GRADITUDE

"WORRY DOES NOT EMPTY TOMORROW OF ITS SORROWS, IT EMPTIES TODAY OF IT'S STRENGTH"
Corrie Ten Boom

These words were written during WWII. While the Nazis were occupying her country this brave Dutch woman did the unthinkable; she hid the Ann Frank family (and others) in her attic. The punishment for this act was death. Not just her death, but the death of her entire family. They, like many others would have ended up in the death camps.

When I was growing up in the Netherlands, my father kept a small book with black and white pictures of "inmates" at various concentration camps throughout Europe. The pictures consisted of men, women and children in varying stages of dying. Some pictures depicted huge mountains of the dead, others depicted mass graves filled to the top with the dead. Their bodies looked more like skeletons with some skin pulled tight over their protruding ribs. Their faces all depicted the horrors of starvation and suffering.

My dad would say to me "whenever you feel like you don't have enough - look at those faces carefully, and then count your blessings for all the good in your life". I was five years old - but I got it.

In some families, this sort of visual display of suffering would have seemed out of place, but since my father had been a resistance fighter this became a normal topic of conversation in our daily lives, and so did the issue of gratitude.

When we immigrated to America, there were lean times when my family couldn't pay the light bill. I would come home from school to find my mother cooking on our gas stove surrounded by candle light. When I would ask her why there was no electricity, she would say "we won't have lights until payday, but we are having a party tonight, all of the immigrants are coming,
I want us all to come together and be grateful for each other and what we have." Gratitude was more powerful than any loss, including the loss of our electricity!


In the past several weeks we have been barraged with news about Wall Street and the losses that occurred. Our focus has been on what we don't have, what we could lose, or how much we were worth last year vs this year.

Here's my thoughts about this:

1. The essence of your being is formless and isn't effected (even though you may feel lack) by any material loss, even your 401k. In fact, this strong sense of loss and lack can drive us even deeper into our essential selves if we choose to see it this way.

2. Our inner peace does not depend on external events. Use the lack or loss to propel yourself to go deeper within to find the Being that you are prior to all identifications. Your soul doesn't care about financial loss or gain.

3. If you can succeed within, you can succeed without.

4. Life does not exist in futures, or in your past. What we have for certain is here and now.

5. By allowing the sacred mystery to unfold without trying to hold on or tamper with it, we can and will move though anything.

6. Being grateful for what you do have zero's in on what's working in your life.

When things become challenging in my own life, I reflect on those faces in that small book. If they could speak what would they be saying? I'm certain that they all thought about how easy their lives once were, and how they took so much for granted, how they made mountains out of molehills, and how silly those small losses seemed in proportion to their daily horrific existence.

NOW is the time for us to allow the sacred mystery that resides in each and every one of us to awaken and unfold without trying to tamper with it, without wanting it to be anything but what it is. It is showing up just at the right moment so we can move through it with greater understanding of our purpose here and now.

The Holy Spirit assigns each of us to the place our talents and abilities can best be put to use and our lessons most powerfully learned. Don't doubt the plan, just make yourself available to it. Do so with gratitude in your heart.

Gratitude is the seed you plant, it grows stronger the more it is nurtured and watered.