Why not praise?

I never regret turning my heart in this direction...

Praise practice is a restoration of forgotten manners in our great Earth community. A necessary reciprocity. Praise lets us be a fount of appreciation that feeds what we love. Praise is a way of being true to our soul’s deep commitment to be amazed by the miracle of aliveness. Praise gives us a chance to linger in awe, the anti-inflammatory emotion. It invites us to participate more fully in this brief life we are given. To slow down from a drive-by life and to more deeply inhabit and relish the one life we’re given.

Praise practice is a way to enter the creative flow of life. Praise can be a practice of piling our thanks like a heap of flowers and then tossing them in the air, watching blossoms of gratitude fall and scatter beauty in all directions. Like yoga or meditation or playing an instrument - you don’t do it once and then you’re done. It’s a practice and it deepens over time, shaping us and our way of being in the world.

Praise is a way to give back to the life which gives us life. Praise is a celebration of beauty and thriving wherever we notice it - inside and out, behind someone’s shining eyes, sprouts in damaged soil, the shine of light on water - the infinite daily gifts that are invitations to reverence and marveling.

Praise is a conscious cessation of the infinite modern refrain of “More. I need more.” It’s a step out of the mind of scarcity into celebration of what is. It’s a chance to climb out of the contagious mind of “never enough” and into the delighted celebration of what is right here.

Praise is a chance to offer applause for Earth’s artistry, and then again an encore. Praise is an invitation to step out of self-centeredness and instead, to become the center of a mandala of beauty, rather than a black hole of dissatisfaction and want. Praise is an embodiment of generous love. It’s a way to be the wind under the wings of that which we wish to honor and uplift. It’s a training to use our attention in beautiful and life-giving ways.

Praise practice asks us to take the lid off the simmering pot of “WOW!” that lives deep inside our chests. It asks us to crank the heat under that pot and let it spill over with awe and appreciation in a flow of abundant admiration. Praise is a full-bodied reminder of what a blessing it is just to be alive. Praise is said to be the only prayer we need. “Thank you.” Praise is an expression of right relationship with life.

Praise is a delicious cocktail made of humility, awe, and celebration, flavored with a dash of the bitters of impermanence.

Praise is a good posture for humans to take: Arms raised, eyes shining, and mouth open, spilling reverent thanks; or head bowed in reverence and grateful humility at the generosity bestowed on us every day of our lives, whether we deserve it or not. Praise practice is a soul medicine that invites us to be more permeable to beauty and more resilient to despair.

Praise is a whirling dance around the giant bonfire of gratitude for life. A way to let it be known that you’re paying attention, rightfully astonished, and ready to tell about it. Praise is an invitation to practice turning your attention to the beauty around you - and this usefully undermines the soul-deadening strictures of industrial culture.

Mary Oliver writes:

I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Truly, there is so much to admire, to weep over. And sadly, we’re often too busy or distracted to notice. Praise practice is an invitation to pause, to admire, to express our deep care. It’s a move toward belonging. And even if you are flat broke, you’ll find you can still make beauty and be generous with your words, your attention, your big ol’ heart.

Noticing beauty, celebrating it, admiring it, weeping over it, writing about it, each of these offers a doorway not only to momentary joy, but a deep and abiding sense of belonging: in your body, in your place, on this earth. It weaves us back into life. Praise is a chance to rub a healing salve into the cracks of self.

In an increasingly digitally connected, but sensorially disconnected modern age, opening our many senses to be on the lookout for something to praise is a deeply important practice. To notice beauty invites us to turn an affectionate eye toward the world, rather than just a critical one. It invites us to slip out of the too-tight-clothing of self-preoccupation, and to slip instead into a larger world, full of surprises and sensory delights that are all too easy to ignore.

A basic understanding that lives across many sane cultures is that we’re asked to offer rituals of gratitude. May this necessity for our reciprocity be felt not as a burden, but a joyful gateway that braids us into beauty and belonging. With praise practice, our living becomes a love letter to life. We use our attention to compose an ongoing love poem or a praise song, and we discover an unlocked door that opens to possibility.

Our refusal to be satisfied and to say thank you might have life responding to us much the way we’d feel if we gave a friend a hundred gifts and they never expressed thanks, just distracted exasperation and wanting more. Would we want to then give them more gifts? No. We’d want to turn away. Praise practice is not only good manners, it actually attracts more things to praise.

Radical gratitude and the practice of praise are deeply rooted, take nothing for granted, and insist on seeing the miracles we live among. Choosing to see and participate with life in this way changes everything. As Rumi says, “Awe is the salve that will heal our eyes.” May it be so.

As Mary Oliver says, Why not get started immediately?

Mary also confessed that she wanted to create a literature of praise. I confess I’d like to create a culture of praise. As Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote toward the end of Braiding Sweetgrass, “More than anything, I want to hear a great song of thanks rise on the wind. I think that song might save us…” I think so too.

Cheers to the vast capacity of the human heart. May we use it in beautiful and life-giving ways.

With love (and a fierce determination to keep loving)

Erin

p.s. When you look around you in this moment, what are you moved to praise? Please share!

I’d like to praise October’s slanty light on golden catalpa leaves, their yellow-green glow gorgeous with the blue sky behind. Praise the goldfinches at the feeder and the sunflower hearts to feed them. Praise the Sunday quietude, the lack of a toothache or an earache, even though my hip aches. Praise these functional fingers that let me type these words to you, and the laptop on which I type, and praise the magic of connecting through writing and reading. Praise your eyes and heart for taking in these words. Praise the stack of books on the table next to me, offering countless doorways to other worlds, fresh possibilities, new ways of seeing. Praise the dear old friends hosting my kiddo this weekend in their loving home. Praise apples from the farmer’s market, impossibly crisp, sweet, and tart. Praise a steaming cup of green tea. Praise the creek running down the nearby canyon, and praise the light that shone on the water as we strolled by. Praise the chance to beautify my mind with praise.