GRATEFUL FOR ONE THING

GRATEFUL FOR ONE THING (art by Hallelujah Truth)

ALL TIME. This TIME. Before this TIME. I am grateful for everything large and small, simple and complex, challenging and easeful. I AM GRATEFUL FOR MY TIME here on this planet.

Even though here in Atlanta, Georgia, spring is slow to emerge (morning temperatures are in the 40’s!), the oak tree hanging over our patio is dripping pollen on the route from our door out to the parking lot and world beyond. The long-eared hostas lining the path in light and dark greens streaked with yellow are unfurling, some more exuberantly than others. There is a light floral fragrance perfuming the brick walls and gate. I am reminded of the saying “Time waits for no one.” In this case, it is nature. Nature is not waiting for warming temperatures to do its thing!

Neither should I! However…

TIME

and NATURE

between

my outer world 

and my inner world,

I am experiencing a 

WALL…

LEAVING DREAMING. ALL TIME. This TIME. Before this TIME. I am grateful for everything large and small, simple and complex, challenging and easeful. I AM GRATEFUL FOR MY TIME here on this planet. The blue box that the figure on the right is immersed in represents my WALL. Hallelujah Truth (me) is on the bottom left. She is "dreaming" of the leaves unfurling - the growth beyond the gate. (art by Hallelujah Truth)

My art work posted here (four days in progress), shows my morning reflections on this topic beginning this past Sunday before I went to Dance Church at Decatur Ballet, where we community members move in whatever ways our bodies call us to move. This art work has continued to dance forward each morning in the wee hours before I begin crafting the language lessons I teach to international visitors at GT.

I let my artwork speak to me. I lean in and listen to the imageas as I make a line or color one of them. I lead with my subconscious, my morning waking mind, staying positive, knowing that there is wisdom in this kind of unedited conversation with myself – my inner world.

AT THE WALL

It is in these conversations that my “inner” world and my “outer” world meet at a WALL. For a year or longer, I have felt an inner yearning to learn a new language, walk through a new door, embrace another. However, I keep bumping into a WALL or WALLs.

ROAR

This morning, I am realizing that this boundary between the old and the unvisited or new is the “one” thing I might be grateful for. My WALL is an offering to the progression of my wholeness. There it is – a WALL signpost in my pilgrim’s journey. Hallelujah! 

Hallelujah for the poem “Start Here” by Steve Garnaas-Holmes that was offered to me by Nancy Pfaltzgraf on the online Monday dance chapel. It is through gratitude that our lives are illuminated with ease and grace. And we do not need to be grateful for everything. One small thing will do.

Start Here

Those mornings when you wake up burdened,
already thinking Oh why bother,
start here:

thank God for one thing.

One person whom you love will do,
though even a remarkable coincidence is acceptable.
You don't even need to go into peaches,
the color blue, or migratory birds,
or a child's laugh you heard the other day,
let alone the angelic speech of nerve synapses
or the inscrutable ballet of spiral galaxies,
or God's outlandish love for you. 

Just one thing to give thanks for.

Then resolve to live the day
in adequate gratitude for that one thing,

and begin. 

-Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Right now, as I stare TIME in the face and feel the WALL in my body and see it expressed in my image, I am GRATEFUL. Perhaps by being GRATEFUL for this one thing – this WALL -, I too am experiencing the grace of being that begins transformation.

My husband has filled his thermos with coffee, donned his jacket, and kissed me on the cheek before heading out the door and out into the yellow skies swirling with pollen. As I follow him today and go through the gates of the wall that surround our courtyard, I will dance and hum gratitude for the WALL.

That’s Coffee with Hallelujah! Are you making time for your creativity? What one small thing are you grateful for today? Will you join me in creating grace one step at a time from the mundane to the mysterious?

THE MYSTERY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Nancy Pfaltzgraf for this poem on gratitude by Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Deep gratitude to Cynthia Winton-Henry for creating the online Dance Chapel on Monday nights.