As we celebrate the last week of November, the last month of Autumn and the end of another year; it’s appropriate for us to give thanks for the many days, weeks, months, seasons and years of our lives together, wherever we are. As a nation, the United States even has a holiday, holy day, every year at this time to give thanks with gratitude,  appreciation and hopefully some sense of humility and understanding. With significant gratitude, we shift to a higher frequency which enables us to attract better lives for all. 

As I sit here at my desk two days before the ‘official‘ Thanksgiving Day of our national holiday, now followed by ‘Black Friday’, a national consumer day of materialistic buying frenzy: I wonder how much gratitude, humility and understanding there truly is. I wonder about the thankful hearts that open their eyes to the multitude of blessings and those that close their eyes to the multitude of inconvenient truths.  I wonder about the poor, sick, hungry, homeless, refugees, women, men and children that give thanks for the hope of a miracle that will set them free. I wonder about any new understandings.

Next week we enter December, the first month of Winter, the Advent of a new season, the Jewish Hanukkah, the Christian Christmas and the Winter Solstice where darkness turns into light and a whole new series of possibilities and potentialities emerge. In all of this and more, we have a legion of opportunities to give thanks, express extreme gratitude, open our hearts and change seemingly ordinary events into appreciating New Life. Here we can turn jobs into joy, ordinary days into thanksgivings, loss into love.

In the Saint John tradition of Christianity, with its emphasis on the Inner Light in all persons, the essential goodness in all creation and the divine energy residing in all the earth; we acknowledge the spiritual within the material. We become aware that all created things carry within them the grace and goodness of the Divine. We recognize that gratitude, humility, understanding and blessing are all natural and normal outcomes. We become thanksgiving transmitters and receivers. . . .

As we end this season and begin the next, let us open the eyes of our hearts to the goodness that’s deep within us and the whole of creation. Let us express overwhelming gratitude, humility and understanding to reunite everything we can that is divided. Let us be reconciled to all the broken and alienated parts of ourselves as well as those of others. Let us discover the goodness that’s deep within ourselves, one another and the whole of creation. Let us continually say the ‘best prayer anyone can say’ a thousand times a day. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You!!!!

• Over the next days and weeks, make a commitment to say ‘Thank You’ quietly and or aloud whenever you awaken to it: When you’re getting dressed, driving your car, dealing with a problem, getting upset, having a positive thought, giving or receiving a criticism or an affirmation and on and on. Awareness is key here. . . . Thank You!
• Notice, in your day to day routines and engagements, the Divine energy residing wherever you are in anything you focus on. See into the heart of the matter and know that what you call God is there, here, everywhere. . . . Thank You!
• Become aware of the passing seasons of your life every day this month. Discover what Blessings are present within your days, your interactions, your reflections, your thoughts, relationships, words, actions and, Give Thanks. . . . Thank You!