I don’t always do a good job of appreciating.

I try…I pay attention and try to notice the things I should be grateful for…but I don’t always appreciate like I should.

I get distracted and forget.

The other day I was thinking about breathing.

I don’t usually think about breathing.  It’s just something I do. Everyday, so far, I breathe.

I guess I’m blessed that I find myself in that situation, where I can take the most important things for granted.

I started thinking about what kind of situations that would force me to pay attention to my breathing.

Maybe staring at the sun from the bottom of fifty feet of icy lake?

Floating in space?

Who knows…I suppose it would take something pretty dramatic to really have much of an impact on me.

Did you know that they call a breath an “inspiration”?  I was thinking about that, too.

An “inspiration”…drawing something necessary in so that we can live.

Wow.

Then if you make the leap to one of the descriptions of what inspiration means, you get something like “with spirit”.

Divine inspiration.

Touched by God…or just being aware of being touched by God.  Waking up for a moment and being aware.

Thinking about creativity, I’m always interested in inspiration and being inspired.  I don’t think I understand what inspires….but I’m curious about it.

Maybe, like breathing, it isn’t something we really court or even pay attention to all that much.

Maybe it’s just something that comes if we keep moving…keep doing the work?

Maybe inspiration is all around us all the time…we just have to get the “vessel” ready, and prepare  to be filled when the time arrives?

Maybe it’s easier to ask questions than it is to find answers.

Getting back to breathing, I guess that one of the things I was thinking about was that the “best breath” is probably the one that you needed the most.

Maybe that’s the one you really appreciate.

It’s the gasping “inspiration” when you break the surface…after staring at the sun and wondering on the swim up if you’re ever going to make it.

I don’t think that we remember these things long enough to always be grateful for each breath, though.

Gratefulness is a lot of work.

It’s pretty hard to be grateful for the everyday…hard enough just to be conscious.

I am blessed not to have to think about necessary gifts. I am not required by my circumstances to think about anything like that.  I breathe without awareness. I move without pain.

I exist without discomfort.

How did I win this lottery?

Maybe the gift of all of this is that we are given these things, but because they can be enjoyed so unconsciously, we never come close to appreciating them like we should?

We measure our lives by what we see on the television…or the shortcomings that some salesman or politician points out…and we arrive at the conclusion that there are more important gifts than the ones we can’t pay attention to.

We can’t pay attention to the gifts that we enjoy everyday.

I breathe.

Lord, teach me to be grateful.