An Immortal Moment

From 1993, a great and unique moment with so many greats of an era now slipping away.  We will not see the like again.

On Thanksgiving

I've been quoting from Joanna Macy's essay on gratitude for years now on Thanksgiving.  Frankly, there are fewer and fewer paragraphs from it that I can quote with full sincerity.  But there are still these two, about the nature of gratitude:

"The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It's like a setting or a channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what's going on around us. It helps us connect to our basic right to be here, like the breath does. It's a stance of the soul...."

"There are hard things to face in our world today, if we want to be of use. Gratitude, when it is real, offers no blinders. On the contrary, in the face of devastation and tragedy, it can ground us, especially when we're scared. It can hold us steady for the work to be done."

This year I'll add a few more quotes, from the Dalai Lama:

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”

“The creatures that inhabit this earth – be they human beings or animals – are here to contribute to the beauty and prosperity of the world. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, have not just dropped from the sky. This is why we should be grateful to all our fellow creatures.”

“When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect towards others.”

Keeping On

"Yet somehow the old discredited values and longings persist. We still have tender feelings for such outmoded notions as truth, respect for others, personal honor, justice, equitable sharing. We still hope for a happy ending. We still believe that we can save ourselves and our damaged earth — an indescribably difficult task as we discover that the web of life is far more mysteriously complex than we thought and subtly entangled with factors we cannot even recognize. But we keep on trying, because there’s nothing else to do."

Annie Proulx's National Book Awards Speech