REMEMBERING TO GIVE THANKS

I commune with my heart in the night;
I meditate and search my spirit:
"Will the Lord spurn for ever,
And never again be favorable?
Has His steadfast love forever ceased?
Are His promises at an end for all time?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has He in anger shut up His compassion?"...
I will call to mind the deads of the Lord;
Yea, I will remember Thy wonders of old.

-Psalm 77:7-10, 12

I wish I had many new things to give thanks for this Thanksgiving. But I don't. So all I can do is look backwards, as did the Psalmist in the above psalm. You can almost feel him gritting his teeth and forcing himself to find something (anything!) to be thankful about. But he does force himself to do it. And I guess that's the point.

I am helped immensely in my ability to look backwards by a spiritual discipline, I guess you could call it (though not much of one) that I started years ago after the concept was introduced in a Bible study I was attending. It was mostly actresses -- and me. And one meeting, our leader had us number a piece of paper from 1 to 100 -- then we had to fill in every line with something we were thankful for.

It was a wonderful experience. We went around the room reading our gratitude out loud at random (we would all ready, say, line no. 11. Then line no. 62. You get the idea). The funniest moment came when, on the same line, the group leader and myself had listed the same thing to be thankful for (the bougainvillea outside our window).

I loved that evening so much, I started doing it myself every month. I have a little notebook, and on the first of the month, I open it up, I number to 50 (all I can fit on the page), and I start listing what I'm thankful for.

I have missed some months. Especially when my kids were born, and I was just too exhausted to even notice what I was doing. But I now have over 12 years of gratitude (again, with some gaps). And when I too am wondering (as I am) "Has God forgotten to be gracious?" -- well, I just have to take out my notebook and read.

And since I can't chronicle a lot of more timely stuff, I will do what we did that night, and pick a random number -- let's say #19 -- and list here the last 2 years (I'm not going to make you read 50 or 100!) of items I listed in gratitude. Many of the things listed will seem petty and selfish, I'm sure (I might even be quite embarrassed -- but I'll list them anyway). But if we can't be grateful for little things, then we're not likely to manage it for big things.

Here we go...

11/04 A lovely phone chat getting to know a mom from school (whose daughter has a crush on Cory!)
10/04 My addictive computer games from popcap.com
9/04 Cory and Sabrina having lots of playdates right before school starts
8/04 Answered prayer
7/04 Our agent agreeing to speak to our students at Act One
6/04 A barbecue for our writers' group at our dear friends Nancy and Bob's home
5/04 Getting through the Brownie meeting where I was in charge of the whole thing (teaching "Manners")
4/04 A wonderful day at Legoland with Lee's half sister and her family, whom we hadn't seen in years
3/04 The privilege of serving on the Act One Board of Directors
2/04 Sabrina being excited about my birthday coming up
1/04 New workout clothes
12/03 Sabrina helping fix Thanksgiving dinner
11/03 Spiritual protection
10/03 A visit with our former nanny Arlene and her boyfriend [now her husband!]
9/03 Getting great evaluations from Act One students
8/03 Sabrina learning to cut her own nails
7/03 Getting caught up on overdue bills
6/03 Fasting
5/03 Cory's growth spurt
4/03 Being present for the moment our friend Bob "came to" from viral encephalitis
3/03 Great meetings with an out-of-town producer who wanted to do a movie about the life of Paul
2/03 A great lunch with David Schall [who died 2 mos. later]
1/03 Michael Chabon's "Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"
12/02 E-mail
11/02 Being able to throw our annual Christmas party

....Okay, my look back does indeed, as it turns out, help me look forward (-- even though from here it looks as if I'm looking forward into an empty pit of terror).

Here's wishing you all many big and little things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

KETCHUP VS. MUSTARD

In the last week or two, I have found myself telling so many people about Malcolm Gladwell's fascinating article about ketchup and mustard that I figured I'd better post it to all of you as well.

When you go to the supermarket, why are there dozens of variations on mustard on the shelf, but basically only one kind of ketchup? Think of all the answers you can, then read this article. The answer will surprise you.

