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Gratefulness
In that moment, I realized even more deeply how certain places can evoke a profound experience of gratitude for us.
This past July, I decided to leave the San Francisco summer fog, and head across the Golden Gate Bridge to a retreat center in warm Marin county. The Santa Sabina Retreat Center, tucked away in a corner of the Dominican College campus, feels likes a large home, with 40 single bedrooms surrounding a lovely courtyard with a center fountain.
I was first introduced to the Center over a decade ago when I was coordinating retreats for tenured public-school teachers here in San Francisco, and for half a decade, I held six week-long retreats a year there until the funding ended. Throughout those years, the Center began to feel like a second home to me and was a place that comforted me as I journeyed through a time of deep loss in my life—facing infertility, grieving the loss of my older sister from breast cancer, and my husband closing his small business.
…feeling the solitude and silence this place held, I was overcome with gentle tears of gratitude.
I hadn’t been on a retreat there in several years, and as I settled into my room, arranging my clothes in the closet, laying out my yoga mat on the carpet, and feeling the solitude and silence this place held, I was overcome with gentle tears of gratitude.
I wasn’t expecting such a deep sense of gratitude to wash over me like that. Yet, as it did, in the spaciousness of the retreat atmosphere, I let myself connect with what my body was feeling. I was filled with gratitude for the gift of this special place, which had held and supported me through such a tough time in my life.
In that moment, I realized even more deeply how certain places can evoke a profound experience of gratitude for us. Have you ever noticed how your favorite bakery, or neighborhood park, or familiar church, or your own living room, can bring you profound gratitude that you feel in your body?
As a school librarian, I can see that the library is a special place for many of our students—it’s a refuge, a place of free choice, and a space for curiosity and exploration. Just the other day, I found a drawing that some fifth-grade girls had made for me at the end of last year. It was an 8 ½” by 14” picture of the library, with shelves filled with books and the words, “I love the library,” and “Thank you, Ms. Lafia!” written down the middle.
The drawing made by fifth-grade girls expressing their love for their library and librarian.
Lately, I’ve noticed how grateful my husband and I feel when we come through our front door after a long day at work. I often spontaneously say, “I’m so grateful to be home.” And my husband usually echoes the thought with, “Me, too.” And on the weekends, when we have time to clean, weed, and water our small urban garden, my husband will always let out a big exhale and exclaim, “I am so grateful!”
Place connects us to gratitude, and gratitude connects us to place. And this gratitude also finds its place in our bodies. As we find gratitude in a sense of place like a retreat center, our home, a park, a library or bookstore, we also find gratitude in a sense of place within our hearts and bodies.
Our bodies are speaking to us all the time—and if we pay attention, we hear the gratitude they hold.
Our bodies are speaking to us all the time—and if we pay attention, we hear the gratitude they hold. The expression, “I feel it in my bones,” isn’t a metaphor. Our bodies feel and express gratitude through our tears, laughter, trembling, surprise, relaxation, tenderness, amazement, comfort, love, and more.
Pause for a moment and ask yourself—what place evokes gratitude for me and how do I feel it in my body?
Find your “place” of gratitude in the world, and in your body, and receive the gift of gratefulness it’s offering you. I invite you to become a vessel of gratitude—to receive it in your bones, and your heart and, like a child, be curious, excited, and joyful when it arrives.
Colette Lafia is a San Francisco-based spiritual director, workshop leader, and writer. She is the author of Seeking Surrender: How a Trappist Monk Taught Me to Trust and Embrace Life, and Comfort & Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others. Colette has a passion for helping people connect more deeply with the presence of the sacred in their daily lives and blogs about it at www.colettelafia.com.
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Thank you, Colette. There is a place I go first thing every morning in the dark in the quiet. It is a spot just a few steps out the back door between my guardian trees, Spruce and Hemlock. I go there to thank and bless Mother Earth, to listen for what she asks of me. A place where I can sense her roundness rising to meet the arches of my feet and sometimes feel her energy expanding from there upward through my heart and beyond.
I so enjoyed hearing about your special place, and that you “go there to thank and bless Mother Earth, to listen for what she asks of me. ” So beautiful! Thank you.
