At 2:30am this morning, Kalvin cried as he sometimes does.  All he wants is for Dan or me to go in and tell him to go back to sleep. Sometimes he wants his Dora backpack, or a car, but mostly, he just wants to know we are there and before we can even get to his bed, he plops his head back on his pillow and is asleep. I, however, cannot return to sleep so easily after having been startled awake by crying child and rushing through darkness sans glasses to make sure no one has fallen out of bed or some such thing.  Nope, I’m awake then, usually for an hour, sometimes more.

This morning, that hour was beautiful. The snow fell so softly outside the bedroom window while across the valley, a low hanging mist caught the moonlight and seemed to hold it, as if a little self-contained cloud, illuminated from within. The first snow of the season always speaks to me on a primal natural level about rhythms and celebrating the change of the seasons.  Sparkly snow speaks to me about taking delight in living, all these little glimmers of experiences we get to have each and every day. And then there is gratitude.  Gratitude for where we live. Gratitude for the little boy sleeping next-door and the little girl sleeping in her room.  Gratitude for my husband.  Gratitude for the peace and calm in the middle of the night that reminds me so often of night feedings when Grace and Kalvin were babies.  Gratitude for the unfolding of this life. None of this is particular newsworthy.

I’ve written often about how gratitude is the language of the Universe/God/ Source/Creation.  But I’ve always written about it from my standpoint, as the one wanting to communicate or commune with God (for lack of better word at the moment). The difference last night was seeing it from God’s perspective.  When I feel grateful, my world opens up.  When people are grateful for me, or something I’ve done, I also feel wide open to some universal vital flow.  And the opposite is true as well, if I’m ungrateful, yuck.  And if others are ungrateful, I feel a closing, a lack of wanting to give more.  Also, not particularly newsworthy or insightful.  Just very human.

But in the quiet morning watching the moonlight play in the softly falling snow, the question that occurred to me is this: why would the laws of physics, attraction, karma, call it what you will, why would they be any different on a macro scale?  Why wouldn’t the Universe constrict if it is on the receiving end of a paucity of spirit, scarcity of grace, and ugliness of ingratitude?  It is only natural in us as humans, we are part of nature, so why not nature itself? That was new.

Putting myself in “God’s shoes” (which seems a bit funny to write) was the aspect that was new. Because it is new, I’m struggling to find words, so please grant me the grace to understand through my stumbling what it is I’m trying to convey: if you want to talk to God or the Universe, be grateful because it opens you.  If you want Universe to listen, if you want to commune with the universe, be grateful because it opens it.  So simple.  So utterly simple.

I mean, picture yourself giving a gift: you’ve thought long and hard, you’ve planned, you’ve sacrificed, you’ve created something out of thin air to offer to another, a piece-of-yourself kind of gift. And picture it being received with love and heartfelt gratitude.  Lovely.  You will probably feel inspired to give again, despite the time and energy. It’s intoxicating. Then picture it being received and discarded. Or received and placed on the shelf.  Or received and never valued. Or received and used but no gratitude ever felt. Ugh.

“God”, Universe, it gave us THE most remarkable of gifts. Life. Life itself. The experience to be alive. To feel, to create, to stand in the middle of wonder and awe and pain and humanity, like Christmas lights all around us, glimmering, shining, remarkable. We can barely take it all in. Wow. How can we not stand in the midst of this plenty in anything but perpetual gratitude? I mean, we can, we do, I have, but really, why would “God” shine any more light on those souls who stand in the middle of his gift and lack gratitude? Would you want to give? Would you feel drawn to those people?  And we are it, we are the same, we are nature, the same laws apply.

I cannot articulate the magnitude of this shift for me.

It’s as if I saw myself as this expanding and contracting form, breathing, almost, in unison with the universe.  Gratitude expands me, but it also expands it. And when I contract, it contracts as well. I breathe and expand and am grateful, it does the same. I constrict, close in, get selfish, feel entitled to more, it contracts. And when it contracts, I feel cut off from some vital source of delight, wonder and awe not understanding that my constriction is why I feel cut off. Perhaps all the road bumps are really that kind of synchronous constriction. Chicken – Egg. Remarkable.  Truly.  That it took me so long to apply the most basic rules of this simple human form to the cosmic sense of humanity.  Humbling.  And beautiful.  Thank you.