Tara Brach - Gratitude: Entering Sacred Relationship

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group. The audio includes a poem of blessing by John O'Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya (from the archives).

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome. Thank you for being here, friends. So in the United States, it's the day before Thanksgiving and as with many parts of the world, we're entering a season of holy days. And at the same time, it's shadowy, uncertain in our world. For many, it's a sense, there's a sense of unraveling. My favorite thing about Thanksgiving, and as I'll mention, there's lots that I can find difficult, my favorite thing is its name, because it directly points to something beautiful, which is giving thanks. So in that

spirit, I wanted to pause a bit and just take some moments to, express my thanks to you who are here with me right now. I thank you for your company, for your care, for your presence. You know, I've never in my life felt so strongly the power of feeling accompanied by caring others as in recent years. That power of knowing we're part of something larger that we're joined by our love for truth, by our love for love, by our caring about life. So thank you, friends, each of you from my heart for holding hands on this journey.

I really do feel us together in the field. And that matters more than words can say. I'm pausing right now again, just as I thank you, just to name that feeling gratitude, sincerely feeling you, in the body and expressing it as such a feeling that ah, I'm at home in who I am. So really, thank you. And as you might have suspected, gratitude is our theme. And I'll be sharing a reflection on gratitude from the archives that feels made for these times.

It's about reclaiming holy days, holy moments, that which is sacred. no matter what's unfolding. And we'll look at what blocks gratitude, we'll look at some interesting research about gratitude and generosity, and my favorite practices for cultivating a grateful heart. And, of course, there are stories and fun stuff in it. You know, the Taoists describe this world of 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. And I so often think, may we not miss the beauty and mystery and goodness that's available every day.

So that's my wish. Again, thank you for being here. I'd like to start off by recounting a story told by a great American historian, journalist, author, James Aggie. He recounts an experience during the Great Depression that struck me. He found an impoverished elderly woman in the hollows of Appalachia and she was living in this tiny shack with dirt floors and no heat and no plumbing. So he asked her, well what would you do if someone came along and gave you some money to help you out?

And so she was rocking in her chair and shook her head and she said, well, I guess I'd give it to the poor. And what struck me so much about this is it really has within it one of the greatest of the spiritual teachings, the teachings of awakening which is for true happiness. Our life is not about the what's happening but how we're relating to it. So we can be in any state but whether or not we're happy, whether or not we're feeling our hearts are open, it's going to depend on how we're relating to what's happening. And I was reflecting a lot on us here entering, where we've already entered it, the holiday season,

the season of the holy days and the meaning of the holy days and how through history there were times of pausing so that we humans could reconnect with something that was sacred that we cherished and live in a more awake way with each other relating through creativity and song and dance and relating through prayer and so on, to really be living from in a way that reflected the divine, at that holy quality. And so I think about that that here we are and that's the invitation, can we reclaim that somewhat if it hasn't been so alive for us or for others around us, to have this be a time of really living from love and living from gratitude and huge amount of acceptance.

You know how Anatoly France put it, he said, it's difficult to be a saint in the midst of your family. And don't we know it? I mean, isn't it the truth? But it's kind of just to acknowledge it's poignant to even use the language of holiday and holy day at a time when we have also such a sense of shadow hanging around us. I'm sure I'm not the only one having that thought, you know, but really a time where there's so much societal anger and agitation and dividedness. So it's really for many a time of a lot of agitation. A lot of fear, a lot of distrust. And then for many being alone during the holy days, living alone, not having a lot of extended

family, just accentuates a sense of I'm by myself. And then it gets really amplified by some of the cultural traditions that are so here and now for us, which is huge materialism. I saw on my screen today the big question, is it better to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday? I don't know. You know, which it's, but it's amazing. It's like shop, shop, shop. And then of course we know that it's, you know, time for many of overconsuming and what

most registers for me is the enormous cruelty of the way turkeys are bred and slaughtered, but it's true for all animals used for meat. but that's just part of, considered to be part of this cheerful part of a holiday when, if we look behind the lines, what's really happening is pretty painful. So, I wanted to reflect tonight on how we can in sense reclaim the essence, in the particular we're talking about Thanksgiving, but of holy days and all days as an opportunity to really really deepen our attention to the sacred, to connecting. And I wanted to start tonight's reflection by honoring the indigenous peoples.

