guts. by patresa hartman

On the eve of a giant culinary tradition my focus is on my guts. I am thankful for them on many different levels, and to express those levels requires me to give you far more information than you care to have. Please prepare.

First of all, I love mashed potatoes and gravy with a reckless, food-in-the-hair, abandon. I am also ridiculously glad for stuffing, extra sage and celery, please.

Second of all, I am grateful that I have the resources to enjoy such feasts. I have never been hungry. The table has never lacked food nor company, my family loving and stable. The more I learn about the world, the more I understand the privilege of this.

Third, and in an entirely different capacity, I am grateful for the dysfunction of my guts. I have a very glamorous condition called Ulcerative Colitis. You will not see any Lifetime movies on this subject, because it would entail too much emphasis on digestion, including colons. It is not a sexy disease. I have 8x10 glossies of the inside of my colon.

Ulcerative Colitis essentially entails ulcers in the digestive tract -- much like Crohn's. Most of the year they are tamed into submission, remission. But around Thanksgiving and Christmas they wake up on the wrong side of the bed and get very cranky. Stress is my primary trigger. Why am I thankful for this? Because I have learned that this dysfunction is a messenger.

Some believe each element of the body is closely linked to each element of the spirit. Louise L. Hay, for instance, posits that diseases of the guts typically indicate an inability to let go and relinquish control. True for me. I am not always good at identifying my intangible emotions, and I attempt to control my environment with a white knuckle grip. This is not healthy. Sometimes I don't even recognize that I'm doing it. My body has to tell me.

The holidays are prime time for my control issues to flare -- navigating family traditions, finances, time crunching, and travel, etc. One thing I am very good at is pretending everything is fine and there is no need to change my behavior. The reason I am thankful for my faulty guts is they are no longer allowing me to be complacent about unhealthy spiritual patterns. Around the same time every year, they wake me up in the middle of the night to say, "Pardon us, but you still have not learned how to live with acceptance."

I do not care for their methods, but I appreciate the intent. Perhaps this is the year I listen.

Grateful for The Power of Now

There’s a lot of free-floating anxiety around lately. The stock market plummeted 777 points in one day, then rebounded much of that the next. Money is becoming harder to come by for mortgages and other loans. People are moving what’s left of their portfolios to safer investments. It’s hard to navigate gratefully through the rocky shoals of this crisis and the maelstrom surrounding it when your retirement fund looks like it is disappearing faster than the polar ice cap.

But I take comfort in the knowledge that as sure as the market falls it will come back again. It may take years to get to the levels we became accustomed to seeing. Growth in our economy may stagnate further since businesses and banks are closing up shop, and lending requirements are tightening. After a time things will settle down. Retirement accounts may not look quite so comfortable. Things may cost more and be less available. Jobs will return slowly to the market. Our housing will be worth less. Heck, that may not be so bad across the board. Real estate skyrocketed to ridiculous levels that are unaffordable by most. We’ll get through this the way we’ve gotten through other difficult times. Being grateful helps.

I remind myself that I am grateful for the roof over my head, and for the meals on my table, grateful for my friends and relatives who listen to my fears and who share their thoughts, grateful for the women who write with me each day on this blog for they keep me focused on what matters. I'm thankful I can connect with other people and not just the nightly news. I’m most grateful that I can switch off the television and turn to other things. All around me are things of beauty and acts of kindness that give meaning to my life. The golden light of autmum is stunning from my window. It stops me in my tracks several times a day and beckons me to be still for a few moments and breathe. Life is within and without.

Lately I’m also grateful for the lessons of Eckhart Tolle. I don’t read self-help books usually, but his book, The Power of Now, was recommended by a friend. Tolle lays out strategies for finding inner calm and suffusing your life with it. He's great for reducing stress, great for allowing you to become you by shutting out the constant hum of thoughts. Staying present in the now and not slipping into the past or the future, definitely is a good idea at any time, and is even more of a challenge for me right now when birth and death hover on the horizon. Thank you Eckhart Tolle. You’ve managed to help me find restful sleep many nights, managed to help me to shift my focus to what matters. Read this book! You will be amazed at the simple and pure lessons it teaches and I bet that like me, you too will be grateful for his wisdom.