Hope you enjoy it!

10,000 AND COUNTING

It sort of woke me up last night when I scrolled to the bottom of my blog and saw that the counter had clicked over to 10,000.

Wow. 10,000 of you have bothered to check in on what I might have to say. (Okay, yes, I know, some of you have come back more than once. Hey, I check my stats -- some of you come back more than once in a day. But let me enjoy the moment, okay?)

That's a little over 1000 people a month. If I stood on a street corner, I doubt I could get 1000 people to listen to me. If I wrote my thoughts out and tried to mail them to newspapers or magazines, I'd probably send out 1000 copies to get one response. So let's hear it for the web.

And let me take a moment to say thanks. It's been a real blessing to meet a few people in person, also a blessing to get e-mails and comments from you all. (And take that thing about "comments" as a hint!)

It's fun to write stuff that goes out as a first draft, without even proofing. I don't do that anywhere else in my life -- I'll even rewrite thank you notes. So this is kind of freeing, in a way. Writing without pressure.

I am humbled that so many people have bothered to read what I have had to say. And I'm encouraged to keep doing it. Thank you for reading.

A nice little milestone to pass, that's all.

We'll chat again like this at 100,000. (Or maybe 20,000 -- I doubt I can wait that long!)

THE FEELING OF HAVING WRITTEN

People often ask me, "Do you like to write?"

I usually answer, "No, I like having written."

That's not entirely accurate, of course. Sometimes, on those rare occasions when everything is flowing and the words are coming and the images are pure and beautiful and clear -- writing can be a joy. But no matter what, the feeling of being done beats the feeling of facing the blank page any day.

All of which is to say that, we have finally finished a script we have been working on the better part of this year. Called simply Galveston, it's the story of the Galveston hurricane of 1900. It's Titanic on land. Romeo and Juliet set against the greatest disaster ever to hit the U.S. (Pick your logline.)

Normally I would be feeling a great sense of relief and joy by now. Unfortunately, we have far too much riding on the reaction to this script. So that relief is instead replaced by anxiety (what if everyone hates it?) and that emptiness that comes with having the greater part of your day's schedule removed.

If y'all feel so inclined, pray for our little 117-page baby as it goes out into the cold, cruel world of Hollywood. I'll be sitting here chewing my nails.

And in the meantime.... I guess I'll have more time for blogging! (Now I just need something to blog about.....)

IT'S OVER

Yes, I know people are still voting as I write this. I haven't even voted yet -- I'll do it on my way home from school with my kids, continuing my own parents' tradition of dragging me to the polling place with them every election.

And I know the votes haven't been counted. And I know even when the votes are counted, we may still not know who the winner is (As The Daily Show has been calling their election 'coverage': "Prelude to a Recount").

But here's what's over:

--No more nasty cartoons e-mailed to me purporting to slam Kerry but in reality making nasty anti-Catholic statements.

--No more "voting guides" that make often vastly wrong assumptions (a) about my political party, (b) the specifics of my political opinions, and (c) my ability to make my own choices.

--No more smug, "aren't-we-smart" e-mailed columns and jokes that amount to character assassination of the nastiest kind.

--No more hearsay and rumors -- with the people sending them insisting that no, it's not hearsay, they're not rumors, because they're read it all themselves on the Internet.

--No more "God-is-on-our-side" screeds implying that, therefore, the "other" side is Godless, evil, and really should go straight to hell without bothering to stop at the polls.

This election makes me want to cry. Listening to my kids chant "one nation, indivisible..." at flag salute in the mornings almost does make me cry. I wish someone would hire me to write a Civil War movie, because right now, I think I have an inkling how it felt to be alive at that time.

How horrible it must be to be in a "swing" state! No one even bothers to air the nastiest commercials in California -- a small blessing, I suppose.

I am so numb from all the nastiness (on both sides -- no one's hands are clean in this one), that I hardly even care who wins tonight. (Or tomorrow. Or next month. Whenever.) Just so long as it's over.

And then maybe we can start treating one another as human beings again, worthy of respect regardless of the color of our state or the slant of our opinions.

Maybe.