The Dance of Gratitude

In honor and celebration of the New Year breaking in and wooing us all into new memories, fresh opportunities, and unknown areas of desired or perhaps undesired exploration. It is appropriate as we cross this threshold of a new year to pause and offer gratitude and thanks. Joining together in …

The Dance of Gratitude

There is a wave of gratefulness because people are becoming aware how important this is and how this can change our world. It can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you're grateful, you're not fearful, and if you're not fearful, you're not violent. If you're grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live. 
― David Steindl-Rast

A dance is a sequence of movements for the purpose of expressing an idea, feelings, or experience. I noticed how gratitude also becomes a sequence of movements coming together and composing a dance.

Would you like to dance?

Invite gratitude to rise within your soul.
Acknowledge each gratitude as it rises.
Identify each one.
Walk around each gratitude.

Perhaps a place where beauty or goodness has touched you.

Again, the voice of David Steindl-Rast, “Gratitude is at the heart of prayer in which one sees all of life as a gift. Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.”

Now widen your gaze and acknowledge the goodness and gift of each named gratitude.

Each one of your named gratitude is a gift … to you.

Sink into that gift. Savor the gift. It is precious.

Now shift your focus from the gift to the Giver of the gift. Recognize and acknowledge the Giver and the gift. Identify both the Giver and the gift in your mind and your heart.

Keep moving. Keep dancing.

Trevor Hudson reminds us that “God’s goodness and gifts are not in the abstract but in the concrete.”

Widen your gaze and behold the presence of God within the gift. Notice how God dwells in the gift.

Each named gift of gratitude is specific and unique to each one.

            Each is specific to you.
Each is unique to you.
Each is personal to you.

Expand your view a bit more.

Since God dwells within each gift, each gift is the holy’s concrete, specific love you!  

God shows and showers his specific love for you in each and every gift given to you.

Pause and imagine how this happens each day in the ordinary and extra-ordinary moments of your everyday life. Throughout the day, the Holy’s love comes to you in every gift you receive. Perhaps it comes in the sun as it rises in the sky and warms you, the water you drink, the food you eat, the energy you use, the friend who reaches out, the companion who holds space for you.

Now, sink in and savor the Divine’s specific and concrete love for you with each and every gift you receive.

I am here to serve your soul in whatever ways you might need … spiritual direction, spiritual companionship, leadership coaching, enneagram coaching, Ignatian Spiritual Exercises guide, and guided retreats. What does your soul need? What does your soul want?

Keep dancing friends, Becky