My family is like millions of others in the United States who come together this time of year for the holidays and struggle to put their passionate differences aside for a few hours. Of course, these divides always existed, but recent years have been different for two reasons. First, major shifts -- generationally and ideologically -- have left many feeling left out of the party, so to speak. Second, politics is the ugliest it's been in modern history. There are plenty of hurt feelings all around. A lot of fear gets stirred up.

In couples counseling, it's an axiom that the most toxic thing to a relationship is not when the partners disagree, or even fight, but when they stop respecting each other. For several generations now, there has been little trust and respect in the political sphere. Both sides have demonized the other, have assumed ill motives on their opponents' parts.

But of all relationships, the deepest and oldest, next to our relationship with God, is family. So, how sad when distrust and lack of respect attacks relationships with literal brothers and sisters.

There isn't just one approach. You might choose items made locally; or by individuals; or from small manufacturers that treat their employees well. If you're not buying directly from the supplier, you will be considering the retailer too. Let's call it "conscious" gift shopping. The spiritual principle here is to consider the whole gift: what it will mean to the recipient; what it's made of; how it was made; who made it; how it got to your hands. I think everyone can embrace supporting individual craftspeople and small businesses over multinational corporations. At least for Christmas.

When you find yourself feeling particularly ungrateful about your life — or your spiritual director or friend points out to you that you are — you can stop and remind yourself of all the things for which you can be grateful.

There are some obvious things. You often hear people say, "at least I've got my health." That might sound trite, but if you have ever experienced a serious loss of your own good health and then gotten it back, or if you or to someone close to you is deprived permanently of good health, you will know that good health is a great blessing. Another common item is family — partners, parents, children: whoever loves you unconditionally and gives you sustenance and support.

Not half full or half empty — just half full

Gratitude list items can also be seemingly trivial things — or at least things that might seem so to someone else. And many things can be seen as blessings or negatives. For example, I do not live with anyone else. I could focus on and feed feelings of loneliness. But I can also be grateful for the control I have over my environment and how easy it is to meditate and have silence when I want it. (Ask anyone with a big family about how precious that is!)

It's important, even though this is a list, to not fall into thinking of it as a two-sided ledger. It's not "I'm alone but at least I have peace and quiet."  It's, "I can have peace and quiet whenever I want in my home."

It's not about seeing our world's cup as half full rather than half empty. Because the truth is everyone, and I mean everyone, has things they can be grateful for and things they can be ungrateful for. It's about paying attention to the part that's full. Who cares about what you don't have? Seriously. Think about that for a moment.

Focusing on what we don't have, on expectations of things that have not materialized for us, only leads to anxiety and self-pity. I'm not saying there is no place for wanting to create a more abundant life, but that's not the way. Paradoxically — as are most great spiritual principles — it is by being content with what we have that we are open to seeing clearly what is around us, and seeing new opportunities.

Lately, I've been considering teaching my son Matthew about the saints. At the big-boy age of 5, he's surely old enough to become captivated by their stories. But then I realized that when you talk about the lives of the saints, you also have to talk about their deaths.

Therein lies the problem.

Not every saint had a gruesome death, of course, but quite a few of them did. And for a kid whose imaginative diet consists of nothing more sinister than the dragon that Harold draws with his magic purple crayon, I can hardly fathom telling him about St. Agnes, whose head was cut off, or St. Lawrence, who was literally grilled alive. My child already has an innate fear of the dark; I don't need to tell him stories that will encourage it.

I often hear people talking about living in the present moment as if it is a struggle, some cosmic game of attempting to grasp something that is fleeting, illusory. They say things like, "the moment I have it, it's gone." While this is true and can be frustrating, the last thing present moment awareness is about is grabbing serenity. I have always liked the metaphor of the river (borrowed from my Christian contemplative practice of centering prayer) in talking of the flow of thoughts. Imagine the stream of consciousness as a river, with boats and debris representing thoughts. You're sitting on the bank of the river watching it. Normal awareness has you looking at each individual boat-thought, following it down the river with your eyes -- and to strain the metaphor, getting on it and opening hatches -- then suddenly shifting your awareness to another boat and so on. If your mind is particularly cluttered, you can feel overwhelmed by all the boats you have to look at and it can feel like that classic I Love Lucy skit with the conveyor belt at the chocolate factory, like you're falling behind and they start slipping by. There can be a sense of panic that a thought that's getting past you without attention is important and you're missing it.

Present moment awareness is simply sitting on the bank and watching the river, not the boats. Boats cross your field of vision and you do see them, but you don't follow them with your eyes or get on them. They're not out of focus, but you don't focus on them.

My last column, about waiting patiently for a late bus, provoked some interesting comments and reactions (on the site and directly) that tease out the bigger issues involved. While I wrote about waiting for someone who's late, two commenters brought up the flipside of the same time management coin -- what to do when you're going to be late yourself through no fault of your own. Fellow Busted Halo contributor Ginny Moyer wrote...]]> http://bustedhalo.com/features/what-works-53-martha-and-mary/feed 0