Thank you Colette. I am grateful to be connected with the web of gratefulness.
Thank you, Maria, for being connected. Warmly, Colette
Colette, my “place” of gratitude is an interior state rather than an exterior location. Wherever I’m alone, quiet, safe, creative, or among friends, is my “place” of gratitude. Ahh… I just thought of a place. I called my home on the main channel in the Marina, “Heaven on Earth.” And when I moved, I thought I’d feel a loss, but I found things about my new home I loved just as much, and realized that “home” was inside me, and not in my apartment. However, now that you’ve brought this up, I might go back to the Marina. I can’t visit my apartment, but I can walk around the dock, again, which I haven’t done in ten years. It will be interesting to see what that evokes in me. Thank you!!! Julie
Julie, I also find that “place” is both interior and exterior, and I love that you bring that forward. Blessings as you go back and walk the Marina and see what arises. Warmly, Colette
Colette, thanks for this beautiful reflection. I love imagining my body as a gratitude place. It makes me think of the Walcott’s poem Love After Love and the invitation to feast on our life. Gratitude lives in me and is a place I can return to–a gift not only to the world but myself!
Mary, I was struck by and greatly appreciate your comment, “I love imagining my body as a place for gratitude.” So beautifully said. Warmly, Colette
I resonated with the experience you shared about coming home to gratitude. I have a book that I have turned to dozens of times now, maybe more than a hundred times, and breaking open it’s cover (physical or digital at this point) and reading it’s highlighted pages brings me back to a perspective of gratitude. Maybe not the environment you spoke of, but this emerged in me as I read your meditation. Thank you so much for sharing.
Thanks, McKay, for sharing the insight that coming home happens in so many ways. I will take that into my day. Warmly, Colette
dear Colette, your words resonate with me, thank you for this. Of course there is a place where I can find peace and feel calm and peaceful. It’s my home When I come back from work, I take a breath in front of my door. “Oh, I’m here”, even though I know when I get in, a lot of chores are waiting for me. But I have my family, my couch, my blanket, my herbal tea, my time for meditation and I can nourish my spirit. There are other circumstances that bring joy and peace as well, our parish choir rehearshals. You are right, I should name both, my house and my choir, in my prayer of gratitude, I will give them more life.
Anna, I know that moment, “Oh, I’m here.” It feels like a refuge after a long day (even with the chores). Thanks for sharing. Warmly, Colette
Delightful, and certainly true for me.
Thanks, Dave. I appreciate your word “delightful.” Resonates with me. Warmly, Colette
Thank you for bringing me into this space that I know but hadn’t named. Gratitude for place. For space. I love your gentle and embodied writing.
Thanks, Victoria. I really appreciated your mention of “this space that I know but hadn’t named.” I have found that once we name something, we give it more life. Warmly, Colette
Bookstores, which become more and more rare. On a path in the woods, hearing the sounds and the silence. At the edge of Lake Michigan, or any vast body of water. With each of these, I slow down, breathe, find home.
Yes, yes, yes! “Slow down, breathe, find home.” I’m practicing slowing down this week so your comment really resonates with me. Thanks for adding your voice. Warmly, Colette
Oh Colette, I just love this and love you!! Thank you for every feeling that you highlight and help us focus on. For me it is space that is outdoors where the longer I’m there walking the quieter I become.
Dear Mickie, your comment reminds of Jim Finely’s teaching of how the quality of our experience deepens as we sink into it more, and let ourselves become what we are experiencing. Thanks for your offering! Warmly, Colette
Thank you, Colette. Reading your blog, I felt awash with gratitude. Much appreciated.
Dear Ann, Thank you! I’d love to hear what place brings you a sense of gratitude. Warmly, Colette
To be honest, I was not thinking of any special place, per se. It’s more like an attitude, a perspective. But, maybe, that’s just because my home, which is a peace-filled place, is where I feel much gratitude these days.
Yes, gratitude can be an organic sense–an attitude–that we can have and feel when we are in a special place like our home. As I mentioned in the post I also feel so much gratitude in my home these days–it’s a spontaneous kind of gratitude that fills me. Thanks for responding and sharing!
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