Stumbling Through Blessing: Part Ten– What’s Tina Turner Got to do With It?

(The latest in this series about the Birkot HaShachar, the Jewish morning blessings, and the role they might play in helping us – Jews and non-Jews; believers, agnostics, and atheists – live with more gratitude, presence, and even compassion.  Part spiritual reportage, part suggested practice.)

Before I get to my recent experience with

Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, Sh’asah li kol tzarki

Blessed are You, Source of all that is, who acts for all my needs

please allow me to start in on some bragging.

I say this knowing that bragging is poor manners, but sometimes a man can’t help himself.

While I have some modest proficiency at gratitude, I am world-class at dissatisfaction.  Ask me to itemize the ways in which my life should be other than it is – happier, better – and I can go an hour straight, barely needing to take a breath.  At which point, I’ll be warmed up.  And being a model of consistency, I can produce day in and day out.  When I’m really on my game, which is not infrequently, my dissatisfaction soars past mere noting of what’s wrong in my world to peaks of glumness and dejection.

Unfortunately, though, since adopting a dedicated mediation practice a few years ago, my talent for getting to and sustaining such states of mind has been impaired.  Worst of all, it’s become increasingly difficult to take out my displeasure on the world.

Cases in point…

A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of a funk, I’m in the lineup at a drugstore.  I’ve got my items in hand, and a game plan.  All I have to do is avoid eye contact with the cashier, grunt the briefest of thank-yous, and be on my way.  But as she scans my nasal strips and shaving cream and I open my wallet, I am suddenly blindsided by a moment of inner lightness and find myself saying, “Well, I had a lot of money at the start of the day.”

It takes her a moment, then she looks at me, suddenly realizing that someone is talking to her.  Now I’ve done it.  I’ve gone and started some kind of connection.  Still, if I just keep my head down, I can do some damage control, limit myself to gutturals, and slink out of the place. 

But instead, I add, “You know, if I just stopped sleeping and shaving, I’d save a lot of money.” 

From Montreal’s Palais des congrès

Now she’s smiling at me, and commiserating, telling me she’s concluded that the only way she can retire is to move back to the jungle.  “The jungle?” I ask.  Yes, she says.  She was raised in the jungle in the Philippines, where homes are passed down from one generation to the next.  “So will you really be moving back?” I probe a little further.  Absolutely, she answers.  She wants to say more, and I want to listen, but there are people in line behind me, and I take my leave.

Despite my best laid plans, I exit the drugstore feeling light-hearted.  Fortunately, by the next day, my Olympic-class resilience has kicked in, and I am again able to spend it in an unhappy mood. 

But at the supermarket in the evening, I make the mistake of pointing out to the young woman at checkout that someone has left a basket of groceries in the aisle.

She thanks me and says she’ll call someone to reshelve them.  Being unable to leave well enough alone, I find myself asking, “So do I get a discount on my groceries now?”  She laughs, and laments that she doesn’t even get a discount herself.  Again, light-heartedness sets in.

Wil this never end?

But that’s the way it is with meditation, at least for me.  It is anything but a magic bullet, but what I’ve experienced since adopting a dedicated practice a few years ago, is that I go off the rails much less often, and when I do, I get back on much more quickly.  And when I do Metta (or loving-friendliness) practice, I’m also more likely to access compassion.

So on an ice cold afternoon, walking past a homeless guy I’ve gotten to know a little, despite feeling unhappy, I stop to find out how he’s doing.  Rattled is how he’s doing.  As far as I can follow, last night he’d taken some medications that worked against each other, and had passed out in the street.  Rushed to the hospital, life seeping out of him, a nurse was trying to inject him with something critical but his body was so frozen, she couldn’t get the syringe in.  “Oh, God!  Oh, God!” she screamed, frightening the bejesus out of him.  Finally she got the needle in, and after spending the night at the hospital, he was released this morning.  I doubt I’m following the details properly, but I know it’s important for me to try, and to let him know I’m glad he’s around to fight the fight.  People have been generous today, he says, bringing him lots of food.  As is his way, he asks if I’d like some. 

But if Tina Turner happens to have been surreptitiously following this blog series, upon reading this post she might well be asking, “What’s God got to do with it, got to do with it?”  Where do the Birkot HaShachar, the Jewish morning blessings, fit into this?

Throughout this period, the brucha of which I’ve been trying to be mindful, and which I’ve recited more frequently than any other is

Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, Sh’asah li kol tzarki

Blessed are You, Source of all that is, who acts for all my needs

Feeling dissatisfied as I was, it’s not the brucha I would have chosen.  But when beginning this series, I’d decided to adhere to the traditional sequence of the brachot and this one was next on the playlist, so I work with what I’ve got instead of what I want.  Which, right now, feels like the very point of the brucha.  I may not have all I want, but this blessing is about what I need.  And the essentials I need – food and water, clothing, shelter – have been lacking for many, across time, across the planet, and around the corner.  I have friends with illnesses that make it difficult to maintain a healthy diet, never mind a pleasurable one, and others who struggle to put a comfortable roof over their heads.  I, on the other hand, without having done anything to earn it, have been granted the circumstances and skills that provide me with food and shelter and, while I’m at it, winter gloves that are warm and snug, but not too snug, and which I could effortlessly replace should I ever mislay them. 

Time and meditation practice do their thing and the doldrums abate.  I find myself back at baseline, perhaps a slightly elevated new baseline, more content much of the time and feeling equipped to address discontent from a more discerning, settled place.  

Perhaps in some subtle way, the brucha has contributed to this ascendance.  I’m not sure, to be honest.  What I am sure of is that I’m glad to have its company, and if it will allow me, I’d like to keep it.

Let’s allow the ancient liturgists the last word…

Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, Sh’asah li kol tzarki

Blessed are You, Source of all that is, who acts for all my needs

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Let’s Get Mindful

Sometime during the course of your day, or maybe several times, put your mind to the blessing, perhaps reciting it…

Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, Sh’asah li kol tzarki

Blessed are You, Source of all that is, who acts for all my needs

…and take a moment to reflect very specifically of the ways in which you have been granted essentials like food, clothing and shelter.  Perhaps it will give you immediate access to gratitude or perhaps it’s planting a seed that will sprout gratitude in days to come.  Or perhaps it’s just enough to note what is.

…and/or…

Are there ways in which you can help others – across the globe and around the corner – to access these essentials?  Is this a good time to make a specific plan to help in ways large or small?

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…also, comments are welcome…perhaps to describe ways in which you’ve employed the suggested practices, or your own riff on them.