Nov 3: GRATITUDE Daily Devotional
Psalm 100:4 Enter G-d’s gates with thanksgiving and G-d’s courts with praise; give thanks to G-d and praise G-d’s name.
Let this scripture invite you into the fundamental practice of giving thanks. Pay attention each day to something about which you are thankful.
Prompt: Perhaps take time at the beginning or end of each day to list at least three things which you appreciate.
Song: Thank You by Led Zeppelin: https://youtu.be/12KbOAc8vmk?si=vAR6MGLqHwSuujv7
Led Zeppelin – Thank You
Sabbath Poem 10. — Wendell Berry
Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.
When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.
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Thursday, November 5: Gratitude Reflection
Let us give thanks for windows and doors. For physical thresholds that mark our arrivals and departures, our comings and goings. Sometimes they’re more than a knob and a hinge: they’re portals of transition. They demarcate the places we begin or end, they designate both routine movements and life-altering journeys.
At such portals, we leave something behind. Imagine something new. Say farewell. Anticipate hello.
Doorways and windows are gateways and portals. They launch us. Send us off. And welcome us.
They transport us from one environment to another, one state of being to another: inside to outside, human-made to natural, domestic to foreign, private to public, personal to professional, learning to living, living to work, work to play.
At doorways and windows, people move, look, and listen. They permit entry and protect against access. Sometimes they’re simple openings, alternately they involve barriers with locks for security and privacy.
Through doors and windows, we experience many states. Opening. Closing. Revealing. Hiding. Accessing. Retreating. Locking. Liberating.
Give thanks for what a door might offer or a window give. Let us appreciate these points of transition. —Rev Gail
Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy. — Psalm 56
Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. — Psalm 100
However, gratitude is not just an expression of good manners; it’s a doorway to higher consciousness.
— Chopra Center
Praying (excerpt) — Mary Oliver
… just pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.