A few days more and the curtain close on 2016. We tend to make a list, at least in our minds of all the complaints and things gone wrong.
To develop a grateful heart we need to be thanking God whenever we have the chance and all through our lives. Gratefulness is an alternative attitude to all of life. It enables us to see the world right side up. The grateful heart is a manifestation of one’s true self. Everything I have is a gift. Other people are sent to me as a blessing. At its worst the ego sees others as potential threats or competitors. At its best the ego takes everything for granted. Nothing side lines the ego more effectively than a grateful heart.
To be a saint says the spiritual writer Ronald Rolheiser is to be fuelled by gratitude nothing more nothing less and, according to Gustav Gutirez only one kind of person can be a blessing someone with a grateful heart.
At the end of our journey of 2016 and as we walk the path of life in pursuit of meaning , making us ready to face the challenges and to live our lives more faithfully may all life experiences of 2016 and a stepping into a new journey of 2017 help us to learn the art of uncovering the gift and make life meaningful to us and others, help us to realise that any experience good or bad is not what happens to us but what we do with what happens to us. It is marvelous and wonderful; there are people who really love us. There is a world that in spite of all its wars and sins is still a most beautiful place in which to live. Lets live it to the best of our abilities to place oneself in the middle of what Tagore calls the stream of life, it is to feel a new power and perspective and to find a heartening confidence in the current of one’s destiny. There is nothing without Gods light and lightness.
May we emerge as people who can do greater justice to who we are, and who we can become. We are meant to be channels of grace, joy and peace enriching human living. Peace does lie in the hands of all of us so does a humane world , how we choose to show up in the world every day and the accountability of the words we speak, where we choose to focus our energies and the feelings we carry within our hearts. As we step forward into a brand-new year of 2017, we will all be armed with the knowledge that the power to change our world does not lie in any elected official, or anything external, but it always lay within us.
Walk on in courage and hope. What we give we get back in return that applies both hurts and blessings. Unless you learn to value time you will never learn to value life. Time is the greatest of resources.
In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
