Being Thankful

As many of you know (unless you must have been living underneath a rock recently), Thanksgiving was this past Thursday.

This past week I have been thinking a lot about Gratitude. I have learned a lot about gratitude working at the Campus. I have met people who had very little materially but who were more grateful and content than I have ever been in my life. I have been frustrated by others who are ungrateful about what they receive. I have been astonished by how ungrateful some participants are when churches feed them or when we help them.

I've never been a naturally grateful person (in some ways, I wonder if I never grew out of my spoiled child phase). Some participants have taught me how to be more grateful and content with little while others have reminded me of how ugly ingratitude is, and have forced me to search my own heart.

As I've mentioned before, one practice I've tried to implement since I started working at the Campus is making a gratitude list every day. While it doesn't exactly happen every day, I've become more conscious of being grateful since I started working there.

I was thinking about that this week with Thanksgiving. I was thinking about how freeing living gratefully is and how important it is to not take anything for granted and to give thanks to God always. I've also learned that some people will always be ungrateful and have something to complain about, because that's how they choose to be.

I found a couple quotes I liked that I wanted to include, the first of which is from Augustine:

“[People] go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

[Now, let us] acknowledge the wonder of our physical incarnation--that we are here, in these particular bodies, at this particular time, in these particular circumstances. May we never take for granted the gift of our individuality

I love the sense of being here....just simply being.... Thanking God for waking up another day (I rarely am grateful to wake up in the early morning for work), thanking God for our gifts and our particular lives and bodies. I would like to have more of an "attitude of gratitude" and I can already tell that God is transforming my stubborn heart through being in this community and through relationships at work.

Here's another poem that caught my attention:

Benediction
written in 1513, by Fra Giovanni

There is nothing I can give you
which you do not have;
But there is much, very much, that
while I cannot give it, you can take.


No heaven can come to us unless our hearts
find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden
in this present instant. Take peace!


The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.
There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see,
and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look.

-Amen and Shalom

Please pray that I could learn to be content/grateful with little! Finally, I just wanted to say that I am so grateful for all of my supportes. Thank you for your support and prayers!