Happy Thanks Giving

       In this nation and on this planet, poverty – as in lack of food, shelter, health care, education and other basics – is real.  It's a major challenge in our world, one that deserves concentrated and coordinated efforts by all of us.

       Impoverished spirit – a belief in scarcity and a grasping for more – is perhaps even more pervasive on this planet.  Especially in the west, we've become quite skillful and practiced in noticing what we don't have.  In our restlessness, we hunger.  In our grasping, hearts contract and grow stingy.  Spiritual scarcity begets emotional emptiness.

       I see a synergistic relationship between gratitude, abundance and generosity.  Like good family members, these qualities nurture each other.  For example, to experience abundance, we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, which allows us to see, appreciate and actually have the abundance within and around us.  As we freely open to life's cornucopia, our sense of abundance overflows naturally into generosity toward others.  Gratitude gives birth to abundance.  Generosity confirms it. 

       Imbedded in my wish for all of us to have a Happy Thanksgiving is this blessing:  May each heart beat in grateful resonance with the one heart.  May gratitude guide our release into the generous and abundant flow that is the heartbeat of this universe – a heartbeat we share.  

       Have a wonderful Thanks Giving.