Gratitude

It begins with an awareness of breath. My breath, my wife’s breath, rain falling lightly in the fog outside the bedroom window. My son stirs, clambers down from his loft and crawls into our bed. Family, the three of us half-awake, half-asleep, still this early morning.

Memories of Thanksgivings past dance through the fog Douglass Fir tree tops emerge. Family gathering in Ohio. Friends coming down from Tacoma. Friends full, already stuffed in Tokyo. Ah, the gift of Chex mix and bright green moss on the trees.

Grace, our turkey, begins her slow transformation into dinner. Grace, the words and the intent behind the words uttered before our feast, our communion and celebration of Abundance. So much to be thankful for. So much.

My son’s blonde mane appears over his now sleeping mother, followed by, simply, the most beautiful smile. Time to wake and be, fully, part of a day dedicated to Gratitude.

Itadakimasu. We humbly and wholly accept and receive this gift of life, family & community, bountiful harvests, opportunity & prosperity, and the means to give these gifts of Abundance to others. Om Shanti Om. Amen.

Tags: abundance, grace, Gratitude

Consuming Thoughts: S

S means Savings Through Which We All Win. John Lydon; Anger is an energy! Anger is an energy! So is money. It is the water cycling through our economic ecosystems, the electric currency powering the prosperity of our communities. Life is a big ‘ol square dance of energy exchange.

Money is kind of funny because it has value only because we agree that it does. It’s not food, shelter, clothing and certainly not sex. It is a means to an end. What end? In the “West” we tend to focus on personal prosperity. In the “East” there is still often a strong element of familial piety that creates large amounts of savings and distribution within large, extended families. Both models work and both can become highly dysfunctional. Their relative levels of success depend on where we stand in terms of scarcity and abundance.

Scarcity leads to contraction, hoarding, and win-lose competition for what are perceived as limited resources. Abundance demands we expand our sense of “me” to “we” and our sense of family to include community. In a scarcity driven world we save money out of fear and distrust. With an abundance mindset we save money because of its potential to benefit us and the community that sustains us. Scarcity leads us to the false choice of “either/or.” Abundance challenges us to be big enough to hold “both/and.”

To spend money we have to save money. Saving is good. It builds up a reservoir of energy. What we need to consider is, “What are we saving it for?” How can those savings be best used to sustain us and that which sustains us?

Another key consideration is value. Some of us are highly skilled at accumulating money but are terrible musicians and would soon whither in the extremes of a 1st grade classroom. Currently schools throughout the US are significantly underfunded yet scarcity minded, yet professional sports salaries continue to climb. Koyaanisqatsi, koyaanisqatsi.

Collectively we have the talent, resources and means to create communities of abundance. Our biggest obstacle? Our selves. What are we saving it for? What are we waiting for? What can we create-together?

Tags: abundance, bonuses, John Lydon, koyaanisqatsi, savings, scarcity

Consuming Thoughts: R

R is for (Re) That Begins the Begin. Michael Stipe: Let’s begin again. Begin the begin. Yes, REM again. It is slowly dawning (at least publicly) on key economic muckety mucks that a straight line growth model for business and the economy driven by relentless consumer spending may not be the direction we want to continue heading in. From No more reliance on consumer spending: Volcker on the Reuters site:

Consumer spending accounted for 70 percent of the U.S. economy before last year’s economic meltdown, a level that Volcker said was sustained only by “the magic of financial engineering.”

“We cannot rebuild the economy to the tune of 70 percent consumption or housing booms. It will just break down again,” Volcker said.

“We cannot have so much consumption.”

Begin the Begin. Volcker’s position is that we have to shift our paradigm from one of endless production and consumption of stuff to one of innovation and creation of value through projects like infrastructure development, “green” technology, energy efficiency and (re)trofitting of existing buildings. For consumers that means a strategic (re)direction of our spending. Instead of accumulating stuff how can we (re)orient our spending to create value?

Can we (re)invest in community?

Can we (re)trofit our homes?

Can we (re)duce our mindless buying?

Can we (re)place waste generating habits with value generating ones?

Can we (re)cycle the waste we do produce and the stuff that we do buy?

Can we (re)pair things instead of throwing them away?

Can we (re)use things and the things in things?

Can we (re)fuse that which is wasteful, poorly designed and, essentially, junk?

Can we (re)direct our spending on things, businesses and services that strengthen the Value Web?

You get the idea. Feel free to add to the (re) list and, please, begin the begin.

Tags: Begin the Begin, consumer spending, energy efficiency, green technology, Michael Stipe, Paul Volcker, recycle, reduce, REM, repair, retrofitting. reduce, reuse, Reuters

Consuming Thoughts: Q

Q is For Quiet When the Noise Relents. Michael Stipe: Answer me a question I can’t itemize, I can’t think clear, you look to me reason, it’s not there…Begin the begin. Competing desires, a hundred brands of breakfast cereal, 1000 channels of TV, millions of blogs, websites, billions of people and a gnawing feeling that most of this has little meaning. Noise. We are surrounded by noise and most of that noise is designed to encourage us to shop, spend, consume over and over again. We rarely get or give our selves the gift of being alone, silent, quiet, still. Gretel Ehrlich wrote The Solace of Open Spaces a wonderful meditation on living in the vast silence that surrounds and holds this noise. In “The Body and the Earth” Wendell Berry refers to our moments of communion with quiet as “atonement”-literally “at one-ment”. To achieve this “at-one-ment” is to practice fidelity to deeper commitments like marriage, family, friends & community and our relationship with place-our home. This is a fidelity that can “preserve the possibility of devotion against the distractions of novelty.” It is local, it is living in appreciation of the abundance brought forth from our commitments to our selves, the place we call home, and to each other.

Turn off the TV, gently return your iPhone to it’s charger. Go, sit down and draw and play with your children. Hug your husband or wife like you mean it and, then, find a place. Your place. Sit and be quiet. Begin the begin. At home. At one. Atone.

Tags: atonement, Begin the Begin, Gretel Ehrlich, iphone, Michael Stipe, The Body and the Earth, The Solace of Open Spaces, Wendell Berry

Consuming Thoughts P

P is for Patterns and Being Present. Roger Daltrey: Listening to you, I get the music, gazing at you, I get the heat, following you, I climb the mountain, I get excitement at your feet. In our excitement to buy, adorn and enhance our selves through commerce it would serve us well to be aware of two things. 1) Our selves: What patterns of consumption drive us to buy and what exactly are we buying? Those of us who do the shopping probably have some well-worn trails we traipse. As I say to my son: pay attention, you might just learn something. 2) Our context: What environmental patterns (designed and emergent) drive us to buy what? Michael Pollan’s intriguing treatise, The Botany of Desire on the control plants exert on our development as people and cultures is well worth a read. As is Biomimicry, a beautiful book by Janine Benyus.

Ms. Benyus also gives us this to ponder: life creates the conditions conducive to life. Spend some time with that one, folks. As a consumer, parent, business person, educator, human being are you creating conditions conducive to life? How do you know?

Tags: Biomimicry, Botany of Desire, Janine Benyus, Michael Pollan, Roger Daltrey