This week we baked focaccia to go with what Amy predicted would be ‘sad beans.’ She was wrong. They were very happy beans. But I’m grateful she suggested the focaccia, which I’ve only made a few times and none as successfully as tonight’s simple, delicious recipe for a small loaf pan focaccia. I didn’t even make any adjustments for altitude and it came out beautifully. I topped mine with flaky sea salt and Penzeys Bouquet Garni spice mix. I really miss having a rosemary plant in the sunroom, and regret that the one I’d had in a pot for many years didn’t survive a repotting last fall. But the Bouquet Garni mix was a good substitute for fresh rosemary.

Amy also suggested a delicious ‘dirty martini dip’ she found on instagram, which is just cream cheese, sour cream, an ounce of gin or vodka, and an ounce of olive brine zapped in a food processor with a pinch of salt, then served with olive oil and olives. I skipped the olive oil, substituted greek yogurt and mayo for sour cream I didn’t have, and tossed one olive in the mix as well. Next time all the olives go in the food processor. We are both grateful for olives. Amy ate her dip with pretzels and crackers and saved her focaccia for the White Beans au Vin that I had proposed for dinner, but I enjoyed the dip with my bread.

I don’t think we intended to put alcohol in both our dishes but I just realized that we did. I’m grateful for tomato paste in a tube, which lasts a long while in the fridge and doesn’t get yucky like that in a can when you try to save it, even in another jar. I’m grateful for all manner of kitchen and culinary conveniences, and grateful that I have a kitchen in a warm house during this cold winter.

I led an interactive guided meditation today in a study group. The meditation, from one of our instructors, called on me to lead the ‘client’ in an exploration of feelings of amazement and gratitude for the most basic things, including how our body breathes and pumps blood and mostly does everything right most of the time without any effort on our part. But when I reached the part where I encouraged the client to bring to mind the things in their life that provide security, the kinds of things I write about here day after day, like a safe home, sufficient food, and clean water, they balked.

Their big heart immediately skipped over gratitude for the comforts of their life, to a desire to help the many who lack these basic amenities. It can be a fine line. I struggled with this myself for many years, and still do sometimes. It’s not fair that I have so much and others have so little. But gratitude is not antithetical to compassion and may indeed be a necessary precursor to it. We need to give ourselves permission to experience gratitude without guilt: for the small things in our lives, like tomato paste in a tube, and the big things like lasting friendships, meaningful work, and our capacity to help others as we’re able. The bottom line is that it’s not only healthy but essential to acknowledge and give thanks for all the good in our lives.

“Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted. ”
― David Steindl-Rast, Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day

Both recent research in neuroscience and the longtime teachings of Br. David Steindl-Rast reveal the importance of gratitude. Brother David is passionate and eloquent on the transcendent meaning within gratitude. It’s a spiritual practice for him, and he’s been studying and teaching its importance for many of his 97 joyful years on earth. I’m grateful for his influence on me through the years, and that I am finally beginning to live his message. Let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day.

“There is a wave of gratefulness because people are becoming aware how important this is and how this can change our world. It can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you’re grateful, you’re not fearful, and if you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live.”
― David Steindl-Rast