I'm very thinking often of this land here, this land that we're on right here in Bethesda. And if you go back in history, it was the home of two primary groups of indigenous peoples. One is the Nkotanks, also known as the Anacostens, that might be a more familiar name. And the other one was the Biscataway peoples. They were the ones that in and out kind of inhabited this area, this particular area. And within 40 years of initial contact with the white Europeans, that was 1608, within 40 years 78% of them were gone, killed by the aggression. of the white Europeans killed by disease.

The Piscataways were forcibly removed. The Anacostans don't exist anymore. No descendants at all, zero. No lineage. So just to take a moment and we can, if you'd like to close your eyes for a moment, and just sense that these grounds have been sacred grounds to people's, people who really loved and tended the earth, people who suffered the fate of being what I sometimes describe as unreal others, inferior

others to a more dominant aggressive population, just to open our awareness into what comes before and just to feel the poignancy of that. So that was about 400 years ago. Taking you a few full breaths if you'd like to open your eyes, we then look ahead of it sense, well, what's our trajectory? Well, we wake up past our, the kind of toxic biases and sense of hierarchy that leads to domination, subjugation. Well, we really embrace others that have felt so different as part of our heart, you know, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, can our hearts wake up in that way?

Then we think ahead and here's a big one, which is that the number one word, the Oxford Dictionary has identified for its biggest use of the year. It's actually two words. Climate emergency. Biggest usage of the year. It's in our nervous system. We know it. We know the great dis-ease of this earth.

So then, well we learn this pathway to sacred relationship and act as we need to act. We don't know the answer to that. But these are the questions that come up when we think of holy days and sacred relationship. So here's where the... I'm looking around, if you're not here watching, everybody's gone kind of like this. And I understand because I'm feeling that also. Where the hope is is that we create our future and how we live today, really this moment, how we live this moment, and we can let these holy days and all days matter and very consciously

cultivate our hearts. And tonight I want to explore a key entry to that and it's the entry of gratitude. It's really a gratitude and honoring and appreciation. and I'll start off with a quote from a great bodhisattva fairly contemporary, Fred Rogers, who's becoming more and more central for so many. Here's what he says. I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred, in appreciating our neighbor, in appreciating each other,

in appreciating nature. When we are feeling gratitude, we are participating in something sacred. I think that's just such a beautiful way to say it. How many of you have seen a beautiful day in the neighborhood? Anybody? A few. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just that. It's, the more I read about Fred Rogers, the more he truly is quite a model, you know, of presence, whoever he's with, really truly respecting and showing up with his heart. And the reviews are interesting to me and the reason I'm spending time on it is because it points out something. One reviewer put it this way. He said, people took to it immediately as if applying a band-aid to a wounded psyche. And I was thinking about that and what seems so important about the movie is that we love goodness.

We really love goodness. And we're hurting and I say we're grieving because our society right now feels so far from the values that matter to us and what we're kind of riveted on often as a society. so far from the care and the presence and the respect that matters to our hearts. So there's a grieving. The response is, can we open up our own hearts? And let's just look at gratitude as an example. It's really helpful to begin to notice in our own lives,

what stops us from feeling grateful? You know, if you ask yourself today, what stopped you from just that attitude of appreciation, of appreciating who you're with at work or family, our friends, or the natural world around you? What stopped you? And I know for many of us, it's that we're on our way somewhere else and we're just not really here to take in what's right here. How many of you could say that for yourself today, that you're on your way somewhere else, I know I was. So, okay, three construction workers

are standing in a row next to traffic carrying signs. The first carries a big stop sign. The second carries a sign that says, stop and smell the flowers, carries a bunch of flowers in her hand. And the third, the sign says, okay, resume tearing through your life like a maniac. And we get it. You know, it's like we're on our way somewhere else. And the somewhere else is often, in some way we're trying to get something we want. You know, we want, often it's to get things done, but we also want to get things. Now, an extreme would be Rita Rutner who says, someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity.

That's how rich I want to get. But it's not that extreme. It's not like we're, most of us are thinking like on that level, but we're moving through in some way trying to get, you know, the next cup of coffee or trying to get, you know, the next bit of approval from somebody or trying to get something. Julia Child says, at department stores, People often get unnecessary kitchen equipment when they were only going for men's underwear. And we know how it is and it happens online all the time.

