What Are YOU Grateful For?

HAPPY

THANKS-GIVING!

This week I stopped at the Whole Foods Coop to pick up eggs. While looking out the windows I noticed these "gratitude leaves" affixed to the wall. Patrons of the Coop had been invied to share what they are gratefull for. I thought their sentiments worth sharing here. 

I myself am grateful for my family, friends, health,

God's mercy, memories, laughs, libraries, love and you. 

WHAT ARE YOU GRATEFUL FOR?

The Power of Gratitude

Gratitude... it's like magic.

Yesterday I was reading a book in which at the end of one chapter the authors gave readers an assignment to make a list of 25 things they were grateful for. I decided to do this and found out something. Nearly the entire list was people, people who have enriched my life in a multitude of ways, family, friends, relatives, and eventually a few things like our home, Susie's garden, a career in which I could use my gifts, etc.

While writing this, other people keep coming to mind, people who helped me or cared about me or encouraged me, including teachers, coaches, and even a few strangers.  I'm also grateful that  I'm not dead yet. And overarching the whole is a sense of gratitude to God for this gift of life.

These thoughts prompted me to find quotes on gratitude to inspire you as well. Many of the names are familiar and some surprising. May you find something here to lift your heart and your spirit in these turbulent, unsettling times.

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
--Cicero

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."
--John F. Kennedy

"When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."
--G.K. Chesterton

"I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude."
--Brene Brown

"Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty."
--Doris Day

Cape May, NJ --1999

"Nine-tenths of wisdom is appreciation. Go find somebody's hand and squeeze it, while there's time."
--Dale Dauten

"Thankfulness is the tune of angels."
--Edmund Spenser

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."
--Robert Brault

"When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around."
--Willie Nelson

"Gratitude and attitude are not challenges; they are choices."
--Robert Braathe

"Gratitude... It can change everything, almost like magic."
--Kat Senn

"If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get."
--Frank A. Clark

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."
--William Arthur Ward

"If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily."
--Gerald Good

And finally, this verse from Paul's letter to the Philippians, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything give thanks." Words that we especially need today as much as ever.

Thank you for reading. 

Much To Be Grateful For

We take so much for granted. Hence there is value each year on Thanksgiving day to reflect on how much we have to be thankful for. Friends, family, loved ones, a home, a job. It is a good tradition to make a list, to write it down. Writing forces you to clarify even further, and this process makes you even more appreciative.

But if you are an American, when you have finished your list you will have still not recorded some things that are so basic, so part of our lives, yet we take them for granted. One way to deepen your appreciation for how good you have it is to visit an impoverished Third World nation.

We did not do such a thing this week, but we did go there in pictures when the son of a friend of ours shared photos from his recent nine day trip to a slum called Cite Soleil outside Port au Prince. Having lived in Puerto Rico and Mexico, I have seen slums. But I'd not seen anything that closely compared to this (except perhaps some very poor sections of Mexico City.)

The shanty towns stretched far as your eye could see. No yards, no electricity, no running water, disease infested stenchwater and muck all through the streets, makeshift homes of corrugated steel and miscellaneous scrap materials, and death. One in four children never see their fifth birthday. Reality is grim, and hope is difficult to imagine.

Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. For a bed, many people sleep on cardboard. AIDS is rampant. Food is lacking. And for most, even if you want to work there are no jobs. What is there to look forward to?

Without electricity, if you had as cell phone, there would be no way to re-charge the battery. No microwave ovens. No way to read this blog post because you would not have internet access, or a computer. Was that a mosquito bite or a malaria infection you just received?

The mission of The Haiti Orphans Project is to improve the lives of orphaned children in Haiti by providing medical care, access to education and equal access to basic services. If you wish to do more than "give thanks" you can visit their website and see what a few handfuls of good people are doing out on the front lines where poverty reigns.

http://www.haitiorphansproject.org/haiti/english/home88.html