Practices in Gratitude

A few weeks back, I wrote about my decision to change my inner negativity and to finally see myself with the same love in which God sees me. I realized changing my inner voice was a powerful first step, but that if I really wanted to get on top of my stress and negativity, I needed to do more.

The first step was going to the doctor to finally figure out why I was so tired all the time. Turns out I am anemic. The good news is with the help of some little iron pills, I will no longer be on what I called “Team Sleep.” Less fatigue means more energy for schoolwork, but that doesn’t take away the stress or the poor way I was dealing with it. So I decided to enroll in the Koru course offered at the McDonald Center for Student Well Being.

The course covers mindfulness and meditation directed for stressed college students. We meet once a week to learn new types of meditation, stress management, and how to develop better habits in these areas. We are given “homework” to practice meditation daily. It’s amazing to see how my mindset changed when I let my brain take a breather. In addition, our homework challenged us to also cultivate habits of gratitude.

Every day we were asked to write down three things we were grateful for. At first it was tricky- “Okay, I’m thankful for coffee… and uh my friends… and maybe SkinnyPop?” But within days of writing down my gratitude and becoming aware of it, my eyes began to open to how everything is a gift. I was gracious for the feeling of a grand jeté during ballet rehearsal, for the excitement of Sunday night skype calls with my sister, and for taco Mondays with my friends. Being intentionally grateful changes how you see your day. Instead of focusing on the negative, you focus on the positive blessings you see each day. In each unfolding of your life, you are challenged to relish in what makes it beautiful.

This concept is even more powerful to us as Catholics. Our lives are shaped by God. Our blessings are given to us by God. In this way, all our gratitude is for God. In taking time to cultivate gratitude, we are taking time to praise God in thanksgiving. In taking time to notice the gifts all around us, we are taking time to notice the way God is all around us. Gratitude gives us the daily opportunity to rediscover the awe we have for God. A God who knows how to brighten our evening with a beautiful sunset, stimulate our afternoon with a rich over lunch, or calm a late-night study session with the peace of a warm cup of tea. In the end, each piece of gratitude is gratitude for God.

So how do we cultivate these attitudes of gratitude? How do we live lives of thanksgiving? It is all about creating habits that challenge you to remain grateful daily. Ready? Here are some ideas:

·      Write, write, write. Get a pretty notebook. Get a really nice pen. Write a huge list, add to it daily. Don’t stress about what you write down. Some days you might have tons of things, some days you might have just a few. Wherever you are is where you are meant to be.

·      Make a playlist that reminds you what it means to be grateful. Don’t have time? Listen my own gratitude playlist (link)! Put it on as you walk to class or dinner, or as you drink some Earl Grey and close your eyes- use this time to think about what you are grateful for today.

·      Make a gratitude collage. A few weeks ago I wrote about my own, which is definitely an awesome option if you have a free wall. You can also make a quick collage at Polyvore (link). It doesn’t take long to make, but it can help center you on what you are grateful for right now.

·      Give back to those you are grateful for. Random acts of kindness are perfect ways to give to strangers and I highly encourage it. But also don’t forget to honor those who make your life better with simple acts of gratitude. This (link) article has great examples.

·      Read poetry on gratitude. As an English major, I love finding inspiration in literature. Reading poetry about gratitude helps slow mybody down and requires me to focus on what I am reading and what it means. Try Ode to Thanks (link) by Pablo Neruda, Slant (link) by Suji Kwock Kim, or An honest Tear (link) by Emily Dickenson. Need more? Check out this list (link).

·      Get the app. Do you have trouble remembering to do things without your phone to remind you? I totally get it. Luckily, there are apps to help you cultivate gratitude. This (like) awesome app even lets you upload pictures of things that made you gracious each day and records it in a calendar.

·      Take part in gratitude meditation. Spend time praying and reflecting on the things you are grateful for. You can do this in adoration, or you can do this in the silence of your dorm room. You can even use a guided meditation, such as this one (link), to find God’s light within your thanksgiving.

The most important part of developing the habit is acceptance. If you miss a day or only have a small entry- that’s okay. Don’t let gratitude become part of the stress or negativity in your life. Let it be the release.

It will be easy to think about gratitude this week, when it’s Thanksgiving and all around us people are asking, “What are you thankful for?” But the true benefits of gratitude come when it goes beyond a single day and becomes part of your lifestyle. Starting here and now, decide to live a life of gratitude.

