[Oe List ...] Gratitude

[R Williams]

One of my favorite illustrations of the depth meaning of gratitude comes from Paulo Freire in his book Education for Critical Consciousness.  In describing the peasant farmers in Brazil with whom he worked he said (and I paraphrase):  "They work not to earn a living or to prove their worth as human beings, but as an expression of gratitude for the fact that the world is already theirs."  Freire goes on to say (again, I paraphrase) "And in so working, they transform the world."
 
Happy Thanksgiving to all,
Randy


--- On Wed, 11/24/10, Janice Ulangca <aulangca at stny.rr.com> wrote:


From: Janice Ulangca <aulangca at stny.rr.com>
Subject: [Oe List ...] Gratitude
To: "Colleague Dialogue" <Dialogue at wedgeblade.net>, OE at wedgeblade.net
Date: Wednesday, November 24, 2010, 7:52 AM





 
 
i thank You God for most this amazing
        e.e. cummings
 

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


 
The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
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