Goodbye Graces

I've finally done it. I've accomplished a feat I thought would never happen: I finally finished One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.

Wait, what? you ask. You've been talking up this book for months now and you haven't even read it all the way through?

Guilty as charged. 

When I find a book I love, that speaks my soul language, I can't rush it. Ann's the kind of writer that keeps me occupied with one paragraph, one line even, for days, weeks. 

Her obsession with eucharisteo, with giving thanks, for choosing to see life as gift, will--I hope--keep me occupied for a lifetime. 

Ann writes, "the only thing to rip out the tape echoing of self-rejection is the song of His serenade. One thousand gifts tuned me to the beat."

I've felt it too. One Thousand Gifts has tuned me to the beat. The rhythm of love. The heartbeat of joy. The grace of gratitude. 

It's the antidote to my burnout at work, my dissatisfaction with my body, my stress and busyness and discontent. Even the act of giving thanks is a gift. 

I ended the book, tummy down on a picnic blanket overlooking a duck pond on a reading lunch date I pulled from my "Bucket bucket" which was inspired by Ann's commitment to counting gifts. 

These last two months before I move to Guatemala, leave my job, I am choosing to be present. Out of a bucket of uncertain tasks, I daily embark on challenges that promise certain joy. 

Here's my week of joy in pictures: 

Take a reading lunch break with Becky to the pond-- where I finished One Thousand Gifts.

Write notes to everyone (in the office that is).

Have a picnic on the grass.

Dress like a coworker day.

I found joy in quiet moments, in spending time with ducks--who doesn't love ducks?--, in slack lining and bocce ball tossing with coworkers, in Bananagrams and note writing. I end this week filled. And for that I am thankful. 

Where did you find joy this week?

What to Expect When You're Expecting

My "Bucket Bucket"

--Expecting to leave a job, that is.

As of today, Friday May 4th, I have 40 days left at my job. Yes, I've started a countdown, but not in a I-can't-wait-to-get-out-of-here kind of way. Like Ann Voskamp's counting of gifts, I want to count my remaining days as an exercise in giving thanks. In choosing, deciding to see the gifts that await me. To open my palms to receive the graces. To open my eyes to capture joy.

As I anticipate my last 40 days at Plant With Purpose, I am expecting joy.

I was wary to blog about this because I've blocked enough wedding countdown updates on my own Facebook newsfeed to know that most people don't really want to read about my incremental journey toward freelancing bliss. However, I have a hunch that most people who read this blog would be interested to hear how choosing to see these days as opportunities for adventures instead of the final hours to trudge through is altering my attitude, multiplying my joy, and allowing me to be present in the midst of transition. Allowing me to see God where I am, enabling me to see God in where I've been, and preparing me to see God where I am going.

No, we didn't actually bring a keg back to the office.

To do this I've created a work Bucket List--a compilation of challenges and adventures I want to complete by my final day. My coworkers and I have jotted down suggestions on neon sticky notes and placed them in my newly coined "Bucket bucket" that sits on my desk.  At the end of every workday, I will pull out a challenge for the following day.

Thus far I've completed two challenges. On Wednesday, two of my coworkers and I trekked to the Karl Strauss brewery across the railroad tracks from our office--a lunchtime adventure we've been talking about for some months, but had never fulfilled. It turns out the brewery doesn't have a tasting room, but we had a delightful dilly-dally nonetheless. We stretched our legs, traversed the wildflowers, and got to know our office neighborhood a little better. We ended up back at our business park deli to enjoy Coke Zeros, baklava, and a chummy time with our Executive Director.

Yesterday my challenge was to go a day without making any cynical comments.

It was a quiet day.

Drinking Coke Zero instead of a Karl Stauss-- better for our waistlines and our productivity.

Today's challenge is to brainstorm the content for our quarterly newsletter. Now this may not sound like fun to most, but I absolutely LOVE coming up with creative content, and it's my last chance to impose my tree-mendous puns on our newsletter readers while I'm still the official Editor-In-Chief. Let the punning begin!

For the next 40 days I'll be sharing a bit about my bucket list at the end of each blog post--this way, if you so choose, you can ignore it and stick to the regularly scheduled bloggy ramblings.

I expect the next 40 days will fly by entirely too fast, will be filled with both sadness at leaving and impatience at staying, yet most of all, I am choosing to expect joy.

T.S. Wednesday: The Meaning of Life

“Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”   T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, Four Quartets

Transitions are tough for me; I think they’re tough for everyone. I’ve spent the last months, nay year, deciding whether I should stay at my job, stay in the country. I’ve oscillated between living in the future, what could be, and the past, what has been and what could have been. Both the memories and the dreams sear vividly across my eyelids as I sleep to the world in front of me, the day before me, the moment that flits by.

My bathroom wall used to don a Lululemon poster that contained—along with myriad other inspirational quotes and phrases—the saying, “Living in the moment could be the meaning of life.”

Before I read Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts and before I immersed myself in Eliot, I would have chalked the phrase up to pop psychology and over-priced yoga pants propaganda. Not now.

As I contemplate Ann’s excursions into eucharisteo, or thankfulness, in every aspect of her life, I can see her journey to joy, to God, to meaning, is a pilgrimage to living in the moment. To naming the graces. Counting the gifts. Stacking the joy.

The journey to God is the quest to unlearn our clinging to the past. The challenge to relinquish a life lived solely in the future.

Naming gifts brings meaning as the moment is acknowledged, fully lived.

Eliot writes in his poem Burnt Norton,

“What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.”

I am tired of straining to hear the regretted footfalls thump-thumping against untaken paths. I grow weary of a world of speculation.

And so I will keep at this naming of gifts, this stacking of joy. I will scrawl in my notebook the thanks of the moment:

     * A time of extended merriment with friends old and new.

     *Soft mist blanketing, softening the valley as the miles dart by on quiet freeways.

     *The sharing of stories and journeys and pig cheeks' carbonara.

Another way I will orient myself to the present is by implementing a Bucket List for my last two months at my current job. Instead of withdrawing, disconnecting, and playing the Lame Duck Grant Writer, I will engage. I will create new challenges. I will try new lunch spots with my coworkers. I will write new blog posts. I will dance my butt off at our newly scheduled weekly Wii dance parties.

I will celebrate the past and I will dream for the future, all the while pointing to the present. 

***

Questions: Are you more apt to relive the past or spend your time dreaming and scheming for the future? What helps you live in the present, in the moment? Any suggestions for my work Bucket List?