GRATITUDE

"thankful for relaxation, complication, hibernation, and irrational seclusion, confusion, all my impurity, and insecurity.
cause i know it's God just perfecting me. that's why today i take life as it comes." ..... India.Arie....Voyage to India

Every now and then situations arise that force us to slow down, contemplate, think and find our way back to God.

Today I needed to take the MotherShip to the shop for new tires. It's gotten dangerous ... slipping and sliding every time it rains, which lately seems to be at least three days a week. No traction whatsoever and you know a sister can't roll like that with two little people in the MotherShip. So I took my knitting project with me, my prologue and a book I'm reading about self editing for fiction writers. I packed up my portable CD player (yea, I'm behind the times....no MP3 but that's okay) and a few CDs and planned to go across the street to the IHOP for breakfast. After I handed over the keys I remembered the five CDs recently recovered from my jammed CD player and grabbed them too.


Now, let me just digress a minute. I have been without the CD player in my car for almost four months. Shortly after the Voyage to India CD was released, as I was zipping down the highway, the CD player jammed up and all I could hear was metal against plastic. I nearly had a heart attack right there on the road. Honestly. Trapped in that CD player was Jill Scott (1 &2), the new Maxwell, the new India Arie, Remy Shands and .... oh dear Lord .... Sade. I cried and cried. I told Spouse he had to go to Sears and buy every tool he could find to get my CDs out of there. I know I shouldn't have even thought it, but I considered slipping a butter knife through the slot with the hope of at the least, the very least, getting my new Voyage to India CD. No chance. So for four months I've been stuck with nothing but radio.

Until yesterday.

The MotherShip has a brand new CD player, thanks to the good fortune of an Extended Warranty. So you know a sister is thankful to the most High right about now. And get this .... all of my CDs were recovered!

Okay. So today, after handing over the keys to the repairman, I walk over to the IHOP and sit down to breakfast all by my good ol' lonesome. I'm listening to India Arie's 2nd track, The Little Things and then I skip down to Track 15, God is Real.

"the sweetest honey to the brightest flower,
the largest planet to the smallest atom
snowflakes and the bird kingdom
smaller than the eye can see
bigger than the mind can conceive..."


And for some reason, as the mind will often do, I got to thinking about Luther Vandross. Tears filled my eyes as I thought about the very fact that today I am alive. I am well. I am in good health. I have the good fortune of waking up, taking my vehicle in for servicing and eating a decent meal. I have the good fortune that I don't have to run at breakneck speed, risking my life, to get to someone's 9-5. I have the good fortune that I am not trapped behind the walls of a 2x4 cubicle .... not because I am infinitely wealthy but because I live within my means. I thought of Kid 1 and Kid 2 and I thought of Spouse who, despite all his quirks, is really a good man. He worries about me. He is always concerned about me. And though he isn't an artist, he understands that I am. He gives me my space and does everything he can do to support my goals. I thought about the few true friends I have and I saw them as a full glass. Not a glass half empty or even half full....but Full. I thought of my new friend Nakachi and how nice it was to check my email last night and see that she had sent me a note and had been thinking of me ..... I thought of another new person I met recently.... a woman in her sixties named Andrea, who has raised her children and is now at the stage of traveling and doing all the solitary stuff she's wanted to do for years --- pottery, writing, etc. She reminds me that time will pass too quickly; she encourages me to enjoy my children (despite all the busyness) because they are only with me for a season. I thought of the tomatoes that I planted yesterday, in a big old cedar bucket....the green peppers....the oregano and sweet basil....all in pots. I thought of how delightful it will be to watch them all go from seeds to full fledge vegetables and tasty herbs.

As I sat there thinking about all of these things, I thought of Luther. I thought of all the money he has and all of the places he's been and the people he knows. I thought of how exquisite his home must be and all of the snapshots we've seen over the years in Ebony. The personal theater, the kitchen that makes mine look like a matchbox. I thought of the sell out crowds he's sung to, the personal stylists, make up artists, wardrobe people.... and I thought of how none of it, not one bit of it matters now. I thought of him in his hospital room, probably wearing only a standard issue hospital gown, connected to hard plastic wires with intravenous lines tangled like spaghetti, clinging to life by the grace of God and potent drugs to keep him pain free. I thought of all the years he's battled with his weight, struggling up and down and back up again. Struggling to protect his heart and his brain from what inevitably happened....a massive stroke. Struggling to protect his ego and integrity from what people have always speculated upon .... is he or isn't he gay? .... and how none of it, not one bit of it matters now.

I hope that Luther's spirit is somewhere, undergoing transition to rise from here to a better place. I wish him, as Nakachi would say, peace and elevation. I hope that his spirit has had some peace over the years it's been on this planet, in this Universe. Because we know that though we may see a person smiling on the outside, it sho' don't mean they're smiling on the inside.

Today, I am practicing simple gratitude for all that I have and all that I don't. Whatever I don't have is not a sign of lack, but merely a sign that it isn't for me to have right now. It doesn't mean I'll never have whatever it is. It simply means that I don't have it now, for reasons that only the Divine One knows. It means that it's one less thing for me to concern myself about and it means that whatever it is that I want, all I need to do is sprinkle it with a positive affirmation or two, fertilize it with only good thoughts and wait for it to materialize. And if whatever it is never materializes then it just means that it wasn't in the Divine Plan, which in all actuality is the only Plan that really matters.


I'm not letting this rain spoil my mood, rather I'm grateful for it, allowing it to sprinkle down on my spongy twists.....so grateful that it is here and that it will feed all the vegetation around me, which will in turn produce more oxygen for me to breathe. I am thankful for my lungs that are not marred with tar and carcinogens ... but are healthy and able to bring in that oxygen which feeds my brain and enables me to write. I am thankful that I have my two good eyes and my fingers to pluck away at this keyboard ... that I am not waiting on a nurse to come and turn me or feed me or clean the stool from underneath my behind that has soaked my sheets. Today, I'm not focusing on terror alerts that I can't do anything about. I'm not focusing on SARS that I can't do anything about. I'm not focusing on the things I can't afford. I'm not even focusing on the book deal that I want so badly I can taste it in my mouth. I'm focusing on the life I've been given simply through Grace.

Thank you, thank you, thank you God.

Thank you for today.

I encourage you to do the same. To call on the name of God, whatever you perceive him or her to be. Just for today, be thankful that you are alive.

Be well. Be love(d).
ANGEL