Live It Up
January 24, 2020

     In an important sense, we cannot ever be "worthy" of our blessings.  Blessings are specific expressions or instances of grace, and grace, by definition, cannot be earned.  Grace precedes and gives rise to our lives – indeed, constitutes a fundamental precondition of our lives.  It is the soil from which we grow.  So if you're thinking you have to get your shit together before you will receive blessings, you have it exactly backwards.  The fact of your existence – and the universal conspiracy that gave rise to it, before you ever lifted a finger – is the one inestimable blessing out of which all others unfold.

     But once you see this – and seeing is a function of the practice of humble thanksgiving – then you can, in another sense, seek to be worthy of your blessings.  We commonly say that someone is or is not "living up" to her or his potential.  So we intuitively understand that people have a sort of maximum capacity for expressing their gifts in the world.  And even if we can‛t say with precision what that capacity is, in either scope or substance, we nonetheless sense when a person is falling far short of it, when we ourselves are falling far short of it.  We know when we‛re not living up to our blessings or leaning into our potential.

     So you don't have a clue what your blessings are?  You don't know what gifts you're bearing within you?  You don‛t have any inkling of your potential? 

      Is your heart beating?  Give thanks.  That‛s where you start.  Then give thanks for the breath you just took.  And then give thanks for whatever else in your body seems to be working – even if much of it is not.  Then move out from there.  Do you have clothes on?  Give thanks.  Do you have some kind of roof over your head?  Give thanks.  Will you have access to food and water today?  Give thanks.

     Give thanks for anything and everything that enables you to make your next move, even if that move is simply to get out of bed to go to the bathroom – or to call for someone to help you.  Ignore the obstacles for now and only take stock of your resources, no matter how seemingly insignificant.  Pile them up.  And keep piling them on.  You can only use what you see, and you can only see what you name.  So give thanks and see where it takes you.