Sat, Nov 28 Gratitude Reflection
Pay attention to darkness. What are the gifts that darkness brings to you?
Shade provides respite from glaring light or extreme heat. Night permits sleep and rejuvenation. Shadows reveal depth.
Darkness is, in some ways, the absence of light and color. In other ways, it is the blending of many hues to create a deeper, richer palette. Darkness may be identified as the fecundity of the womb and the slow nurturing of the dormant earth in winter. Darkness is the home of starlight, the natural element through which all light moves.
What form of darkness feels significant today? The cozy dark of a beloved corner where you can tuck up and retreat? The vaulting depths of a night sky? The eternal emptiness of the unlit ocean? The secret darkness of a hiding place where a treasure might await you?
In our faith tradition, darkness is that fertile state of being, across with the Spirit moved, originating the creative dynamics that resulted in genesis. Life sprang out of darkness.
Give thanks for darkness. . — Rev Gail
He reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what is in the darkness,
and light dwells with him. — Daniel 2:22
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
— Mary Oliver
You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.
— Rumi
Fri, Nov 27 Gratitude Reflection
Give thanks for laughter.
What makes you smile today? What tickles your sense of humor?
Laughter alleviates stress. Laughter expresses joy. Humor helps humans cope with the most challenging of circumstances. Laughter floods the body with good chemistry; it promotes healing and resilience.
Give thanks for what amuses, delights, or surprises you. Cherish a smile someone else shares with you, that invites you to smile back. Or the laugh that springs up from deep inside you when something strikes you in a whimsical way.
Take time to read the funny anecdote, look at the silly photo, or watch the slapstick video shared with you by friends. Give time and space to encourage laughter. Appreciate that people share such gifts with you.
As we’ve studied as a faith community, humor is holy. Laughter is a gift: a capacity that is part of how humans are designed. When you laugh, you send joy reverberating up to heaven. — Rev Gail
Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” —Genesis 21:6
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy. — Job 8:21
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
— Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile. — Elie Wiesel
We need laughter in our lives. Laughter is carbonated holiness. — Anne Lamott
Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. — Reinhold Niebuhr
Thurs, Nov 26 Gratitude Reflection (Thanksgiving Day)
Notice what is still and calm, without motion or activity. Give thanks for this aspect of your world.
A lake or pond, for instance, reflects like a mirror when still. It gives back the world to itself. It echoes and returns what is offered to it.
A boulder or stone ledge has no voice. Such rock scapes show traces of age and reveal the record of geological events via their exposed layers. Yet they remain mute, silent, and seemingly permanent. They are tangible, solid, and ever-present: a source of serenity and assurance.
What is still in your life? Calm? A place or way that is rooted, or centered, simply by its existence?
Give thanks for stillness, for calm. Appreciate the opportunity to pause all the motion and remain in one place. — Rev Gail
Be still, and know that I am God. —Psalm 46:10
He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. —Mark 4:39
The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed. — Maya Angelou
Resentment indicates we are still trying to fill the emptiness with something we think we deserve. Gratitude is the sign that God has filled the hole; indeed, that God has become the Whole in Whom we live, move, and have our being. – Steve Harper
Tue, Nov 24 Gratitude Reflection
Appreciate questions. Sometimes it is essential to dwell in the uncertainty of asking, the discomfort of not knowing. Sometimes we get a choice, as when we are students, and opt to learn. Other times, we are thrust into such situations, and must cope. Either way, this becomes a necessary skill: to be present to what we have not yet learned or thought, and to discover that there is much we do not yet understand.
To ask, or to be asked, is to become vulnerable. When you inquire, you enter into a reciprocal relationship, expressing your own need for information or education, admitting you need support or assistance to attain the answer you seek. You acknowledge that, one way or another, you are seeking. You also turn to someone else for guidance toward an answer.
Sometimes, simply by asking, you also discover that you know what is needed. That by articulating the question, you find insight within yourself.
At the same time, to ask a question, or to be asked, is to become strong. When you embrace the state of uncertainty and not-knowing, you become more comfortable with growing and learning. To ask a question is to become more connected, to open yourself to the resources of a network of relationships. To be asked a question is to be honored or perceived as someone who serves as a guide or mentor.
Appreciate that in the asking, or being asked, you do not have to know the answer. Sometimes it is best to acknowledge that you, too, will have to make inquiries in order to provide a solution or information. Or that if you are the one asking the question, be prepared with patience and humility, to wait for answers, or to receive only partial responses and incomplete understanding.
Give thanks for questions. — Rev Gail
To you, O God of my ancestors,
I give thanks and praise,
for you have given me wisdom and power,
and have now revealed to me what we asked of you,
for you have revealed to us what the king ordered.
— Daniel 2:23-24
There are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not: How do I escape? It is: How can I use this as something positive? ― Dalai Lama
GRATITUDE (excerpt) — Mary Oliver
What did you notice?
What did you hear?
When did you admire?
What astonished you?
What would you like to see again?
What was most tender?
What was most wonderful?
What did you think was happening?
Nov 22 Worship with Gratitude Focus
Worship Service
Message
JCC 112220 Gratitude for Next Chances from architect on Vimeo.
PRAYER of THANKSGIVING by Howard Thurman
Note: Thanks to Maren Tirabassi for posting this on her Facebook page. We shared it and reflected on it during two worship services.
Prayer of Thanksgiving by Howard Thurman, 1899–1981
Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.
I begin with the simple things of my days:
Fresh air to breathe,
Cool water to drink,
The taste of food,
The protection of houses and clothes,
The comforts of home.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!
I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:
My mother’s arms,
The strength of my father
The playmates of my childhood,
The wonderful stories brought to me from the lives
Of many who talked of days gone by when fairies
And giants and all kinds of magic held sway;
The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;
The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the
Eye with its reminder that life is good.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!
I finger one by one the messages of hope that awaited me at the crossroads:
The smile of approval from those who held in their hands the reins of my security;
The tightening of the grip in a simple handshake when I
Feared the step before me in darkness;
The whisper in my heart when the temptation was fiercest
And the claims of appetite were not to be denied;
The crucial word said, the simple sentence from an open
Page when my decision hung in the balance.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!
I pass before me the main springs of my heritage:
The fruits of labors of countless generations who lived before me,
Without whom my own life would have no meaning;
The seers who saw visions and dreamed dreams;
The prophets who sensed a truth greater than the mind could grasp
And whose words would only find fulfillment
In the years which they would never see;
The workers whose sweat has watered the trees,
The leaves of which are for the healing of the nations;
The pilgrims who set their sails for lands beyond all horizons,
Whose courage made paths into new worlds and far off places;
The saviors whose blood was shed with a recklessness that only a dream
Could inspire and God could command.
For all this I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!
I linger over the meaning of my own life and the commitment
To which I give the loyalty of my heart and mind:
The little purposes in which I have shared my loves,
My desires, my gifts;
The restlessness which bottoms all I do with its stark insistence
That I have never done my best, I have never dared
To reach for the highest;
The big hope that never quite deserts me, that I and my kind
Will study war no more, that love and tenderness and all the
inner graces of Almighty affection will cover the life of the
children of God as the waters cover the sea.
All these and more than mind can think and heart can feel,
I make as my sacrament of Thanksgiving to Thee,
[O God] in humbleness of mind and simplicity of heart.