November is the well-recognized month of gratitude – at least for Americans – culminating in the feast of feasts – Thanksgiving.  The event itself can all too often fly by in a whirl of pies, hugs, and family traditions of relating, disagreeing, gossiping, and bonding.

December is a month filled with multiple celebrations from work places to yoga studios to friends and family. It is further filled with many more occasions that we stop and think of people we care about in our efforts to provide them with a gift befitting our intimacy and connection. Creating an environment even more, perhaps, befitting of a cultivation of gratitude.

Amazement Gratitude

Standing in the middle of a New York forest in fall, eyes soaking in, like sponges, the array of reds, oranges and sunlight on the leaves. Soft palette releasing, beauty without the dialogue “This is so beautiful.”

Walking to Prospect Park on a summer day. My body light, fluid, completely filled with awareness. Every cell connected. Feeling like handstand, a cartwheel, a long arching reach of my arm, or a hug from a friend all imminently possible and astounding.

At the end of one of those days, opening the door to a partner who miraculously greets you with exactly with what you need to arrive home.

Moments of amazement – however they occur for you – are moments that are precursors to gratitude. Throughout this month (year, life) as you attend gatherings and think of special people, cultivate amazement. There is always something there to be amazed by. Sometimes it just requires the intention to stop and notice, and allow gratitude to well up from there.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

– e.e. cummings