The Course in Miracles,
Lesson 195 Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss.
The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others.
They try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they do.
How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts!
For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause?
And who could suffer less because they see another suffer more?
Your gratitude is due to God alone,
God who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.
It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering,
But it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to the One who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed and all suffering replaced with laughter,
All suffering replaced with happiness.
Nor could they even,
Partly sane,
Refuse to take the steps which God directs and follow the way that is set before them.
Follow the way to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive.
Your brothers and your sisters are your enemies because you see in them the rival for your peace.
You see in them a plunderer who takes God's joy away from you and leaves you nothing but a black despair,
So bitter and so relentless that there is no hope remaining.
Now is vengeance all there is to wish for.
Now can you but try to bring God down to lie in death with you.
To bring God down to be as useless as yourself.
To bring God down so there is as little left within his grasping fingers as in your grasping fingers.
You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you,
Nor could you sanely be enraged if your sister seems freer than you.
Love makes no comparisons,
And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love.
Say to yourself,
Repeat after me,
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom.
It will never be that some are loosed while others are bound,
For who can bargain in the name of love?
Therefore give thanks,
But in sincerity let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you.
Those who are sick,
The weak,
The needy,
And afraid,
Make room for those who mourn a seeming loss,
For those who feel apparent pain.
Let your gratitude make room for those who suffer cold or hunger.
Let your gratitude make room for those who walk the way of hatred,
For those who tread the path of death.
All these go with you.
Let's not compare ourselves with them,
For in doing this we split them off from our awareness of the unity that we share with them,
From the unity they must share with us.
Say in your mind after me,
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
We thank our Father for one thing alone,
That we are separate from no living thing,
And therefore we are one with our Father.
We rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made,
Which would reduce our wholeness,
Nor impair or change our function,
Which is to complete God,
Who is himself completion.
We give thanks for every living thing,
Otherwise we offer thanks for nothing,
And we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us.
Then let our brothers and sisters lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest a while,
For thanks for them,
For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find,
The way is opening,
At last,
To us.
An ancient door is swinging free again.
A long-forgotten word re-echoes in our memory.
A long-forgotten word gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear,
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Talk then the way of love in gratitude,
For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside.
What more remains as obstacles to peace?
The fear of God is now undone,
At last,
And we forgive without comparing.
Thus,
We cannot overlook some things and yet choose to retain some other things,
Still locked away as sins.
When your forgiveness is complete,
You will have total gratitude,
And you will see that everything has earned the right to love,
By being loving even as yourself.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger.
We learn to think of gratitude in place of malice and revenge.
We have been given everything,
Therefore,
If we refuse to recognize this,
We are not entitled to our bitterness.
We are not entitled to a self-perception which regards us to be in a place of merciless pursuit,
Where we are badgered ceaselessly,
Where we are pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future.
Gratitude becomes the single thought we substitute for all of these insane perceptions.
Ponder on this.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
God has cared for us and calls us his child.
Can there be more than this?
Our gratitude will pave the way to God.
Our gratitude will shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of.
Gratitude goes hand in hand with love.
Where gratitude is,
Love must be found.
Where love is,
Gratitude must be found.
Gratitude is but an aspect of the love,
Which is the source of all creation.
God gives thanks to you,
His child,
For being what you are,
His own completion and the source of love along with him.
Our gratitude to God is one with his gratitude to you.
Love can walk no road except the way of gratitude.
In gratitude and with love we go.
We walk the way to God.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
