Dear friends,
Welcome to this meditation where I invite you to sit in grateful appreciation.
Grateful appreciation for all the benefits of your life triggered by just thinking of the contents of your wardrobe,
The clothes you wear,
Even the simple socks on your feet.
So to begin I invite you to relax,
Breathe in in your own time and as you breathe in remember to be aware of the fact that you are breathing in.
In the same way when breathing out just become aware of your breathing out.
Today we look around in gratitude remembering the thought from Maestro Eckhart,
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you it would be enough.
Let's begin by noticing ourselves here in this very place.
Notice what we are wearing,
Where the clothes came from,
Who made them,
The materials that went into their making,
How the materials came about and how they were made into these clothes that are on us today,
How they were brought to us.
Let's pause for one minute and give thanks.
You you Welcome back.
We think of the people involved in the design,
Manufacture and transport of the clothes we wear.
How did we select these clothes?
How did we pay for them?
How did we earn the money to pay for them?
Which brings us to the question of our job,
Our education,
The support of our parents and their struggles and their care for us.
Let's pause again and give thanks.
You you Welcome back.
Who do we thank for all this?
Some call it God,
Some nature,
Some the universe.
Some admit they just don't know.
None of us really understand the miracle of existence,
But all of us will benefit from stopping and giving thanks.
William Herbert Carruth,
Who lived from 1859 to 1924,
Was a poet and a professor of literature.
In one of his poems entitled Each in His Own Tongue,
He describes our search for the object of our thanks and this is what he says,
A far mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian and caves where the cavemen dwell,
Then a sense of law and beauty and a face torn from the cloud.
Some call it evolution and others call it God.
A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite tender sky,
The ripe rich tint of the cornfields and the wild geese sailing high and all over upland and lowland,
The charm of the golden rod.
Some of us call it autumn and others call it God.
Like tides on a crescent sea beach when the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings come welling and surging in,
Come from the mystic ocean whose rim no foot has trod.
Some of us call it longing and others call it God.
A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood,
Socrates drinking the hemlock and Jesus on the road and millions who humble and nameless,
The straight hard pathway plod.
Some call it consecration and others call it God.
Words from William Herbert Carruth.
We are surrounded by benefits beyond measure every minute of every single day.
Even the mindful putting on of our socks and shoes in the morning can leave us feeling thankful for all the benefits of our lives.
If a pair of socks can trigger such feelings of gratitude,
Think of the happiness that could be ours if we stopped in the course of our days to notice all that is given to us minute by minute.
All that research shows that an attitude of gratitude produces feelings of happiness.
Gratitude is the mother and father and sister and brother of happiness.
But we don't just want to be grateful in order to be happy.
We want to be grateful because gratitude is the only response that is appropriate when we consider all our benefits.
Brother David Steindl Rast,
A Benedictine monk,
Reminds us that gratefulness is the inner gesture of giving meaning to our life by receiving life as a gift.
And Maya Angelou tells us,
Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer.
So may you rest tonight and every night on your pillow of gratitude.
And for all your tomorrows,
In the words of John O'Donoghue,
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
Namaste.