You think you're going to one thing and you just go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole chasing. There was a research study in 1981 and people were asked to complete the sentence, I'm glad I'm not a, da-da-da-da-da. And other people were asked to complete the sentence, I wish I were A. And the people that completed the first sentence, I'm glad I'm not A, were five times more satisfied with their life than the ones that were, I wish I was, I wish I could have, I want, which kind of makes sense. I mean, when we realize, oh, few, I'm not, you know, there's something in us that relaxes. It's described as a downward comparison and it's actually

a real upper versus thinking we need to have something else. I just thought that was an interesting bit of research. So, the deep habit is grasping after what we don't have and that keeps us from gratitude. Mullah Nazardine is a a kind of Sufi saint and fool also. He's got some good humor to him. Well, at one point he had lost his wife's bracelet and he's panicking and he says, God, help me. If you help me find this, I'll do anything, I'll donate half my week's salary. Then he sees the bracelet behind a cushion. Never mind, God. I've already found it. You know, it's that kind of thing. It's holding on tight. So, more than

about research. There's really interesting research showing the relationship between the vagal nerve, the longest coiling of nerves in our body and how it's related to our pro-social behavior and experience. And when it gets activated, we're more inclined of oxytocin and warm feelings and gratitude and open-heartedness. Well, research shows that after a certain amount of wealth, it cuts off activity to our vagal nerve. In other words, more wealth, more seeking after money makes us less pro-social. It's we get more individual and less we. People that are poorer actually are more generous. How many of you would have thought that? People that are poorer are more generous. So it's something we know about, we can kind of feel. There's

more community, there's more we, the richer, the more isolated in a vacuum. The wealthy people are not sitting on, you know, right nearer to the street, talking to each other, helping with each other's kids, loaning things. They're doing that. The wealthy are more in vacuums. So there's something in our society to look at that as more and more wealth gets concentrated, that wealth also does not get shared. Another block to gratitude is when there's a message that something's wrong and that there's even something wrong with feeling pleasure. Butch Hancock remembers life in his small town. He says this, life there taught me two things. One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell and the other is that sex is the most awful

filthy thing on earth, and you should save it for someone you love. That shuts down joy and gratitude. So, a story, this is a story about James Whistler. In the early 1850s, the American painter James Whistler, spent a brief and academically unsuccessful period of time at West Point. Okay? This is the U.S. Military Academy. Story goes, who is assigned to draw a bridge. So he a very romantic stone bridge. It's complete with grassy banks and these two small children fishing from it. And then his instructor says, get those children off that bridge. This is an engineering exercise. So Whistler got the kids off the bridge. You drew them fishing from the bank of the river and resubmitted the drawing. The angry instructor yells, I told you

to remove those children, get them completely out of the picture. The creative urge was so strong and Whistler, his next version had the children completely out of the picture. Indeed, they were buried under two small tombstones on the riverbank. He didn't make it through West Point. But I share this and the takeaway is that gratitude is an essential part of living. It's an essential part of living and when it's removed we don't feel fully alive. And so there's all this amazing research now on what it does for us when we consciously cultivate gratitude. And the research on depression is some of the best, that people with really strong depression doing just a simple exercise of writing, I think,

three things I'm grateful for a day and sending it to somebody. Very clinically, um, demonstrable relief. Interesting. The body, the immune system seems to improve and gratitude correlated with the parts of the brain that have to do with every other positive emotion of happiness and contentedness and joy. So there's a reward circuitry that evolution built into us that gratitude really is valuable and you see it in all sorts of spiritual writings too of course. This is one of my favorite. and this is Alice Walker. Listen,

God love everything you love and a mess of stuff you don't, but more than anything else, God love admiration. And the response is, you're saying God vain, I ask? No, she says, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. I love that. that it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. We're designed to notice and take pleasure and appreciate. This weekend, I was up in New York and on the way back I visited one of the beings I consider one of my dearest friends, Dan Gottlieb. And Dan's a psychologist and he was for many years a very popular radio host in Philadelphia.

And for the last 30 years he's been paraplegic. He was in a really bad accident and so visiting him and honestly the most clear and remarkable thing is anything that you talk about with him, he's just filled with a sense of Appreciation, appreciating me for being there but appreciating the tree gets to see out of his study and a picture on his wall and his partner who's there and his work and from what I gather, anyone he's with he just appreciates. And he talks about his life and the loss and how hard things are but it's with this big frame of oh my gosh, it put me on the fast track of loving and letting in love.

