“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues.” – Cicero

Each year, Americans take one day to give thanks for all that we have in our lives.  At Café Gratitude, we think that giving thanks is so important that we ask our employees, our customers, our vendors, and people driving behind us on the road to do it every single day.  If you haven’t seen our bumper sticker before, it poses the question, “What are you grateful for?”

One of the things that you hear most about healthy relationships, families, and communities is that they are built on trust.  Now, I have to admit, that this confuses me a little bit.  I mean, what is this ‘Trust’ thing anyway? To find out more about how to cultivate trust, I did a bit of research.  John Gottman, Ph.D. at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley defines trust using the acronym ‘Attune’:

•  Awareness of your partner’s emotion;
•  Turning toward the emotion;
•  Tolerance of two different viewpoints;
•  trying to Understanding your partner;
•  Non-defensive responses to your partner;
•  and responding with Empathy.

Are you surprised?  I have to admit that I was.  I grew up in a culture where having ‘trust’ in a relationship meant something straightforward, like having trust that someone is not ‘cheating’ on you, or trusting that they will show up when they said they would.  Matthew and Terces seem to have a similar idea about trust in relationship.  Here are some of the things that they are committed to:

I am writing this as an elder in our community, and am thanking you in advance for listening with open hearts. My intention is to empower you and to take a stand.

I have read your letters and heard your requests in regards to Occupy Oakland's General Strike. I appreciate your passion, commitment and urgency. Here is what I would like for you to consider:

As individuals we have great freedom in standing up for what we believe in and support. We are free to take great risks and be responsible for whatever consequences there may be. We are free to make our choices. I celebrate this freedom.

Kaci Christian is a woman with a mission.  Her life has seen her through various careers: as a lecturer, investigative reporter, TV news anchor, sign language interpreter, motivational speaker, and more.  At heart, she is a storyteller - a bridge between the worlds of those who know and do not know, see and do not see, hear and do not hear.

The connecting thread for her has always been a genuine passion for people, animals, the our planet, and a desire to make a positive difference in the world.  That mission is clear in her latest endeavor: The WE conference.

In the past few days, I decided to recommit myself to a pretty simple practice. A quick note about simple practices: what I mean when I say “simple” is that it requires one or two steps, like sitting meditation, or washing my dishes within 24 hours. The joy with simple practices, of course, is that they hold my entire world in their exercise. If we take on that the way we do one thing is the way we do all things, simple is just an optical illusion. The stuff we’re working on is going to show up whether we’re orchestrating a complex, multi-million business model, or in “chop wood, carry water.” So in a way, “simple practice” is more of a reassurance to my resistance. Don’t worry; I tell myself, it’s a simple practice! Then it’s harder to talk myself out of it (though it seems my ego can wiggle its way out of anything) and it feels more manageable. It’s all just talk though, after all, since the big results are the same present moments strung together as small results, but it’s helpful talk.

That being said, my practice has been not fudging with time. I have a habit of saying, “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” when there’s really very little chance I could get there in less than fifteen. I’m usually fudging five or ten minutes, and most often this happens with friends, not with work or professional relationships. I noticed this habit and didn’t like where it landed me: rushed, contracted, and lying. For me, this is more work on wise speech - “fudging” is easier to allow myself than “lying”, but they’re the same thing. Fudging is only different from lying in the amount I’ve deemed it acceptable to not be in line with the truth. Well, I’m playing the big game here, so I know that if something is off, even just a little, that’s where my current path is to more freedom. (That’s what I love so much about things being off-center -- I have a beautiful treasure map of the place I’m getting to dig in and grow.)

One of the practices at Cafe Gratitude is to celebrate our mistakes.  This did not come easily for me at first.  In home economics class in 7th grade, and I accidentally spilled flour on the floor.  I remember feeling so ashamed.  I wanted to hide it from the teacher, so I ground it into the carpet with my foot.  She caught me doing this, and the glare I got in return was enough to keep me feeling ashamed about my mistakes for the rest of my life.  That is, until I came to Cafe Gratitude.  

