gratitude3
We are on the verge of Thanksgiving — a time when most in our culture press the PAUSE button to acknowledge the many blessings that we enjoy and to express our gratitude.
Traditional celebrations are being altered by many in hopes of staying safe during the pandemic. And although we may be separated from family and friends, they remain close in our minds and hearts.
My list of things to be grateful for remains virtually unchanged from year to year. If you have followed this blog, this may ring familiar.
To the SOURCE of all that is, I offer thanks for the breadth of life, my senses and faculties, mobility, health and the well-being that I enjoy living in this incredible universe. I am grateful for my mind which is free to express its creativity while contemplating my purpose in life and my relationship to the creative force from which it came and to which it will return.I am grateful for the love that abounds — beloved family and dear friends. Each day is enriched with the experiences that I share with them. I am mindful that without them my life would be absent sooooo much joy.

Also on my list are Mother Gaia’s gifts of beauty, habitability and sustenance including food and water the value of which cannot be overstated.  It includes the over arching circumstances within which we live:  freedom, peace, security, and democracy and ensuing benefits created for opportunity, prosperity, comfort, abundance. In contrast are daily reminders that my blessings are not enjoyed universally. Disease, hunger, violence and natural disasters rob millions of life. War, political and civil unrest pre-empt peaceful co-existence. Repressive regimes cultivate oppressions and produce conditions that result in victimization and exploitation. These reminders of the suffering of millions who are denied the opportunity to share the bounty that is common place for so many of us intensifies my gratitude for blessings!

I am so very grateful that I have come to appreciate that serenity and joy don’t depend on any of these external circumstances of my life. Inner peace, happiness and bliss are products of the inner world. They are available to those who go inward, who find stillness and silence amidst busy and hectic lives; those who are in touch with their inner self; those who know that SOURCE is the ultimate nourishment and bounty.

After decades on life’s fast-paced treadmill I have found the entrance to the interior world — the quiet space where one can connect to SOURCE. My time there tops my gratitude list. As you enter into the season of celebration and sharing, I hope that you will carve out time to enter this space, to dive into the stillness and while doing so discover the serenity of your soul. Take time to meander the inner world knowing that it is the place of eternal peace.

During this season of gratitude, I hope you will experience the peace, joy, harmony and bliss that is the INFINITE!

Joanne

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