The Gift of Gratitude
Happy Thanksgiving
We’re all getting hit with a million different Thanksgiving messages right now, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t add to the cacophony.
I’m grateful for you…
I’ve been writing these blogs for over five years now. It’d be an exercise in futility without you on the other end of them. Being able to keep this thing up is a privilege that I take extremely seriously.
So… Thank you.
On Gratitude…
As with all good things, we’ve turned gratitude into law. Gratitude is now a ‘practice’. It’s a gazillion-dollar (give or take a few bucks) industry fueled with gratitude playlists, meditations, journals, cards, candles, courses, etc.
People have become burned out… ON GRATITUDE!
Leave it to humanity to ruin a good thing. Anyhow…
I wanted to offer a word that has helped me put it in perspective:
Gratitude — when it hits your heart sincerely — is a total gift, not a chore.
Maybe you’ve been able to exercise that gratitude muscle over a long period of time, but it seems to me that, the more we force gratitude, the more it escapes us.
The best way to live with gratitude is to be open to it. To take a receptive stance. And to thank it when it hits us — as fleetingly as it does.
Today, we have a lot to lament in our world. It’s been a year.
But thankfully, we’ve designated an entire day on our calendar to create a space for gratitude. Even though many of us are dining alone or in small ‘pods’ this year, the day has come nonetheless. We can still make the meal and set the table to make room for this phenomenon of gratitude as it wafts through the air in the form of [enter a description of your meal here].
In a cooked meal (even if it’s a TV dinner), we have the sacrament of gratitude. A physical thing made sacred by a spoken word of God’s blessing.
I pray that this word hits your heart today and you’re able to bless your meal and thusly allow the gift of gratitude for your life in this humanly existence.
May the gift of gratitude captivate you this Thanksgiving day.
Grace & Godspeed,
Jonas