Category: Gratitude

Gratitude is a gift

1/1/2025

I just posted this on my cottagebythesea.net blog but want to include it here, because gratitude is such an important part of my faith practice--my morning prayer time. Gratitude gets me out of my ego. I'm grateful for all the blessings I have received. And that includes positive changes in thought, word or deed of mine.

Yesterday, December 31st, I wrote my last gratitude for 2024: #4252 "Jessie and Priscilla." I could have written 'good health, good sleep, good energy, good weather, but I didn't. I wrote the names of two good friends who had been in touch with me on my birthday, one through a letter, the other with flowers, and both by phone calls. Each of these friends are close to 30 years younger than I. I was a teacher to one, and a church friend to the other when she was a young mother.
The number seven represents completion or perfection. I do my best to write 7 'gratitudes' each day. I miss some days, but I'm pretty consistent about this daily practice. Sometimes I have to think for a while, but when the list is complete, I know it is perfect.

Thank you God!

1/28/2023

We know about starting everything with gratitude. St. Paul begins many of his letters giving thanks. Gratitude is a popular idea these days. But, I forget. It’s not that I’m not grateful; it’s not that I’m complaining, although that does happen. No, I forget because I am busy going onto the next thing, the next activity that fills my life.,
Right now, as I sit in the Angel Room writing, I glance up at a sign in my window. I wrote it; I put it there. Thank you God!

Thanksgiving from Sr. Vassa

11/26/2020

“Then as he entered a certain village, there met him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. And they lifted up their voices and said, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ So when he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. So Jesus answered and said, ‘Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?’ And he said to him, ‘Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.’” (Lk 17: 12-19)

This Thanksgiving, when we all have learned how it feels to be “lepers,” who must “stand afar off” from one another, the above-quoted passage about a healed “leper” giving thanks to the Lord speaks to me in a new way. Because I’m alive and well amidst a global pandemic, I feel like a healed leper with a choice: I can either be grateful and give thanks to the Lord, or I can do the opposite.

This 2020 I choose to be grateful for myself and anyone reading this: 1. For being alive; 2. For the medical professionals who care for the sick and dying amongst us at this time; 3. For the scientists who have been working on producing vaccines, to bring us out of this pandemic; and 4. For those amongst the civil and church authorities who are making oft-unpopular decisions to keep us safe. Coffee with Sister Vassa

Daily gratitudes

10/12/2019

I’ve expressed many prayers of gratitude in the past few weeks: for the healthy arrival of a friend’s granddaughter; for the comforting passage of a friend onto hospice; for God leading me to visit a friend in the hospital; for my parents (married October 12, 1935.
      There is the early morning start of the day between my husband and me: What are you grateful for this morning?
      There are the daily gratitudes I learned from my mother: Every morning I thank God for friends and family, my health, my life, and my faith.
     The challenge is to keep expressing gratitude throughout the day, which is easier to do when I start the day being thankful.

Worshipping at Greater Framingham Community Church

7/22/2019

The church I attend has no air conditioning, so with yesterday’s 95 degree forecast, Sunday service was held on line. Instead, I chose to worship at the Greater Framingham Community Church. Gfccnet.org
. And worship I did. I’m still in awe of how praise and thanksgiving was front and center of the entire service. Praising God and thanking God through the music of a live band and singing, and through word expressed by the pastor and the ‘amens’ from the congregants. But it was more than that. Gratitude encompassed everything—it took over.
     What I’m trying to convey here is beyond words. Too many words don’t help; in fact they hinder. John 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” One word, gratitude; one word, love; one word, Jesus.
      There is much more to say about yesterday, but not now, not yet, maybe not ever. Perhaps I’ve said it all in the one word that was at the core of yesterdays service. I trust that when I go return there to worship on another Sunday I will receive the same Word. But I’ll go again, just to hear it and be refreshed (they have air conditioning).
      (I didn’t take any photos because I went as a worshipper, not as a tourist or blogger.)

Gratitude first--always

7/13/2019

A friend’s husband is back in the hospital again. Yes, again, after many previous stays during the past few years. My friend continues to be grateful for all the good times and prays that God will do what’s best for him. To be more precise, she knows that God is doing what’s best. Her prayer is that this will be apparent to all. What faith.
I’m reminded once again that gratitude is the core of faith. When we start prayer with gratitude, we surrender to God; we start with Thy will be done. From there we can humbly offer our petitions.

Gratitude for everyone~

11/23/2018

I wrote the following for this blog but when finished, I realized it was right for my cottagebythesea blog as well. This often happens because it is the same me writing for both. On this blog, however, I spell out my faith in more concrete terms.
     The Psalms in the Hebrew Bible are steeped in gratitude. Most of the epistles in the New Testament start with gratitude. In Jesus’ message of love he tells us love and judgments are not companions.

     On this day after Thanksgiving I could be talking in my usual way about gratitude--what we’re grateful for, what we ‘should’ be grateful for, personal graitudes, and gratitudes for the world. I’m all in for these kinds of expressions, but today I’m thinking of the power of stating gratitude in positive terms. For example, “How wonderful we can get out for a walk,” instead of, “Well at least it is not raining.”
     Speaking positively keeps me away from making judgments. I more apt to see people for who they are, rather than who they are not.
   So, on this day after Thanksgiving, I am grateful for friends and family just as they are, and for the food just as it was prepared and served.

Praying for gratitude for all

8/18/2018

This month my life has been filled with two visits with family to Lake Dunmore in Vermont. Prayers of gratitude came easily, and it doesn’t hurt that I was brought up by parents who by example taught gratitude. Grateful (lucky) me!
I know that life doesn’t just offers joys such as being at a beautiful lake with family; sadness comes and goes for all of us. But what about the people who have never had a lake to sit by? Families fleeing terror, children separated from parents, people living with malnutrition, disease, hunger? I struggle with all of this. I know I don’t deserve what I have at the expense of others; I know others don’t deserve what’s going for them.
What can I do? I don’t want to use my age as an excuse for not being an activist, but I can use it to pray that people the world over will be offered beautiful reasons to be grateful. We older folks have the time to pray, and the life-experience to believe deep in our souls that prayer makes a difference.

Holding on, letting go

7/18/2018

    In Very Grateful, the memoir I wrote about my mom and me during the last two years of her life, I talked about ‘holding on’ and ‘letting go.’I held on to her and then slowly let her go; she held on to life and then slowly let go. Since her death almost seven years ago, I continue to hold on to all that she was to me and to everyone who knew her.
     Life is full of good things to holding onto, as well as bad ones. The challenge is to know which is which and then to muster the courage either to let goor hold on.
     I try to hold onto anything I’m grateful for. Today I am holding onto this beautiful day, the book I’m reading, my family and friends, my church, and family time in Vermont in a few weeks.
     I try to let go of anything that gives me worry that is beyond my control. Today, for example, I am letting go of the stressful news, while at the same time considering how I can contribute to making a positive change.

A God moment

4/25/2018

     The other day I visited a mother and daughter in rehab facility. (That’s all you need to know for this story; the details aren’t necessary and in all my posts I do my best to protect peoples privacy and keep their confidences.)
     At the end of my visits we always pray. I ask them what we should pray about and the mother suggested all the caregivers in the world and especially the ones helping them. I put the words to prayer and we ended with The Lord’s Prayer.
     As I was leaving the mother said to me, “Now, you take care of yourself.”
I was moved to reply, “Thank you so much for mothering me.” We looked at each other; the moment was complete.
    What a God moment for me! I felt my own mother’s mothering. My mother wouldn’t have said it exactly like that, but the spirit was similar. Very grateful.