Gratitude

[Guest guest]

Hello beloveds,

I ran across this today and felt led to share it.

Love.

 

Instructions on Gratitude

by David Steindl-Rast, OSB

 

Hold someone's hand to spread calm.

Whatever is given is a gift—even the most difficult experiences and

traumatic events can be seen as Wake-Up calls, and therefore gifts.

And the appropriate response to any gift is gratitude. In the depth of

our heart, we can turn fear into courageous trust, agitation and

confusion into stillness, isolation into a sense of belonging,

alienation into love, and irrational reaction into Common Sense.

The creative imagination of gratefulness will suggest to each one

of us how to go about this task. Here are five small gestures that

can help you show gratitude and stay awake.

 

1. All gratitude expresses trust. Suspicion will not even recognize

a gift as gift: who can prove that it isn't a lure, a bribe, a trap?

Gratefulness has the courage to trust and so overcomes fear. The air

has been electrified by fearfulness these days, a fearfulness fostered

and manipulated by politicians and the media. There lies our greatest

danger: fear perpetuates violence. Mobilize the courage of your heart,

as the truly awake ones are doing. Say one word today that gives a

fearful person courage.

 

2. Because gratitude expresses courage, it spreads calm. Calm of

this kind is quite compatible with deep emotions. Join the truly

compassionate ones who are calm and strong. From the stillness of your

heart's core reach out. Calmly hold someone's hand today and spread calm.

 

3. When you are grateful, your heart is open—open towards others,

open for surprise. During big wake-up calls in your life, or in our

collective lives, we often see remarkable examples of openness:

strangers helping strangers often in heroic ways. Others turn away,

isolate themselves, dare even less than at other times to look at each

other. Violence begins with isolation. Break this pattern. Make

contact with people whom you normally ignore—eye-contact at least—with

the agent at the toll booth, the parking lot attendant, someone on the

elevator. Look a stranger in the eyes today and realize that there are

no strangers.

 

4. You can feel either grateful or alienated, but never both at the

same time. Gratefulness drives out alienation; there is not room for

both in the same heart. When you are grateful you know that you belong

to a network of give-and-take and you say " yes " to that belonging.

This " yes " is the essence of love. You need no words to express it; a

smile will do to put your " yes " into action. Don't let it matter to

you whether or not the other one smiles back. Give someone an

unexpected smile today and so contribute your share to peace on earth.

 

5. What your gratefulness does for yourself is as important as what

it does for others. Gratefulness boosts your sense of belonging; your

sense of belonging in turn boosts your Common Sense. Your " yes "

to belonging attunes you to the common concerns shared by all human

beings. We have only one enemy, our common enemy: violence. Common

Sense tells us: we can stop violence only by stopping to act

violently; war is no way to peace. Listen to the news today and put at

least one item to the test of Common Sense.

 

**Brother David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk who has spent the

last 35 years building bridges between religious traditions. He is the

author of Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer and other books.

[Guest guest]

This was wonderful! Thank you!

Deb