeeping for my paychecks, my retirement fund, my healthcare; the ones who helped keep my computer running and the heat and lights on; the ones who cleaned the hallways and the classrooms; the ones who plowed the parking lots.

Quickly following that arose gratitude for the people who figured out how I could listen to books and music on my phone and my car along the way, and then for the authors who wrote the books and the composers and musicians who have brought such beautiful music into the world – Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” and “Fantasia on Greensleeves,” Edward Elgar’s “Salut d’amour,” Maurizio Pollini playing Chopin’s “Nocturne  No. 8 in D-flat.” The last reminded of perhaps my fondest moment with my late brother when we sat together in a box in Royal Albert Hall, both enraptured by Pollini playing the nocturne.  I’m grateful I had that time with him. 

Every moment of this drive I am filled with gratitude for the colors – for this immersion in the pinks and mauves and peaches in the sunrise that began my drive and for the stunning array of reds, golds, oranges, browns, and greens that blanket me – so like and just as healing as being brushed with cedar boughs.  And with every gasp of “Wow” with yet another magnificent display of brilliant scarlets, bright yellows, tawny gingers I am reminded of so many of these drives of awe spent with my late sister, missing her, gone now these past two autumns, and grateful for the seventy-two years she graced my life.

The gratitudes keep arising unbidden.  Gratitude for the workers who clean the latrines at the rest stops along the way and, despite the delays on this two-lane road, for the road construction crews who keep this road in good repair so I can traverse it, as well for the mechanics who fixed the broken parts of my old car and have kept it running.

Beside me this entire drive is my sweet Ben, my constant companion with whom I never feel alone and yet who allows me the greatest solitude. I am thankful for him every day.

Having arrived at my childhood cabin and the place that more than any other restoreth my soul, I bow down with appreciation that I am able to return here still, for this legacy of home and family, of lifetime friendships and memories.  It seems a rare privilege.  The quiet and calm of the place permeates my being.

In the morning, I head out in my kayak, grateful for the people who designed it and the factory workers who made it, granting me some of the most serene and deeply satisfying experiences of my life.  This morning in particular and the ones that follow, with the summer crowd and their motorboats gone, the water is undisturbed and the entire lake is a pool of velvet. How could I not be overwhelmed with appreciation for the ebullient bliss of every dip of the paddle? The swoosh of the eagle’s wings as it flies from its perch in the tall pines and the unmistakable beating of the wings of a dozen or more geese in unison as they, too, travel to other homes, all add to the wonder of the day

Wonder – in both senses –of awe, certainly, but also of pondering – of why it is that in this time and place I am so aware of all the upwellings of gratitude in me that so easily escape my notice in the dailiness of my life. The answer seems to lie in the pace and bustle and preoccupations that so easily remove me from presence even to my own life and bury me in ‘to do’ lists that fill up more quickly than they are crossed off.  The time away, the slower pace, lets me immerse myself instead in ‘to be’ lists which consist of nothing more than being in the present moment. How wonderful indeed that when the demands slough away what is left is gratitude – not as a discipline or a journal to be kept, but rather as the natural response to life, an inherent part of the human condition, but one that is thwarted by the demands of this fast-paced, capitalist, consumptive economy that prevent its natural arising.

I think of harried parents, running from work to daycare to school to soccer practice to piano lessons; those working two, three, or four jobs just to pay the rent; kids bogged down with five hours of homework each night while also playing sports and being involved in extracurriculars to boost their college applications; elders working long hours at Walmart to supplement their meager Social Security checks. From the time we enter elementary school, we are taught that we need constantly to be producing. In this capitalist economy, so often our worth is measured by how much we produce and we are urged to produce more and more so we can consume more and more. Even in retirement I often hear people talking about how productive, or not, their days are. 

What if as a culture we shifted from being focused on production and its hectic and demanding pace, to a slower tempo centered more on being, sharing, giving, loving.  As Molly Remer wrote so poetically in a recent FAR post . . .

Now is not the time for production.
It is time for pine whispers
Time for tea and quiet reflection.
Time to be curious
about what might yet arise, . . .

. . . and if what arises is gratitude.

Robin Wall Kimmerer has written of the gift economy, in which worth is measured not by how much one produces and accumulates but rather by how much one shares, as an alternative to the capitalist economy, and in which the natural response is one of gratitude. I wonder how different our social relations might be, how much more generous, appreciative, and kind we all might be, were we to make this shift. For as Kimmerer wrote of gratitude, “It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging . . . .”

As we approach the Thanksgiving season, I would wish for this not simply to be one day set aside in our culture, but for cultural shift — a slower pace, time for relationship, an economy of giving and receiving, of sharing and gratitude.

References

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance.” Emergence Magazine, October 26, 2022.

Remer, Molly. “Samhain Slowing.” Feminism and Religion blog post. October 22, 2026. Samhain Slowing by Molly M Remer – Feminism and Religion