As we chop and slice, boil, and season this week, pay attention to what you discard. 

The tops of carrots, the skins of potatoes, the fat of the turkey, even the excess on your hands as you prepare. In the highest teaching, nothing, not a single facet, bruise or stem of our lives lack nutrition. We are here in this life to feast on the harvest of our crop-and we grow each moment from seed.

In the evenings at our house we sit around the table and ask each other what our miracles of the day were. What was extra delicious? A surprise to our normal flow? Sometimes it can be challenging to pick out the most "perfect" moments of the day, but the mundane ones REALLY skim between the ears. Filling a water glass, pulling out a chair, the heater coming on, paying bills, going to the bathroom, putting away the groceries...

Recently I have been practicing a variation of a Jewish tradition, with a goal to say 1000 thank you's a day. Now, even 100 blessings as in the Jewish practice, works out to be roughly one every 10 minutes, but that's the direction I want to be headed, and beyond. Gratitude gives birth to stillness in sneaky, unsuspecting ways. In just a few days, I have already noticed a new level of inner quiet from acknowledging the forgotten moments, which is where the cranes come in.

There is a Japanese legend that states that the highly revered crane lives for a thousand years. If you fold a paper crane for each year of its life, a wish will be granted, or healing will occur for that individual, for you have demonstrated the patience and dedication to your cause. While my daily goal of a thousand blessings will be a life-long feat, a thousand paper cranes can become a collective effort to demonstrate gratitude and love for ALL beings and events. At this point in history, we have big work to do, to heal and hold together that which feels fractionated and wounded.

So, will you help me fold 1000 cranes on a single day? And not just any day, but the first day of the new year? With your help, we can create a day of peace, union, love and gratitude. In honor of the mundane and the forgotten. In honor of life, not power or position. A whole day of simple folds with a simple intention: Love It All. The cranes will be strung and hung in the studio, and then eventually gifted to the winds and rains of Mother Nature, for their prayers to be carried out into the world.

Please consider it.

And your daily blessings.

Gratitude invites us to be still, even in movement; to eat the vegetable ends, the bone's marrow, and the burnt edges with satisfaction. We will find through a thousand folds, that it is ALL here for our heart's evolution.