In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door.
Gratitude is here presented as more than a feeling, a virtue, or an experience; gratitude emerges as an attitude we can freely choose in order to create a better life for ourselves and for others. The Nigerian Hausa put it this way: Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.
The experience of love and the experience of death destroy the illusion of our self-sufficiency. The two are closely connected, and to become fully human we must experience both of them.
Order is the disposition of things in which each gives to the other its room, its own proper place. That’s the external aspect. The other is that order that springs from love: there’s no other way of establishing order except through love.
There is no one harder to live with than an artist. Therefore an artist is a real gift because he or she raises the sanctity of everyone else in the community.
Joy is that kind of happiness that does not depend on what happens.
Any change in attitude changes the way one sees the world, and this in turn changes the way one acts.
We can’t really waste our time; we have to see that we are all in the same boat and that different religious traditions point in the same direction, and now let’s get moving together, doing something for peace.
Only gratefulness, in the form of limitless openness for surprise, lays hold of the fullness of life in hope.
If you’re really mind-full, and if you underline that aspect of fullness, wholeness, or wholeheartedness, it reveals the gift character of everything.
The challenge is to learn to respond immediately to whatever it is time for. Not to wonder whether you have time for it or whether you like it, but simply to respond when it is time.
Truth is something we discover by carrying it out. It is not a list of statements, but a direction of life.
Can you be grateful for everything? No. But in every moment.
Meaning springs from belonging.
At a certain pitch of religious experience, the heart just wants to sing; it breaks into song. Paradoxically, you could say when the silence finds its fullness, it comes to word.
Is the relationship between God and Jesus Christ not unique? Of course it is. But so is yours. The relationship between God and every human being is unique and irreplaceable – in ever-new variations of the Christ theme.
True gratefulness is courage to give thanks for a gift before unwrapping it.
Now think of a situation in which something becomes meaningful to you. What is there to grasp? What is there to keep under control? That is not the idea. You will find yourself using expressions in which you are perfectly passive or at least more passive. “Responsive” is really the word, but you are more passive than in a situation in which you are accomplishing a purpose. You will say, “This really did something to me.
After all, how could I be a person if Ultimate Reality were impersonal?
The gift within every gift is always opportunity.
Life is given to us; every moment is given. The only appropriate response therefore is gratefulness.