Giving thanks

I am a Canadian who grew up in the Bahamas. Thanksgiving was not a big deal there and Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October. When I married into the Allen family I had never really experienced a Thanksgiving dinner. I became part of a huge extended family; my husband has five older sisters and three younger brothers. I learned that holidays are about family and as chaotic as it can be today to have the entire clan including sixteen grandchildren, six great grand children, and two great, great grandchildren gathered together, it is blissful.

My favorite Thanksgiving was celebrated in Massachusetts with my mom and baby daughter, far from my new family, at the Option Institute and Fellowship. Our Living the Dream class had forged beautiful bonds over the eight week program and we gathered gratefully in the Kaufman’s amazing hilltop home Thanksgiving Day. Each participant and their guest had the opportunity to say out loud what they were grateful for. Some folks spoke at length quite eloquently, others expressed themselves haltingly in a few simple words. Everyone spoke from the heart, and many tears of joy were shared. I learned the incredible power of gratitude that day and was exhilarated to be alive and honored to be a participant.

Gratitude is the quickest way to connect back with source or the Universe. When I count my blessings of health, relationships, learning, adventure, and business I am once again able to see the bigger picture. When I am lost in the challenge of a daunting task, or unable to communicate clearly I often find myself out of the moment and feeling frustrated, unhappy, or angry. I’ve lost the moment and am living in the past or the future. Focusing on what I am grateful for brings me back to the moment and centers me with joy and bliss.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful opportunity to tell the people in our lives how grateful we are for them; even those people who are extremely challenging and help us to stretch and grow into fuller lives. Those folks are true gifts. How about we challenge ourselves to expand our circle beyond family, friends, and neighbors? What would our experience be if we included every person we encountered? The postman, cashier at the grocer, skateboarder in the park, the driver who cut you off. Imagine if this were the way we operated daily what kind of ripples of thanks-giving we could create and send out into the world.

Wishing you and your family a Thanksgiving filled with abundance and delight.

Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action. ~W.J. Cameron

Comments

[Margot Thompson]

Realizing that the people who challenge us the most are frequently the biggest gifts has been a running thread in my growth cycle recently. Your point about the inclusion of every person and every experience into our daily MO is intuitive and well-taken. Thanks for articulating it so clearly.

And as a fellow Canuck who's deeply affected by American holidays, Happy post-Thanksgiving - and Happy Thanksgiving-to-be. Aren't we lucky to be in a position where we're encouraged by circumstances to "formally" thank the universe twice?