A Diné (Navajo) friend once told me a story about how a porcupine thanked her grandmother. Every day the woman had to walk a long way from her traditional hogan to get water. One day she heard a cry and followed it to discover a porcupine trapped between two rocks. She freed the animal and it led her to water much closer to her home.
Tales of animals thanking people are marvelous. But we can also thank animals and other beings.
In my new book, Fierce Consciousness: Surviving the Sorrows of Earth and Self, I tell a story about walking outside the hospice facility an hour after my husband died, to be greeted by katydids singing in the trees all around me. That these insects had a purpose and were exuberantly fulfilling it, even as I was taking the first steps into deep anguish, filled me, even at that moment, with gratitude. The katydids reminded me that, whatever is happening to one human, life on Earth refuses to give up.
The other day as I stepped outside my house, I noticed a katydid stuck between the screen and storm windows on the door. I tried to free it by slowly lifting one part of the window, but the katydid kept moving down, so it got even more stuck.
Finally I removed the screen entirely and the katydid flew free. Then I just sat on my front steps, so happy that I was able to repay in a small way the immense gift the katydids had given me on that August night three years ago.
There are so many beings relentlessly leading their lives on Earth and, in the process, astounding and delighting us. So, thank something! Thank it for singing. Thank it for blooming. Thank it for flowing. Thank it for shining. Thank it for smelling sweet. Thank something!