So, I'll just share with you what happened right after the accident. So there he is and he's in the ICU and it was near fatal, paralyzed from the chest down and he didn't want to live. So a nurse, one of the nurses came in, night nurse and she knew he was a psychologist and she just started talking about the pain in her life and she was suicide. and she tells them, you know, tells them all about it and he says, I felt her inside me because I knew how it was. There was a lot of love and presence there. She left after a good stretch and she felt better and I think it was the next day she told them that she really,

something opened in her, she really felt better. And after she left the room he closed his eyes and said to himself, I can live. I can live if I know I can have. I can have. If I know I can help, I can live. And he just felt this gratitude for being able to be in relationship. Like if I can be in loving relationship, I can live. Gratitude saves us. It's part of, as an animal, our pro-social capacity. You know, primate show gratitude, the monkeys show gratitude through grooming. They do each other favors and show appreciation through grooming. It deepens our bonds. It's part of sacred relatedness. So we're going to spend the rest of our time, do a little time check, on how to cultivate gratitude. And in the Buddhist tradition, it's part of

the whole domain of meditations that have to do with gladdening the mind. So that There are meditations that have to do with direct presence. Okay, how do we be here and be in this very moment? And then there's meditations that recognize we've got a negativity bias. We tend rather than appreciate to be dashing through the day like a maniac, how do we gladden our mind? How do we open up that capacity for appreciating? So there are a number of different ways.

One of the most basic is that when you sit down to meditate or in some way get quiet to intentionally reflect on where the goodness is in your life. Sounds straightforward just to remember the good. There's a second part to it though, which is, let's say you remember, okay, I really love my child or I really, you know, love being in nature or what you know, I really, you know, or whatever it is, when you remember it, you have to really let yourself feel the gratitude and then stay with that feeling. Why? Our minds remember, our implicit memory takes in stuff that's difficult and negative and remembers it for a really long time. But the positive

feelings aren't as sticky. So in order to remember gratitude, have it become a trait, something that's really a part of us, when you feel grateful, stay with the feeling, 15 to 30 seconds. And this is real, neuroscience is showing this now. Stay with it. My friend Rick Hansen calls it installing the trait. Stay with it. So, by way of example, last week I had a very long list of to-dos and I was going out from

my early morning walk and aware that. that I was really grumpy in anticipating having to get back and what I had on the list. And so I decided, okay, it's time to do my, do a gratitude practice. So I was walking along and I just mechanically just started saying, okay, I'm grateful for this, I'm grateful for that. And at first it was mechanical and it wasn't sinking in but it started entertaining me a little because I was just doing something that was, you know, I was just kind of talking to myself And then my puppy, Katie, was running in front of me.

And so I'm walking along and said, and I kind of yelled out, Katie, I'm grateful for you. And she stopped, she turned around, she ran back to me and she put those fervent eyes and her tail wagging looking at me and I said, I really am grateful for you. Oh, I am grateful, you know. And then I started feeling it and then I'm grateful for this beautiful tree right here. and then I got to the river and I'm grateful for the sound of the geese. There were seagulls and geese at the same time at two different levels of sound that were kind of...

So I got really grateful, but I kept installing, I kept feeling it and letting it be there until I didn't have to do anything more. It was, I was reconnected. So that's one approach, is to very intentionally remember and you can remember it You can have a gratitude buddy that's a lot of people find helpful and just send an email at the end of each day. You don't have to write anything else and you don't have to respond to your buddy with three things you're grateful for.

