Good Morning Digital Neighbors at Rubin Report, Phetasy, Triggernometry, Tulsi and Padre's. Sure I have my pet names for all of us and our individual communities, it is part of my fun in joining these communities. Who doesn't love pondering the meaning of ADD Irregulars, Refugees, Phamily, Triggeratti, and Seekers? The names evoke something more to a group's identity and their cause for being. Individuals and ideas have brough us together in various intentional communities held together by the most fragile of mediums - the internet.

It is still such a strange medium - it gives us sense of personal contact without ever knowing the person or being able to assess the non-verbals that are part of the success communication. ZOOM and other visual mediums break down many of those barriers since the visual component is restored, but I suspect just a few use audio/visual mediums among all of the voyagers and voyeurs on the internet. Most still watch others without any sort of mutual engagement. It gave rise to the trolls, those "brave" souls hiding behind their screens and obscure names to mock, attack, or disrupt communities and conversations on the internet. In 33 years (the birth of AOL chosen as a random launching of proto-social media) many trolls have become public figures (or is that many public figures are also trolls🤔) and now make a name for themselves on Twitter or mediums of instant engagement.

I mention all of this because on this Friday morning I have immense gratitude for the internet in spite of all of is problems and challenges. There is so much garbage on the internet, there is so much that is actually toxic and mentally/emotionally harmful to individuals and yet there is so much good. I don't know if the good, the potential for improvement, the creative, constructive and artistic outweigh the empty, the distracted and demeaning elements of the internet, but I like to think there is enough good to make time spent voyaging on the inter-webs worthwhile. One has to be discerning.

The promise of the internet offers the opportunity to encounter so many like mind and similar experienced souls, sure it can become an echo chamber and too much mutual admiration but it can strengthen and expand those ideas and experiences. It also offers the opportunity to encounter many, many more souls with different experiences and ideas. Behind it all, if one can successfully deal with the trolls, the potential misunderstandings and over-reactions that reading can often evoke (doubly so on the internet) one can gain an great appreciation of shared humanity. And share humanity makes me appreciative to be alive. All of this is just a lead up to David's Whyte's thoughts on Gratitude.

GRATITUDE is not a passive response to something we have been given; gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event; it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege, that we are miraculously part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the colour blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

To see the full, miraculous essentiality of the colour blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully the beauty of a daughter’s face is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit inner lives beneath surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participant and witness all at once.

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort; this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.

Paying attention- LOVE IT. One of my most frequent reminders in my preaching. We get more out of life by paying attention and not simply existing. a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life. The gifted nature of life- hold on to that thought, the gifted nature of life makes all the difference in what we think about our story.

that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege - EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS PRIVILEGED - some more than others, but every single one of us. A personal philosophy built on the dialectic of privilege & victimology will lead to legions of unhappy and resentful souls, and not because they lack privilege, but because they lack the appreciation of the gift of living. To focus on what you lack will never help you discover what you possess and what is unique about you. to be a someone amongst all other someones - welcome to the club, Digital Neighbor. 😁

We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort; this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Amen.

A Hidden Connecticut Rustic Barn - Litchfield Hills