Merci, Merci, Merci.

Thanksgiving this past week has left me thinking a lot about gratitude and the things for which I am truly grateful.

When I was visiting Paris, I saw something that I had never seen before.  Outside of a church, on one of the walls, there were several dozen plaques, all made of small white marble and they said "merci, merci, merci."

And somehow those words and that rhythm have stuck with me.  

Merci. Merci. Merci. 

 I wonder what  little miracles (or grand miracles!) had inspired these plaques, what the people who put them there were so thankful for.  Maybe they were just thankful to be alive, thankful for their families and friends, thankful for their good health. (or their noses?)  Those are always the things that I find myself appreciating the most.  

I'm thankful for the opportunity to travel, to find new (new to me, even when they are hardly "new") little pieces of the world, every week, every day. 

This past weekend, I was in Pisa.  Of course we took the obligatory pictures, but really we were there for an art exhibit featuring a number of paintings by the Russian abstract expressionist Wassily Kandinsky.

Kandinsky, Composition VII

I have studied Kandinsky, briefly.  I know some of the basic theories behind his most well-known works.  But what this exhibit gave me, apart from the cool opportunity to get really close to a handful of works by Kandinsky, was some unanticipated exposure to some Russian illustrations and folk art, something that I have NEVER seen before in my life.  And here's the funny thing, I loved it: the colors, the blend of "East" and "West," the stories and fables--the whole cultural aesthetic was beautiful.

Kandinsky, woodcut from the series Verses Without Words

Leaving this exhibit, I was prepared to book the next flight to St. Petersburg or Moscow.  To think that there was such a huge place, which such a rich culture that I knew, more or less, nothing about--those are the sorts of moments that I live for.

And so I got to thinking about all the other places in the world that I haven't visited yet (the phrase "the more I see, the less I know" comes to mind.) and all the people that I haven't met yet.  It makes my heart skip a beat to think about how many people there are and how many places that I know nothing about--and to think that someday, I might know more of them!  There are so many things that could happen, that can happen, that will happen.

So for today, I am most thankful for all the places that I have never been and all the people that I haven't met...yet.  And for the fact that I have the greater part of a whole lifetime to learn all about them.

I guess you could say that I have an awful lot to be thankful for.

Merci, merci, merci, indeed.