Noticing Gratefulness

I’ve had a bit extra external encouragement to notice this past week as I participated in both Michele GD’s annual Gratitude Week and Cythia Lee’s Nine Days of Noticing.

I love both the reminders and the knowledge that I’m participating with others in what I consider secretly sacred practices of paying attention. I’m of course thinking about Mary Oliver’s admonishment:

“Instructions for living a life.  Pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it.”

I couldn’t help but smile as well when astrologer/author Rob Brezsny posed the question on how we choose to see the world. “Is the world a dangerous, chaotic place with no inherent purpose, running on automatic like a malfunctioning machine and fundamentally inimical to your drive to find meaning? Or are you surrounded by helpers in a friendly, enchanted universe that gives you challenges in order to make you smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier?”

I think a lot about our lenses of perception and what we choose to notice – I find it endlessly fascinating.

Here’s a smattering of things I’ve noticed and am grateful for:

My Muses – inspiration and creative ideas have been flooding my brain this week and I’m busy capturing notes on paper before they vanish into the unrecoverable depths of my brain fissures. I live for these accelerated times when my creative mind feels like its sparking non-stop and filling the well that I’ll be able to draw from for quite some time. Thank you Muses!

I’m not sure exactly when I became enamored of abecedariums, but I can tell you my love is strong and deep. Perhaps it’s an inherent need to categorize and organize in a fun way – I really have no idea. But suddenly once again I’m inspired to create more of them. I always look forward to April and the month-long A-to-Z challenge to blog through the alphabet, but I’m hoping to get out a least a couple more before then. A shout out of thanks to alphabets, those who first created abecedariums, and all the fabulous ones that exist.

I often rue that I’m not a good photographer, while at the same time refusing to actually spend the time and energy necessary to improve my inherent lack of skill. But I’m trying to loosen my stance on this – giving myself both permission to take more photos and still allowing that they can be totally un-instagram worthy and I needn’t carry regret about any of it. I’ve had a friend challenge me to start posting on Instagram so she can see snippets of what’s capturing my interest in my long-distance life and I’m taking her up on the invitation.

This is something that delights me. I love the pattern of dots – I’m totally into circles at the moment. But it also shows a glimpse of my life as well.  As a flower essence practitioner, I always work personally with a line of essences for a year before I start incorporating them into my work with clients. I have little “stations” of bottles in various places of those I’m specifically working with, and this is one of them.

While I’m showing photos, here’s one of a card entitled “The Muse” which I purchased from Tara Books, an independent publishing house in India well-known for their silk-screened and handmade books. This particular card is an illustration from one of their books Black: An Artist’s Tribute. I have a number of Tara books and love them all, and I’ll be reviewing this one along with several others soon. So stay tuned.

I hope your Muse is a frequent visitor in your life and that there are many delightful things capturing your attention. There really is so much to be grateful for, and I love how we’re each attuned to different things. When we share them it’s like we’re exponentially growing our own capacity to witness. So I invite you to share something you’ve been noticing or something you’re grateful for. And if you’ve got an idea about what you’d like to see me create an abecedarium about I’d love to hear about it as well.