These boots were made for...gratitude

When sitting down on my favorite porch rocker in order to lace up my riding boots, I sense something’s a bit strange. As these boots have been resoled twice, it’s a familiar action, but usually done as a bit of a chore, more trouble than loafers or even pull-up cowboy boots. If I’m more honest, I’m probably miffed about accepting that I might fall on my head if I try to put on shoes while standing. In any case, this time while seated in the rocker and putting on the boots, a lighter touch than usual is in the air. The sensation reminds me of how I feel when overwhelmed with gratitude. But what’s to be thankful for here? Well, start counting, buddy…

1. The Grace that so generously is providing material blessings. Upon reflection, I realize that this rocking chair takes me back a dozen years to when we closed on our new home and found we could stay in it that very night. So we found the rocking chairs and they’re still making the perfect coffee-drinking spot. And remember the boots—they came along not long after we’d moved in and Leg’cy came into the family. What a surprise! What a gift!

2. Gratitude for the Health to go along with these material blessings. With the 72nd birthday approaching, I’m still able to enjoy riding as well as stewarding the woodland, gardens, and berry patches. 

The gallon milk carton contains the blackberries picked this morning to give away to the fine folks who take care of our strong-willed mare.

3. Thankfulness for all that opens the Holy for our time in this world. John Dominic Crossan talks of the Holy as “what strikes us as both absolutely fascinating and equally terrifying” (p. 43, Raid on the Articulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges). If we want to know what he’s talking about, he recommends: “take up any dangerous sport for yourself.” 

Leg'cy meets me at the gate (in contrast with the way she used to be almost uncatchable).

Maybe that’s why I was drawn into this craziness about horses. In today’s ride, the numinous came in with about the sweetest trot to canter transition thus far. We picked it up in a way that helps me feel the texture of the inarticulate “unsaying” (see Sells just below). Rudolf Otto elaborates on the Holy with “the elements of the numinous”: “mystery, fascination, awefulness, and energy” (p. 151, The Idea of the Holy). Imagine horse…

It’s probably obvious enough with these citations; but to be clear, in addition to gratitude for home, family, stewardship, and horsemanship, I’m thankful for the openings into the Holy provided by the mystics. I’m currently being carried on such as the ones in Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying: Plotinus, John the Scot Eriugena, Ibn ‘Arabi, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. With much gratitude.