“Gratitude makes sense of
our past, brings peace for the present, and creates/cultivates a vision for
tomorrow” ~ Melody Beattie
This week, we are cultivating
and curating a practice of gratitude, thanksgiving, and living with
appreciation. Melody Beattie’s quote
invites us to look back with eyes of appreciation. Rewind and review the last month. What gratitude stirs and swirls within
you? I am grateful to the staff at
Florida State University who hosted the orientation and led sessions that were
helpful to us as parents about to drop our son off at college in a few weeks. I am grateful that we traveled there and back
on roads I did not pave and don’t physically maintain. I give thanks for food that nourishes me, but
that I don’t grow. I give thanks for a
church where people listen and seek to embody love for each other. I give thanks for our staff who share their
gifts and shine their lights. I give
thanks for YOU, dear reader! You faithfully
read and comment on these meditations. I
give thanks for my family who inspire and fill my heart with love. I give thanks for worship on Sunday,
conversations, meetings, and holy moments of honoring the lives of our
saints. Suddenly, July looks a little
different.
This does, as Beattie
says, give peace for this present moment.
I know the world today is broken and bruised. I am not just trying to put frosting on
a burnt cake to serve to you. I
am inviting you from dualistic – either/or thinking – where we operate at
extremes of best or worst ever!!!! To a
non-dualistic, paradoxical, beautiful tension way of being that can hold
lightly the good and bad. Yes, the war
in Ukraine breaks my heart. Yes, the
polarization in our political climate causes pain and the discrimination in our
country hurts so many. Yes, there is so
much that we long and want to make better.
And at the same time each day, God is at work bringing forth beauty and
repair and inviting me as a collaborator.
As Richard Rohr says, “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of
the good.” The best way to be light is
to shine light, not just keep turning off the light with our cynicism and
passing along pain.
Which is what Beattie is
saying. You are creating and cultivating
tomorrow. You are writing the future
when you think everything is going to you know where in a handbasket OR
let your light shine in brave, beautiful, bold ways. Some won’t like it. Some trolls on Twitter will try to steal your
joy because they have no joy. You either
accept their script to live from, or cling to the gospel script of good news
that shows us another way.
May gratitude today help
you see the good that brought you safe this far, wraps around you this morning,
and will lead you throughout this day and this week. With thanksgiving for YOU, Amen.
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