The Daily G.I.F.T. from The GratiDude

My Dream Dinner Table is filled with my favorite dead people. Pass the sourdough, Dad, and Mark, turn your phone off.

www.grateful4.org

Gratitude

Intention

First

Things

The G.I.F.T. Today

Grateful: for knowing the only way to heal is to let it out when it shows up. And you never know when that will be

Intention-flow with focus and knock out a few biggies

First-Pep Boy meeting where the rubber hits the road

Things-get basics to Arslan, map out 6 weeks

Morning Meditation from The GratiDude

When my Brother and I were little up until 10 or 11, dinners at our house were great.

We always ate at around 6:30, and my parents cooked everything from scratch, homemade bread, salad dressing, everything old school.

That is the dinner table of my dreams, the table if I could have just one more meal, I would do it. Right there at 305 S. Revena in Ann Arbor, I know my seat and I will be waiting.

What about you? Who would YOU eat with?

Those dinners ended too soon, I’m afraid, and I’m just now finding the dessert I have been waiting for.

Because we did not have any intro to religion or spirituality, my Bro and I were on our own, and as such I distinctly remember both the subject matter and my feeling of hesitancy as I approached saying my first prayer. I had no instruction and felt like a fish out of water, and I recall my first favor of the Universe and God.

I was 16 years old and still feeling the pain of my dad’s death and I remember in a quiet moment of contemplation realizing that I never had an adult conversation with my dad.  This here is why Tito could make inroads with me.

Me and my Dad, we may have talked about adult stuff, dirty jokes etc., but not in terms of an emotional or intellectual/mature elevated conversation. I wasn’t old enough or emotionally equipped at the time to even have that type of a conversation.

My prayer involved thinking about my mom the late Eugenia Carpenter, who lived to an incredible 94 years of age and had a great life full of adventure, challenges, and the wide range of the human experience.  It was a conditional prayer, almost saying that I wasn’t ready to quite admit that there was a higher power however, if there was a higher power, it would surely know what I was thinking about and praying at that very moment.

I asked to please let my mom live long enough so that I could have at least one if not more adult conversation with her and if I had that opportunity, I promised God I would pour my heart and soul into building a great relationship with my Mother.

Both my brother Sean and I clearly made this request in prayer because we both ended up having incredibly rich relationships and traveling and learning all about her life before her mind started to fade in her late eighties.

When I look around the walls of my bachelor bungalow, I see my life and so many people and inspirations that I am connected to hanging on these walls.

Both family members and famous people, obscure artist’s works and replicas of famous author’s prints all mixed together in a mosaic that is my life on these walls.

Except for just one or two pieces of art, all the people and pictures and depictions represent human beings that are no longer walking the earth as living people.

I see a young Cassius Clay standing over Sonny Liston, Arnold Palmer smoking a stick by his Cessna, Jam Master Jay chilling  and Bob Marley kicking a soccer ball.

Over there is my Great Grandfather Benjamin’s Will and Testament from 1788 written in Guilford, Vermont. 

All these Dead People wish they could have one more day with their children, their spouse, their friends, or any family.

Likewise, the children of all these deceased individuals longed for one more hug for the smell of their mother for the scent of their dad and for the feeling of the warm touch that only a parent can deliver to a child.

This video is funny and sad because the parents are all so wrapped up in an ego-state and in the matrix of Self that all they’re thinking about is themselves as individuals. Who could they eat with that would feed their ego or satisfy some personal sense of curiosity or interest.

Not at all thinking on a deeper, emotional or spiritual level is the significance of the opportunity and instead going right into a self-serving opportunity of what famous person they could hang out with for a brief period of time.