Gratitude That Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind
A different practice for the first day of the year
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Yesterday I saw the movie Avatar: Fire and Ash.
I left the theater with a heavy heart. Capitalism at the cost of life. Military self-righteousness based on objectified following of orders. The rich connection of all living things so fragile when faced with greed. The film held up a mirror I did not want to look into.
This morning, the first day of a new year, I am sitting with what that heaviness revealed.
Not despair, but rather gratitude. Gratitude that I can try to share the richness of the Wild Earth through my writing and teaching. Gratitude that my work can be an opportunity to help those who do not have a voice to support and help themselves. The trees, the rivers, the creatures who cannot advocate for their own existence.
This is not gratitude as a list.
This is gratitude as weight in my chest. As responsibility. As the specific feeling of being given something precious and fragile to tend.
Savoring Rather Than Listing
Most gratitude practices ask us to catalog.
Three things you are grateful for. Five blessings. A running tally of good fortune. There is nothing wrong with this. But it can become rote, a box to check, words without resonance.
What if we stayed with one thing instead?
One moment of grace. One gift we have been given. Noticing where it lives in the body. What it actually feels like. Letting it land rather than listing it and moving on.
Today, I am staying with this one thing. The chance to speak for those living kin who cannot speak human words to speak for themselves.
That is enough for the first day of a new year.
What single gratitude are you staying with today?
~ Jeffrey
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If this resonates, I invite you to subscribe to Where Insight Meets Earth, my weekly reflections on contemplative walking, ecospirituality, and embodied practices for navigating what overwhelms us.
If you want to delve more deeply into this, I am launching the Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary in March 2026—a year-long journey exploring Earth kinship through contemplative practice. Learn more here.
In September 2026, I’m leading a contemplative walking retreat on France’s ancient Le Puy Camino, seven days of silence, movement, and practices for metabolizing what sitting cannot, in the most beautiful landscape you can imagine, on a 1,000-year-old pilgrimage path. Details here.
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