Eight years ago on this day - Martin Luther King Day - I started a blog called One Good Thing, which became the OGT Daily, because I believed that if I could remember one good thing each day then I could survive the moment, the day, the week, the year and get by at a time when so many feared the worst.  It was bitter cold day in January, a day when we finally had a bit of snow which fell on the trail behind my home overlooking the Hudson River. As I walked on the trail, my boots crunching on the frozen film of thin snow, as I contemplated the recent turns in history, all I could hear was the sound of my own feet on the snow so clear and crisp in the cold air. A silent clarity. This is what I was grateful for. This sound and this moment, and their simplicity were so pure that they transcended the complexity of any feelings I might have had about the world. I felt gratitude and that felt good. And I thought, one good thing is all I need. One foot in front of the other and I would get through.  

Today was an eerie parallel to that day. Martin Luther Kings Day and the dread and fear of so many on this late January morning has amplified over those 16 years. Another day of snow, this time thicker and the temperatures more bitter, somehow appropriate to the mood and circumstances of the day. The heavy white blanket of snow, so clean in the morning sun after a night of blizzard.  It felt like a benediction, a cleansing, as I trudged calf deep this time down to the frozen edge of the Hudson to watch the ice crack.  And I'm reminded of that other morning so long ago when so many had lost hope and now on the brink again - I realize its time to begin again.  Time to start up this practice once again - this One Good Thing and to share it daily for 365 days or for 4X that if needed.  

And that one good thing is my gratitude for the beauty of nature to provide me this answer. My hope and belief in our ability as human animals to err on the side of community and sharing with each other, with other creatures, and with this planet, and to not succumb to the pull of greed, profit, and ownership. 

My gratitude does not suggest complacency. We must continue to stand up for what we believe and know is right, but when we are exhausted, when we think the jig is up, we must not succumb to fear but remember the one good thing and just put one foot in front of the other.  I invite you to do the same.  What one thing are you grateful for today?