Pray for Paris

I’m not sure how it can feel simultaneously like it was years ago and just days between last semester and now. Studying in Paris was a life-changing experience. There were those dreamy moments everyone thinks of when they think of Paris- brunch in Montmartre with warm bread and bowls of hot chocolate, afternoons getting lost in the Louvre, buying Laudrée macarons on the Champs Elysée, and picnics in as many parks as possible. There were the unexpected moments of joy and garnered confidence- starring in a student film project, teaching weekly English classes to a ragtag group of preschoolers, and practicing yoga to find my inner peace in a chaotic city. It wasn’t always an easy city to live in. There were moments that challenged me every day. But in the end, I carved out a little bit of home for myself in Paris and Paris carved itself into a little bit of my heart.

It is easy to flit back over my memories and remember only the moments of confidence, maturity, and peace. But those memories would undermine the very serious emotions I felt my first weekend in Paris. I arrived in Paris for my semester abroad the very same week of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. As a person who is already particularly anxious, that week was terrifying and upsetting for me. I spent a long time processing the experience and eventually wrote about it in a blog post last January.

But that blog didn’t talk about what came after. It didn’t cover the way that for months I would wake up in the middle of the night at the slightest noise, unable to fall back to sleep, wondering if everything was safe. I would hear noises from outside in the hallway during classes and feel shivers of panic. I was always on edge, never feeling safe. Terror is not a single moment, but a nightmare, a scar. It may fade over time, but you’re never the same.

On Friday, as I sat in my dorm room at Notre Dame, I switched between CNN and TVMonde5 as I watched unimaginable horror cover my screen. My thoughts went to my friends in Paris. Were they safe? Were they okay? The attacks had taken place in the 10^th and 11^th arrondisments, areas full of hang out spots for young people. During my semester abroad, I had spent many evenings out with my friends in this area. One of the restaurants attacked was a block away from one of my favorite bars. I had walked down those streets. Who was to say it wouldn’t have been me there? My friends in France expressed the feeling that nothing was safe, no one knew where the next attack would be. I remembered the horror I went through last January and I knew this would be monumentally worse.

I made Facebook statuses, snap chat stories, tweets and tumblr posts reading, “Pray for Paris.” Everywhere around me, my friends- in America, in France, and everywhere in between- made statuses echoing the same sentiments, “Pray for Paris.” But I wasn’t sure how. How do I pray for a city so dear to me that has been so marred? How do I find God, or even begin to speak to God, amidst this tragedy?

I went to mass on Saturday. The priest spoke of the attacks, of the way it was a sign of the brokenness of our world, of the way it reminded us to never take a day of our life for granted. The world did feel broken. It felt like there was pain everywhere- not just in Paris- but in Beirut and in Baghdad where bombings took place, in Japan and Mexico where earthquakes rattled, and in our own Notre Dame community, where even amidst the safety and certainty we feel here, death managed to touch us. How do we begin to pray when we feel so broken?

I went to the prayer service for Paris at the grotto on Saturday night, my mind wheeling. I felt bad,as if not finding the words to pray meant I was failure. Paris had given me so much. Paris had changed my life. And now my city was hurt and I had nothing to give back. It was a city, not a person, after all. I couldn’t bake it cookies or hold it’s hand. I could only pray. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the words, the peace, to articulate all I wanted for my precious city.

So I started with the people. As we made our way through the rosary, I dedicated one bead to a different person in Paris. Beads for my friends from the student film. Beads for my favorite yoga instructors. Beads for my treasured preschoolers. Beads for the lady who ran the bakery by my dorm who laughed as I struggled for the right change. Beads for the friends who sat beside me in class. Beads for the smiling cashier at the Monoprix by our university. Beads for each person who touched my life in Paris. When the rosary was over, I still had people to list, so I knelt and continued to pray- my words and thoughts finally coming out. Maybe I didn’t have the words to pray for a whole city, but I would pray for the people who made the city real for me. And in finding those words, I began to touch the ones written deeply in my heart, in our faith- for a love that is greater than all of us, a love that heals in the deepest places.

Weeks will pass and we will change our current profile pictures from photos adorned with French flags to our usual dome pictures. We will slowly stop thinking of Paris as a place where horrors happened and remember the sound of the accordion player on the street, the view from the metro line 6 where it crosses the Seine, and the taste of a still warm pain au chocolat. But even then, let’s not stop finding these words to pray. Let’s not stop praying for those who wake up in the middle of the night, never feeling safe again. Let’s not stop praying for those who always carry scars, physical or emotional, from Friday’s events. Let’s not stop praying for those whose hearts will always miss a loved one who will never come back. Let’s not stop praying. Not now, not ever.

