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Dear Subscriber First Name, This is a really busy time of year for most everyone I know. Like me, your to-do lists are likely burgeoning, and your “to-hope-for” lists about how things will unfold in these last days of November are also overflowing. How can our hearts help it? When gratitude is important to you, Thanksgiving opens the door to an abundance of ways to try and make it a centerpiece; to finally give “thanks” the attention it deserves. It’s wonderful to have an occasion that invites us to notice our privileges and blessings, and to have permission to do so intentionally and aloud as we gather with loved ones. Any moment to deepen and share acknowledgement of the ways in which we are fortunate is worthy of our celebration. And many of us hunger for these moments as the true feast. Truth be told, like me, you may have big hopes for how your loved ones will awaken to gratitude this Thanksgiving, and how the conversations around the table might unfold - with shared epiphanies of good fortune, revelations of life’s preciousness, and outpourings of long-withheld appreciation for one another. You might be thinking about what you could help “serve up” that would bring a deeper experience of Thanksgiving for those you love; what the perfect blessing, poem, music, ritual, or question is that will give rise to a more meaningful and memorable holiday for everyone. How can our hearts help but want this? It is such a tender and generous longing. But I know that our hopes slip easily into expectations, and can therefore set us up to suffer. I share this with you because I know how often perfectionism can set me up to have big expectations for how things will go and the disappointments that sometimes follow. It’s especially so when my fervent hopes get tied to how I want other people to feel. I know that if I’m attached to my dream of how others might wake up to see how much they have been taking for granted, and finally feel gratefulness crack their hearts open, I’m headed for trouble. And, somehow - no surprise at all - the Thanksgiving holiday seems to hold a very large smorgasbord of options for getting myself into just this kind of tender trouble. Perhaps you can relate… This Thanksgiving, I invite you to join me in making your own experience and embodiment of gratefulness the centerpiece of your attention. Open your senses and slow down enough to truly notice all that is presenting itself to you as blessing. Commit to noticing more magic, joy, and beauty. Let your own heart be cracked open by love and know the certainty of your belonging. Feel the great gift of the moments that life is extending your way every day. Trust that your full presence and availability is the greatest blessing that you have to offer. When you are grounded and grateful in your own moment-to-moment experience, the conditions are most ripe for you to offer yourself most freely, and to be an unconditional blessing to all those you encounter. And, friends, please don’t forget to also remember that for many, many of us, Thanksgiving is a poignant time, when our felt-sense of what and who we have lost in our lives walks hand-in-hand with all the many things for which we are thankful. If you feel broken-hearted, know that your grief is always accompanied - and belongs - within the vastness that gratefulness can hold. And allow yourself to feel the ways that a broken heart is an open heart. The museletter collection below and my website are offered to support you in remaining connected with what matters most to you. Please enjoy - and freely share - the gifts and invitations that are here. Thank you. With an abundance of thanks-giving -
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