Talking to Michael Green, the executive director of Center for Envrionmental Health, about gratitude reminded me of when I was young and life hadn’t gotten complicated yet. I used to lay on the grass for hours and look up at the clouds. Did you ever do that? God, I loved the smell of the grass.  The clouds swirled and moved and changed, becoming new things, and I made up stories about them. Then the wind would blow,  the leaves would rustle, and the locusts would whine…it was Heaven on Earth.

I didn’t know it then, but, that was my first experience with Gratitude. I was fully present in every aspect the experience and it filled me with an inner peace. I breathed it in with joy.  I believe that  gratitude is absolutely the path to the Divine.

With the fullness of our lives, the little things go by without a thought.  Yet there are trillions of miracles happening within you every moment to be grateful for.  Do you think about it when your white blood cells rush to that paper cut and heroically fight off infection? Do you think about the hundreds of muscles that move in sync as you walk up a set of stairs?

There are many things to be grateful for.  In most cases, when I am struggling, I am forgetting to be grateful.  Gratitude is not just some singsongy thing to say, it is the actual base with which we propel ourselves forward.  We cannot move forward if we are not in gratitude for where we are in the moment, even if its the bad stuff.

Maya Angelou said to say thank you for all of it

Because without all of it we don’t advance. We don’t get to where we are in this moment. And right now, I’m back lookin’ at the clouds ~ wanna join me?