Creating Sacred Space

I kinda hate Pinterest. While a ton of my friends love it, I avoid it like the plague. I figure  I have enough on my plate without worrying about how many recipes I’m not cooking, how unorganized I am, or how I haven’t even started planning my dream wedding. I do, however,  have a single secret Pinterest weakness- dorm room decorations. The start of every year brings me the joyful flurry of diving into fun DIYs  I want to add to my room. Maybe, it’s my inner teacher, but I look forward to figuring out how I want to redo my room each year.

After all, our rooms are our most personal place on campus. It’s the place you spend most of your time. You sleep there. You entertain friends there. You study and procrastinate there. It’s so important to make sure  you live in a space where you feel comfortable and can be yourself. Your dorm room is one of the most important places you can express yourself. Having your favorite colors, posters, pictures, and knickknacks is what defines your space as yours and shares what you care about with others who visit.

As people of faith, one of the most important things to express in your room is your faith life. Adding elements to your room can help you share[K1]  and grow in new ways.

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Quotes

One of my favorite parts of my room are my quote canvases. I spent a few days at the end of summer working on them with my sister, trying to figure out the perfect quotes to fit the canvas, what colors to use, what designs to include, and so on. I tried to pick quotes that inspired me to be the most loving person possible (obviously picked from songs from my “Live in the Light Playlist”). They serve as a constant reminder to love selflessly and to love in a sincere and caring way.

Quote canvases are easy and inexpensive to make- all you need is canvas and paints and a free afternoon. I discovered in making them that it was a very therapeutic and peaceful activity. While making full paintings can be pretty time consuming, I found an easy way to continue doing this was to start decorating notecards with quotes. Whenever I hear a line from a song that inspires me to be a more loving, peaceful, or positive person, I write it down on a notecard with some decorations. I started using them to decorate my walls, but now I’ve moved on to let them decorate my walls. Being surrounded by these quotes help challenge me to be my most loving self. And they are even easier to make than canvases- just grab a pen and a stack of note cards and go for it.

Collages

While I was abroad, I was on a tight budget. But, I couldn’t stand my plain and boring room in Paris, so I devoted a wall to telling my story through free things I acquired in my travels. I covered it in maps, ticket stubs, brochures, and programs. It was one of my favorite parts of my room (other than the Eiffel Tower view) and it was a great way to share my story with everyone who stopped by. But, in the end, it was an exercise in gratitude. As I worked on my collage, I got to step back and look at the amazing gifts God had given me in my travels. I had so many marvelous experiences, dream after dream coming true, that looking at it gave me a chance to relive those moments and renew the gratitude to I had for God who had led me on this path.

It’s in this way I encourage you to make gratitude collages. Pick a corner of your wall, or maybe use one of the bulletin boards that come with your modular furniture, and dedicate it to your collage. You can fill it with anything you are grateful for, anything that reminds you of the wonderful gifts God has given you. Pictures of your family and friends, favorite places you’ve traveled, pictures you’ve taken of sunsets or flowers, activities or hobbies - anything to remind you of the gifts God has given you. In moments of uncertainty, when we find ourselves focused on everything we don’t have, return to this collage and reflect on the graciousness of God.

Prayer Corner

When I was younger, my mom helped me make a prayer corner for my room. We marked the space with a white dollie and on top of it put a small statue of Mary, prayer cards, my rosary, and religious pictures. Making a prayer corner is your room is a way of giving yourself a literal place to turn to for solace. Whether you need a place to pray before sleeping, a study break with God, or a breather between classes- your prayer corner is your go to.

The best part is you can craft it to fit your prayer life. Are you inspired by icons or holy images? Add those. More of a journaling type? Use it as a place to keep your journal. Add an (electric) candle. Make a prayer jar to store intentions. This is a place for you to reflect and grow, so it’s up to you to use.

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Spaces are important, especially, your dorm room, a room you inhabit all the time. Living a faith filled life mean integrating your faith into your lifestyle. It means making time and taking time to pray in your daily life. Your room can be the place where that lifestyle begins. So take some time this week to dig out some supplies and make room for some sacred space.