It's powerful. Even just a little bit of remembering can shift us and if you take the time to install it it's really beautiful. The second way to develop the trait of gratitude and I'm differentiating between the state which arises now and then and a more ongoing capacity for appreciation is that whenever you're moving through your day and you have a spontaneous experience of something's pleasant, something you're appreciating, some bit of beauty, something that brings up a bit of awe or wonder, our, you know, good humor, our care,

just to pause and go, oh, this, grateful for this. So you get in the habit of pausing and savoring. Okay? So that's the second way and again you have to install it to make it really work. The third thing I want to mention is to say it out loud when you're grateful. You know how Meister Eckhart put it, that the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it will be enough? Say what you appreciate out loud. Write it, say it, because the expressing brings it through your body and really creates it more full experience. Maurice Sendak tells a story about a little boy who sent him a charming card.

with a little drawing and he said he loved it. He answers all his children's, or he did, he's not alive but he answered all his children's letters so he answered this one he said this one I lingered over I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a wild thing on it I wrote Dear Jim I loved your card when I got the letter back from his mother and she said Jim loved your card so much he ate it to me that was one of the highest compliments I'd ever received, he didn't care that it was an original Moris Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it. So to express your gratitude. One of the things that, um, one of the tricks that some people find in terms of when spontaneously you have an experience and you want to

really let it sink in and you want to experience it fully is sometimes called, using the five or ten breaths that you actually stop and breathe with the experience, five breaths or if you have the time, ten breaths. So you notice anything that brings you pleasure or sweetness. And just if you take those breaths, if you let the 15 to 30 seconds happen with appreciation, it creates new neuropathways. So finally, what about if you're just an bad mood, like really a bad mood, or it's really a hard time or you really feel sick and you just don't feel grateful. It's like the body chemistry of what your feelings different than the body chemistry of gratitude, then what?

And I've been in many guided meditations where I'll have a teacher tell me to bring to mind something I feel grateful for when I'm just not in the mood and I know how much I kind of resent it. So, I want to say that you don't have to ever force gratitude. I mentioned there's two kind of ways of practicing and one is that pure presence with what's here and then you can bring compassion to it and the other is to gladden the mind. If you're in a really bad mood, just bring presence to it, a kind presence. And it's a bit of a trick because if you're really present with what's going on with the

the fear or the hurt or the sorrow. If you're really present, what happens is that presence unfolds itself and you start feeling a sense of appreciation for having become intimate with what's real. Because in that intimacy there's actually more space and more ease. And so the very pathway of presence will connect you with the gratitude of the heart. By way, way of example, Rachel Naomi Remen, who's one of my favorite kind of mentions wise women, teachers. If you haven't read her, kitchen table wisdom is wonderful. She tells a story in that book of a young man who was an avid athlete and popular and so on and he got diagnosed with cancer and to save his life, the doctors had to remove his leg. So,

So, he woke up from surgery a different person. He went from being this really good nature guy to being really angry and resentful and bitter, thought his life was over, fell into a depression. So that's when Rachel Remen started meeting with him. And she worked with him for quite a while, bringing the kind of things we're talking about, like really bringing presence and compassion and she had him draw some pictures and at one point she asked him to draw a picture of his body. So he drew, he angrily scribbled a vase with a large crack in it and he teared the paper as he finished the drawing. But he continued singer and they continued to work and they continued again, you know, being

with that presence and being real with it and he started getting interested in other people who were also living with amputation, other kids. So he started actually as he came out of his anger at her recommendation, volunteering. and visiting young amputees like himself. And so one day he meets a 21-year-old woman recovering from a double mastectomy because of a horrible history of breast cancer, and she'd barely look up from her hospital bed. And after several attempts to cheer her up and so on,

he looked down his leg and he took off his pathetic device, dramatically dropped it, and started hopping around until finally he heard the woman start laughing. And she looked up and said, if you can dance, maybe I can sing. Turns out, just because it's a fun ending to a story, years later they did get married. During his last meeting with Rachel, he was beaming and he's in good place. And she pulls out the drawing of the crack vase that Jeff had drawn nearly two years earlier and he studied

and he said, you know, it's not really done. And he took a yellow yellow, highlighter from Dr. Raymond's desk and drew a vibrant yellow line extending out of the crack and the vase. And he said to her, this is where the light comes from. This is where the light comes from. The cracks, the fissures, the imperfections, the hard knocks, the hard truths. So we're talking about a different level of being able to appreciate our lives, that we appreciate the pleasures, we appreciate the look in the fall of the silhouette of the trees against the sky and the sounds of birds and the gleam in a child's eye. And we also appreciate that wherever we are in our life, that's the entry place.

