By Anne Strand

Anne is a Chaplain, a pastoral counselor and a retired marriage and family therapist. 

 

The word appreciation has several meanings: to express admiration, gratitude or approval, to be thankful. It also connotes growth or an appre-ciation in value and worth. Appre-ciation requires a state of conscious awareness of what is already manifested in the here and now.

That awareness is the bedrock for noticing, appreciating and valuing the good.

And, most importantly, as we really begin to appreciate our lives, we become more valuable to ourselves and to other people.

“The more I appreciated — that magnetic energy attracted more wonderful people and fulfilling life experiences to appreciate,” reflects writer, Sara Paddison.

I‘ve seen the experience Ms. Paddison describes happen over and over again in my 31 years as a marriage and family therapist and pastoral counselor.

I invite you to notice whether that might be happening as well for Selma and its people at an increasingly growing rate.

Could it be that the more we audaciously appreciate our town, the more we attract the good around us?

Selma appreciated Oprah Winfrey and showed its cooperation and warm southern hospitality to her during the filming of her movie, Selma. She repaid us by returning to bring Common and John Legend to the bridge for a mini-concert.

Those who heard (and have lived) “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” will probably remember it for the rest of their lives. And, to see the song, “Glory,” repeated in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the Academy Awards Show broadcast to 80,000,000 people was astonishing. Such good press for Selma! We can focus just on the “flaws” in the movie or we can also appreciate what good has flowed from it.

We can complain about the trash left in the streets after the bridge crossing or we can pick some up, as I saw a society dowager doing on Dallas Avenue, and celebrate the fact that 120,000 people of good will came to Selma, marched peacefully and that there were only two people jailed (for misdemeanors) all weekend!

Am I suggesting that we overlook the reality of the here and now situation? No!

Only that we ask ourselves honestly, “What is really evident here, both positive and negative?”

Focusing on the negative and missing the positive saps both individual and collective energy and whittles away the motivation to do what we can actually do.

Without accepting who we are now, we cannot move. Prodding and criticizing do not move us.

Only through acceptance can we love ourselves enough to face our faults and limits. Only through loving ourselves (warts and all) can we love others and create peace and justice in our hearts, our homes and our community.

When we can form a realistic picture of who we are now and of what we can be, have or do, our energy is freed to commit to the work and discipline required to bring this into reality.

And as so many have been doing already, we can all join the march back into Selma and can start right now with the first two steps: accepting and appreciating, beginning with ourselves.

The evening of the 50th bridge crossing, watching people peacefully walk the bridge, going both ways, leaving Selma and returning, I imagined I heard a giant sucking noise — a wind over troubled waters, sucking the negativity and hatred out of Selma and replacing it with good sense and love.