Radically Grateful Everyday

My mother turned 96 on Nov. 23. She wouldn’t use this term, but she is a person who is truly “radically grateful” everyday for her life. She tells and shows me that all the time. Yes, she occasionally feels sorry for herself and as you might expect, her 96 years are riddled with ups, downs, joy, sadness and everything in between.

She’s taught me a lot. Perhaps her most generous and meaningful gift is observing the relationship she has with life. She is simply and wonderfully grateful without a sense of entitlement that somehow she deserves it.

The following quote from Fr. Richard Rohr’s newsletter captures her spirit:

“It is important that we ask, seek, and knock to keep ourselves in the right relationship with life itself. Life is a gift, totally given to us without cost, every day of it, and every part of it. A daily and chosen attitude of gratitude will keep our hands open to expect that life, allow that life, and receive that life at ever-deeper levels of satisfaction—but never to think we deserve it. Those who live with such open and humble hands receive life’s ‘gifts, full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over into their lap’ (Luke 6:38). In my experience, if we are not radically grateful every day, resentment always takes over. Moreover, to ask for ‘our daily bread’ is to recognize that it is already being given. Not to ask is to take our own efforts, needs, and goals—and ourselves—far too seriously.”

Thanksgiving is an important holiday for inviting us to consider being radically grateful for life and what it serves everyday.

I genuinely believe that I am not entitled to anything. What I do have to offer however, and fully under my control, is love, forgiveness, and generosity. When I behave that way, grace emerges. When I behave in an entitled, ego-driven way, I get lost, take myself too seriously, behave poorly and wonder aimlessly.

As I give Thanksgiving it includes humbly asking for my daily bread, and recognizing that my life has been given to me as a sacred trust.

Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for your kind support and encouragement.

Lorne & Garrett

















































































































































































































































































































































 

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