“i thank You God for this most amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”

– E. E. Cummings

Spending one day a year in gratitude is not enough, although I am glad that Thanksgiving is a national holiday. I want to learn to come to every moment of my life, especially the most challenging ones, with a prayer of thanks. I want to offer myself up as a vehicle of service in repayment for all the amazing gifts that life offers – and that often go without notice in our hurried days.

I would have gratitude be my teacher, that it teach me the comforts of a heart cracked open and a willingness to devote myself to a cause greater than my own contentment. I want to discover over and over how happiness and success ensue from my discipline to live gratefully.

I am coming to know the truth of how giving and receiving are one in the same. But still sometimes it is a thought that I can’t feel. Instead of being driven by what remains undone or undone by what has come apart, I want my heart to go first for the joy that comes from just doing it.

Maybe a gratitude quest is the next pursuit. Truly the greatest blessings of this life are within us, and the grateful moment is when you are content right where you are. Today is a good practice for all  of us.