summer

You can add enjoyment and meaning to any task by beginning each one with an awareness of the Divine Presence and by taking a moment of silence to be grateful for all you are able to do! Even the most difficult or mundane task can be done effortlessly and joyfully when approached with an attitude of thanksgiving. You are open to new creativity, new energy, and new inspiration. While working, focus on the Divine Presence, and see how the day goes by with ease and efficiency ... see how your work is blessed.

To learn to be grateful for each challenge, every heart, every tear, as well as for the unexpected joy and love you encounter, is a lesson of great growth. Every experience is a step closer to your eventual union with the Source of All Creation. Even a moment of expressing your gratitude for your own creation, your own eternal life each day brings you closer to the love and power within.

It is hard to explain to a loving person who can only give, what the refusal to receive does to would-be givers. If our gifts come out of the substance of who we are, to refuse our gifts is a rejection of our very self. At the same time, the turning away of a gift destroys the reciprocity of love. In place of mutuality, it sets up a hierarchy of love that makes the one who always receives and whose gifts are refused feel empty, powerless, and incompetent to love well, and so unable in turn to receive from the beloved with a grateful heart.

Each thing I have received, from Thee it came,
Each thing for which I hope, from Thy love it will come,
Each thing I enjoy, it is of Thy bounty,
Each thing I ask comes of Thy disposing.

Gratitude is the vision of the Giver, not of the gift. It comes from God. Hope and fear are like the two wings of a bird when it is flying straight to its destination. If one wing fails, its flight fails and if both fail, it dies. Hope is the vision of God in perfect beauty.

In all things may we be grateful, our hearts open to joy.
O Blessed one, speak to us within our hearts;
let your Voice be heard.
As we listen and heed your Word, joy will be our song of thanks.
As you lead us into the Silence, we become friends with solitude;
With trust in You, our lives become simple, with assurance
and peace leaving no room for fear.
All that we have is gift from You, O Beloved,
all that we are is Yours as well.
May we come to see that all we give to others,
we give to ourselves and You.

Best of all is to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song.

The hieroglyphy for peace is a simple loaf of bread set on a reed mat. It implies nurturing, simplicity, contentment, and rest, a prayer of thankfulness before a meal, an offering made.

The heart is contented because it receives what it needs and its needs are simple: silence, prayer, nourishment, presence. Simplicity of the heart keeps our aims and purposes in life clear... In peace we contemplate our lives and concentrate our energies on the true desires of the heart aligned with God.

We learn that patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to live each moment, knowing that we will be attended to by God.

True prayer expresses gratitude for what already is...

If my prayer life is strong and deeply rooted, then I will be better able to carry an equally heavy load of work, to bear the weight of our sisters' and brothers' pain and suffering, because it will not be me carrying the load, but God.