This morning’s Deepak Chopra meditation was about gratitude.  About the prayer that is simply, “thank you.”  As I sat with that feeling, I was overwhelmed.  There is too much, I thought, too much to appreciate, to be grateful for.  Where do I begin?  With just the touch or air on my skin?  With the raving wind outside?  With the field of possibility this day holds?

For the past seven months, since my daughter ran away, I have not felt the gratitude, but the curse of loss and sorrow.  In the midst of that, I have felt moments of appreciation glimmering through a penetrating darkness, but my heart was dark, wounded.  My attention felt magnetized not to what was present, but to the absence.

Today though, I felt flooded with light.  I am not a religious person, but the experience was ecstatic, like Paul on the road to Damascus.  What I mean is that I felt an inner conversion to lightness, to gratitude, to appreciation.  As if all of the work I have been doing to make my way through my grief and rage had suddenly taken hold.  As if “thank you” had illuminated my personal yellow brick road.

Looking up from my meditation i saw the branches of the birch trees outside tickling the waning moon.  The light on the white trunks was like a call to action.  So for me, today, thank you.  Thank you.  thank  you.