Wherever we are, no matter how difficult, if we can bring our mindfulness and our kindness to that place, there is a very much. something that wakes up, we discover a deeper kind of compassion and wisdom and there's appreciation for that. Poem by Raymond Carver, No other word will do for that's what it was. Gravy. Gravy. These past 10 years, alive, sober, working, loving and being loved by a good woman. 11 years ago, he was told that he had six months to live at the rate he was going. and he was going nowhere but down

so he changed his ways somehow he quit drinking and the rest after that it was all gravy every minute of it up to an including when he was told about well some things that were breaking down and building up

inside his head don't weep for me he said to his friends I'm a lucky man I've had ten years longer than I are anyone expected pure gravy and don't forget it. So we're going to practice a little bit, have a practice in mind tonight that is sweet

that I think you'll enjoy and invite you to just adjust however you're sitting so you can practice in this way. And we're actually going to have, it's a little bit unusual what we're going to do as part of, this is kind of a few parts of a meditation. are going to dim magically as I say that you're going to notice and not too long from now, all the lights in here are going to dim, dim, dim, dim, dim, dim, dim, dim, dim, dim. It wasn't too magical, but they will dim and not to see, including the lights that are beaming on me are going to dim, dim, dim, dim, please.

Please. We actually need a little more light in the hall because we're going to have some mics come around at one point. So, that's thank you. But we'll need a little more light in the hall because it's a little bit dark. And then we're going to do an inner meditation and then I'm going to invite you, we'll just bring the mics to whoever's in the mood to just say a word or sentence about what you're grateful for. So we begin by closing our eyes and take a few moments to bring your attention fully into your body and And it helps to relax your shoulders, to soften a little. Let your hands be soft, loosening the belly and letting this next breath be received in a

softening belly, this breath. And now this one and again. Feeling the aliveness in your body, softening the face, let the eyes smile a little, the brow be smooth and a slight smile at your mouth. and feeling the movement of the breath of the heart, aware of the state of your heart right now. I'd like to invite you to begin to scan your life and become aware of what you're grateful for.

I'll do this in a simple way just to fill in the blank I am grateful for and then just let whatever arises come and when you have something pause with it. And then the next I am grateful for. And you might find it interesting to practice this whispering. And don't worry that other people are whispering, they're not going to be listening to you, they're contemplating their own gratitude.

But we can just be together here in Bethesda on these sacred grounds and all the sacred grounds around this planet wherever you are, sensing what you're grateful for and whispering it out loud. Please begin. The people, the experiences, the goodness in your life I am grateful for, feeling the sincerity and the tenderness in your heart. I am grateful for. And now bring to mind one thing that you've touched on.

that has a lot of light to it, a lot of aliveness, something you're grateful for. And sense what about it makes you so grateful, what is it that really brings alive the gratitude? And let yourself feel that gratitude, feel the warmth and brightness of it, just bringing your full attention to it, let it fill your body. You might invite it to be as big as it wants to be. The feeling of love or appreciation or gratitude. Include all your senses, whatever you might be seeing and hearing that goes along with it. Now your body is experiencing it touch, temperature, energy, movement.

Just let it fill you. Intend that the experience sink into yourselves the way light fills the room, or water soaks into a sponge, sense that you're letting in the felt experience, surrendering to it. Grateful, grateful, grateful. The invitation now is that we'll hear from maybe eight, ten people if you're interested in sharing, just naming out loud what you're grateful for. So we can kind of hear like a poem or a mandala in the room, just the different currents

of gratitude. So, if you're interested in just speaking what you're grateful for, raise your hand, there'll be a few mics around. And we're going to have just a very soft background of music as we're doing this. And when you do speak, bring the mic right to your mouth so that the mic's right against your chin so we can hear it. So again, just a sentence, I am grateful for. I am grateful. You hear me? Ah, yes.

I'm grateful that I have a choir that I can sing with and that we all smile at each other as we sing. It's a small jazz choir, and we appreciate the music that we're able to create together. I am grateful to have had wonderful grandparents. A reminder to keep it right. at your chin and speak loudly in. Okay. I am grateful to be living in an area that is packed with racial diversity. Hmm. Thank you. Raise your hand high so our mic people can see you.

I am grateful for an old friend who calls me up late at night from California and tells me her troubles. I am grateful for my parents and my family for supporting me financially and emotionally through college. I'm grateful to be here, but I'm also very grateful for the peace and love that restored in my family just in time for the holidays. Again, really loud, yeah. I'm grateful for having a very loving and successful son and daughter happily married and one granddaughter. Father. Namaste. Thank you.