Inspiration
Sharing Thanksgiving
By Jen Redmond
Inspiration
Thanksgiving is really a season. Sure, on Thanksgiving Day we in the United States gather with family and friends for the traditional turkey feast. We remember our roots as a country built on freedom and hope. But doesn't thankfulness fill your thoughts for more than a single day? Do you wish you could share your gratitude for the simplest of blessings?
Whether times are good or bad, the anticipation of Thanksgiving and then Christmas fast upon its heels should keep the blessings we have been granted at the forefront of our thoughts. Yet some of us are suffering from great loss, indeed. Loved ones may have passed on, financial worries may consume us. Family issues can bury our energy and our will.
Still, there is a blessing in the very breath we breathe, in the freedom to think and worship and speak as we feel inspired. Cherish that essence of Thanksgiving and pass it on as a blessing.
A friend gave me the most wonderful gift so appropriate to this holiday. To Bless the Space Between Us, by John O'Donohue, is a book of blessings in the Celtic spiritual tradition. I have absorbed every blessing within its pages and the poetry is sheer bliss. For a review of this book check out www.spiritualityandpractice.com.
"What is a blessing?" the author asks. "A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen." O'Donohue explains, "When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time."
Try to take five minutes in this season of thanks to open a window for someone else. Invoke your own blessings, inspired by God, for friends, for family and for a world in need. Your blessing can be as simple as a prayer in the silence of your heart or as tangible as a loving wish penned on paper.
And to you, our friends and readers, we offer the most sincere thanks. We pray that your blessings are abundant, your spirit grateful, and your heart at peace this Thanksgiving Day and beyond.
Thanksgiving Prayer
Give us this day our daily bread, O Father in heaven, and grant that we who are filled with good things from Your open hand may never close our hearts to the hungry, the homeless and the poor; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
-the Abbey of New Clairvaux, Vina, California
