I’ve learned that an attitude of gratitude is transforming.  An attitude of gratitude truly helps me to remain joyful in good times and unfazed and peaceful during trying times.  I haven’t always possessed this attitude of gratitude.  Do I fall short at times?  Of course I do – but there is a sense of awareness that comes with the attitude that brings me back to my center much quicker than before.  The various practices I write about in this blog have helped me to cultivate the attitude of gratitude and keep me focused on the positive.  Meditation and contemplation on the Word have especially helped.

I read somewhere that the result of meditation on the body and mind can be likened to a movie screen – you can play different movies on the same screen and the screen itself remains unchanged.  In other words, through meditation we become centered and whole, so much so that NOTHING can change us, nothing can affect us!  Isn’t that encouraging?

Here’s a little something on gratitude I found (I couldn’t have said it better myself):

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance; chaos to order; confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.   – Melody Beattie

Click here to watch a moving video on gratitude shared in Vision and Viewpoint, a weekly e-newsletter by Joan Chittister one of my favorite spiritual writers.

I hope you are inspired to try meditating!  Peace be with you.

Recently I had the opportunity to go to Erie, PA to spend time in retreat at Mt. St. Benedict, a monastery of Benedictine nuns.  What a warm, gracious, welcoming community! My friends and I felt so blessed to have had an opportunity to share in their liturgies and to share meals and conversation with them.  While there,  I picked up a small book entitled God Speaks in Many Tongues by Joan Chittister.  In the book Joan Chittister takes 40 sacred texts and shares a meditation.  Here is one I found quite poignant:

Meditation 12

In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church where I kneel.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church that dissolve, that dissolve in God.

– Rabia, Sufi

Religion is the toxin that too often poisons the idea of the God in whose name we speak.

When we use religion to divide, to demean, to assert our own superiority, then we have made ourselves our religion.

Then God is shamed and, possibly, ignored.

Then no one with a right mind could possibly believe what we believe.

Good for them.

– Joan Chittister

We often  wonder why so many people have lost their sense of faith and no longer seek the comfort and direction of the Almighty.  This meditation challenges us to look in the mirror. What are we doing to welcome them back?  Are we displaying attributes of ourselves that will make people say: “I want what they have”?  If we aren’t, then we definitely should.