The Breath of Being All-Zen-and-Shit

In 2015 while I was thinking about starting this blog, I realized that my favorite of all of Heather’s images sums up a key piece of becoming all-zen-and-shit.

“Always end the day with a positive thought and a grateful heart.”

Heather Stillufsen, owner and artist, Rose Hill Designs

Please tune in for a forthcoming spotlight on Heather.

Nightly gratitude served as the breath of being all-zen-and-shit. Retrospect shows me this has always been part of my nightly ritual, going through a four-decade-long transformation and continuing to change, strengthen, and light up what makes me ME!

I grew up in a Roman Catholic household, so as a young child, my mother included prayer in my bedtime routine and treated it with the same importance as brushing my teeth. The prayers changed as I got older; I reckon it was based on age and ability, starting with the rhyming prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” of which more than one version exists, and then the litany of “God bless…” and naming family and friends, to bless them and keep them safe from harm. I learned prayer by rote. I had not yet learned that what I was really saying was that I was grateful for and grateful to these people.

Once I completed my First Reconciliation and First Holy Eucharist, the bedtime prayers matured to the “Our Father“, “Hail Mary“, “Glory Be“, and “Prayer to My Guardian Angel“. My mom was laying the groundwork for me to learn to pray the Holy Rosary. I’ll get back to the rosary and the feminine side of a patriarchal faith in another post rather than going off on a tangent. I’m trying to stay focused here instead of dizzying you with every thought that comes to mind and making this post longer than it needs to be. 😉

The joke of being a recovering Catholic rings true for me. Growing up indoctrinated in any faith makes it difficult to “break free”. Again, more about that later.

Fast forward through my teen years, college years, early adulthood, and into my 30s, you may see flashes of questioning faith, falling away from Catholicism, reducing Christianity to another man-made world religion and book of fables, denying any existence of a divine presence, returning to faith from time to time, and ultimately pulling into the station where I am now.

I no longer pray at bedtime, and for years, to quiet my mind when I had a hard time falling asleep, I used an old trick of counting backwards from 400 and envisioning each of the numbers. It works just like 4-7-8 breathing.

When I began practicing nightly gratitude, I silenced my mind and calmed the related anxiety by filling my heart with gratitude. Even on days that it was most difficult to find the good in my day, I was committed to going to sleep with a grateful heart. I arrived at ending each night with the simplest of all gratitude and what has become a nightly mantra:

“Needs are met. Wants are few. I could not ask for more.”

Luceat lux vestra.