Employees of Cafe Gratitude are trained to say "I made a mistake!"  This proclamation is met with cheers and applause.  "Yea!!!!!"  The next part is that we tell the manager (if they haven't already heard the cheering).  Then we have a conversation about what we learned from this and how we can prevent making that same mistake again.  But the key part and important first step is simple: acknowledge the mistake.  Claim it.  Own it.  This was tough for me.  Even though I knew better, the junior high student part of me still expected to get a glare and some kind of punishment.  

The first mistake I recall making at Cafe Gratitude was a simple one: I dropped (and broke) a glass.  I was out on the patio (in San Rafael) alone and could have possibly gotten by with keeping my mistake a secret.  It was an important step in my "recovery" (from hiding mistakes) process to say out loud "I made a mistake!" and tell a manager what happened.  That kind soul simply asked me what I could do differently next time.  It was easy for me to think clearly about this, since I was not clouded by shame.  I was clear and able to focus on a creative solution.  I felt so much freedom in this.

This week I encourage you to be courageously transparent.  Consider that we create walls surrounding our authentic selves in fear of not being loved.  As Matthew Engelhart says, all we are ever really saying is “love me” or “I love you”.  I’m beginning to notice that most of us are so caught up in ourselves, trying to conceal parts of ourselves in fear of not being loved that we don’t look up to see others.  

Sometimes I feel so alone that I never open my eyes to see that I am constantly in community and there are millions feeling the same way.  What will it take for us to be loved?  Be ourselves!  This week I invite you to open up to your truest self, whatever that means to you. If there is something that you are hiding in fear of judgment, then you are not giving others the opportunity to love all of you, to love you to the core.  I invite you to crack your castle walls and lower your defenses to be seen for who you truly are.  Maybe this means thinning a mask of makeup for a day.  Maybe this means expressing when you are hurt.  Maybe, just maybe, it means telling someone that you love them.  How funny we are in our aim to be loved and yet withhold loving.  It’s up to us to break the cycle.  My invitation to you is to lower your walls and connect more deeply with those around you.  Imagine a community of people truly knowing each other and having such a safe container to love each other in.  Know that the only thing at stake in speaking up is your ego.  Remember that we love you, that you are powerful, that you are perfect.  Thank you for who you are, and for who you aren’t.  

Remember that game "telephone" that you'd play as a kid?  One person whispers something into the next person's ear, and that person would whisper what they heard to the next person and after 10 kids, you'd have a totally different phrase?  I love how recipes work kind of like that.  Each person translates some version of a dish that they've learned in the past, and then the next person creates their own rendition... over time we've got a beautifully diverse spread of dishes representing various locales, cultural specialties, dietary needs and creative explosions.

I have the awesome luck of living next to Chandra Gilbert, one of my favorite chefs of all time, and our Director of Operations at Cafe Gratitude.  Chandra is one of those people who appreciates every vegetable that comes into season and knows how to rock simple ingredients into a knock-your-socks-off kind of dish that keeps the flavors of the original ingredients roaring.  In Chandra's neverending generosity, she spent an evening showing me this heart-warming and tantilizing soup recipe and introduced me into making the holy trinity of mirepoix- the base for any soup or sauce from scratch.  I share this recipe with you as a sort of rendition of what she showed me that evening. 

I love the space between Christmas and New Years. It always feels for me like a time of completion: An opportunity to say what wants to be said, to acknowledge what wants to be acknowledged and to think about the lessons/opportunities of the year that is wrapping up while looking at what I am up for in the coming year. How about you? This past year for me has been about letting go, opening up, expanding myself... and appreciating all the opportunities that have come our way. It hasn’t all been easy, or even simple and yet I can see, as I share with you, the value of what I have learned and how I am being prepared for what is yet to come.  Just when I felt like I couldn’t be stretched any more someone I love and am close to, got stretched further than I ever could have imagined. I found myself being so grateful for my life and seeing how much further there is to stretch. What about you? As a community we are all learning to be grateful no matter what! It sounds easier than it is, and yet consider that all there ever is to do is to be grateful. What else is there? So this year I am really going to take that on, to see all there is to be grateful for in EACH and EVERY moment, no matter what. What about you? Thank you for all you have shared with me, for all you have given me and for just who you are. I am enclosing a photo taken at Christmas of our family, it is so wonderful to be all together in one room, at the same time, and celebrating LOVE. Love, Terces