Tom Adams
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For me, gratitude is an acquired taste. For many years, my negative thinking blocked my feelings of gratitude; it actually took me years to pay attention to gratitude and its benefits. Thanksgiving is a good time to reflect on the journey to the benefits that can result from greater gratitude.
Kathy died. I knew she was going to. I had known for almost a week. She had suffered a series of strokes over her last month. The last was a major brain bleed that killed her brain. Over the course of that week, she lost all brain function and eventually died. I knew she was going to die, and I surprised myself at how calm I was during that week. It wasn’t until she died that I came apart. Somehow, as long as she was alive I knew I would be as strong as I could.
As part of my engagement in a six-week discussion series on Noticing or Seeing Whiteness, I’m having an incredible opportunity to hone my knowledge and skills about our racial, political, and cultural divides. The experience is strengthening my humility,...
Love is God’s way of sharing God’s self with His creation. God’s love permeates all that is known and unknown. When the human element enters, love becomes more complicated. We are called to love as God loves, yet because of our sinfulness, we fall short. My journey of learning to love and being loved has been a long and arduous trek. It is comforting for me to know that the One who created me is also the One who loves me unconditionally. Other people might want to substitute Higher Power or another name for the divine.
I met Doris about 45 years ago, at a fiction workshop I was teaching. We became friends and literary peers. She then became part of small women’s writing group of which I was a member, and we met regularly for a number of years, hearing and responding to each other’s work. We were always struck by Doris’s sensitive, evocative and psychologically acute fiction.
A mutual friend, Shelley, frequently refers to Doris as the “sage of Cumberland.” She holds Doris in the highest esteem for the same reason I do. We both met Doris in a Twelve Step meeting and she became a sponsor or guide for each of us in working the Twelve Steps. With Doris, we both felt like we had won the lottery. We couldn’t imagine someone more kind, loving and wise.
The 2015 Freddie Gray uprising had a profound impact on me. I reacted, as many of my fellow Baltimoreans, in wanting to do something – not just something but something more substantial. My instinct led me to want to better understand the underlying conditions and ultimately how institutional racism plays an essential part and my role as a European-American in fostering it. My instinct also made me realize how ill-equipped I was as an individual to address this. When an opportunity surfaced to join a training course sponsored by Baltimore Racial Justice Action, I, along with my wife, Ruth, took this intensive eight-week four-hour sessions course which helped me to better understand white privilege and that I personally had to take action in whatever way I could.
Our neighborhood library helped me pay attention to Hispanic Heritage Month. Without a visit there, I suspect I would have missed this important celebration of our diverse culture. It caused me to wonder why Black History Month appears to get more attention than Hispanic Heritage Month? What am I missing?
Four friends, Geraldine and I were feeling the muscle pains from four days of walking the spiritual pilgrimage in Spain known as the Camino de Santiago. It was mid-day and we were all getting hungry and were ready for a lunch break. On previous days, we had found small coffee shops or bakeries along the route where we had lunch and a much-needed rest. Today, there was no sign of such a place. Our map reading leader suggested lunch might be delayed until our next destination, three or more hours further along the path. We shared the little bit of fruit and trail mix we had. I began to get a little grumpy with this prospect, making the muscle pains talk louder.
The last few weeks I have reflected on noticing and its power. Today I’d like to continue that theme in the context of traveling. This past weekend Geraldine and I drove to the mountains of Georgia on the South Carolina border for a family wedding. If you like details, google “Clayton, Georgia,” “Tiger, Georgia,” and “Long Creek, South Carolina.” It is a beautiful part of the world, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
Tom Adams writes and speaks on topics vital to the intersection of our personal lives with our community and global lives. He has for decades been engaged in and written about nonprofit leadership and transitions, spirituality and spiritual growth, how we each contribute to a more just and equitable world and recovery from addictions and the Twelve Step recovery movement.