A time for gratitude for blessings !
Here we are again, on the cusp of Thanksgiving. It is one of the few times that our culture presses a collective PAUSE button to gather in earnest with hearts filled with gratitude and awareness of our myriad blessings.
My list of things to be grateful for remains virtually unchanged from year to year. To the SOURCE of all that is, I offer thanks for the breadth of life, my senses and faculties, mobility, health and the well-being that I enjoy living in this incredible universe. And, not to be forgotten, I am grateful for my mind which is free to express its creativity while contemplating my purpose in life and my relationship to the creative force from which it came and to which it will return.
Also on my list are Mother Gaia’s gifts of beauty, habitability and sustenance including food and water the value of which cannot be overstated. It includes the over arching circumstances within which we live: freedom, peace, security, democracy and societal order and ensuing benefits created for opportunity, prosperity, comfort, abundance.
Closer to home, I am grateful for the love that abounds in my life — family, friends, associates, canine and feline. Each day is enriched with the experiences that I share with them. And, I am mindful that without them my life would be absent sooooo much joy. . . Like some of you, my family lost a beloved earlier this year and so I head into this time of gratitude so thankful that I was blessed by her grace, her compassion, her love of humanity, her countless acts of kindness and the joy that abound the brilliance of her soul. I am heartened and grateful that we will reunite again to share our travels through eternity.
My list goes on. . . and it does so with daily reminders from modern media that my long list of blessings is not enjoyed universally. Natural disasters, disease and famine rob millions of basic life. War, political and civil unrest pre-empt peaceful co-existence. Tyrannical governments and repressive regimes cultivate oppressions and produce conditions that result in victimization and exploitation. These reminders of the suffering of millions who are denied the opportunity to share the bounty that is common place for so many of us intensifies my gratitude for blessings!
Lastly, I am grateful that I have come to appreciate, no revel, in the realization that serenity and joy don’t depend on any of the circumstances, including the myriad gifts that bless my external life. Inner peace, happiness and bliss are products of the inner world. They are available to those who go inward, who find stillness and silence amidst busy and hectic lives; those who are in touch with their inner self; those who know that SOURCE is the ultimate nourishment and bounty. As you enter into the season of celebration and sharing, I hope that you will find time to rest in the stillness, to dive into the peace, to discover the serenity of your soul. Take time to meander the inner world knowing that it is the place of eternal peace.
During this season of gratitude for blessings, may you experience the peace, joy, harmony and bliss that is the INFINITE!
