When I think of gratitude, I think of my mother’s sadness. A prayer I made one night for her wellness. I think of the Earth and picking mint. When I think of exchange, I think of this tending.
I think of a coin between the teeth of a shaman, understanding, forgiveness and gratitude.
I think of all the ways we care for one another and ask permission. Can I? Will you?
And I wonder how it all got so corrupt.
I am not worth a penny, because a penny slips between my fingers just like my life does, like my mother’s sadness, like all the ways I have felt supported, and all the ways I have not. Like the day we danced in my living room, this way I never saw you before.
All those years lost, I don’t know if there is a dime out their shinny enough to pay for the damage done. But I am not alone, time lost in every soul I speak to. Time lost and all the ways we don’t listen to one another.
When I walk in the woods I know there is only sometimes a flower petal left in place of a flower taken to smell.
All these synchronicities, I don’t control, I am witness to, I am in a humble way at the mercy of, my head aches thinking about how I cannot get through to you without admitting there is something wrong with my gratitude. Is it the universe, is it you?
Can I give you something for whats been taken?
I don’t have the credits to be orientated, for reasons designed by man, while god lays with me and I chant prayers to end the pain with an exchange of a different kind, a blank page, creatively engaged with a future unwritten.
And my hope in it all being OK is endless. I hold it for you like a coin, like rent paid.
I hold it for us, that this has never truly been the only way to love. That there is something quite wrong with how we treat each other. That my trust is a dollar bill appreciated for it’s worth, but love? Care, communion, community.
When I am in my garden I know how much it matters, to ask. To check for signs of life, of balance, for signs of permission – to honor a mutual thriving. Never forgetting the way we do not live alone, or outside the things that create our lives. The air for our lungs. A friends smile at lunch.
How I could pick a tomato for you one sunny day, and you could let the juices drip down, laughing, and you would owe me nothing.
And I could sleep held and hopeful.
I could sleep held and hopeful that it was all enough to earn my life with you. To earn my worth.
But the penny slips, while we all scramble to make a miracle into something less, to mine the mines for it – our worthiness. And each resource a symbolic nod from the universe, that we have it, that we’ve ‘won’ it – that we’ve stolen it – a gratefulness forgotten. The kind of care for our interconnectedness pressed down into the irrationality of the past.
And I thank the water, I thank the water and do my dishes, I’m reminded I am one of the lucky ones while the earth burns, it’s all I can think of doing that feels like tending to the thing that was neglected which brought us here.
I am not running. I am here, and the realm of gods is erased like a blank page, a new consciousness arises in the heart again while I lay muttering mantras to clear the path for another future, if there is still time for one.
My hope is endless and infinite, whether I hear you or not, I am a mute witness and I hold this gratefulness for the exchange I see no coin for, in the smile in your eyes, in the courage you’ve despised all this time – the courage you awaken each and every time we are together.