Grateful Living

Today, fully awake, we greet this day's ordinary daily-ness as EXTRAordinary. Today is an anthology of 24 hours or 1440 minutes of moods, world changing events, millions of people making a difference of one, surprises, prayer, suffering, anguish of disharmony, laughter, harmony and hope. Today is a blaze of emerging November leaves, skies, afire and radiant beckoning to the heart longing to embrace a life of grateful living.

Our memory invites us to breathe in deeply and to fill our lungs; to open our hands and gently unfold the gifts held in our clenched curled fingers; to enter the forgotten rooms of our heart that await our grateful presence. This is the season of claiming a eucharistic life. A eucharistic life anchors itself in thanksgiving when we take intentional steps to embark on the daily and daunting discipline of grateful living. To be joyously grateful is a risk holding unforeseen surprises. Will we give our lot to the challenge of observing and hearing what before went unnoticed and unheard? How will this grateful living make a difference? How will it change our perspective? How will it connect us to the Holy? To each other? To all creation beyond yesterday's limited view?

The daunting delicious discipline is nothing more than noticing and journaling one instant that claims our attention from the each day’s anthology of 1440 minutes. A child whimpers about a scraped knee; a grocery bagger carefully arranges items for easy shopper carrying; the juice of an autumn apple oozes over a hand treasuring the new fruit; flame-resplendent fallen leaves are crunched under foot; a solitary thanksgiving evening star rises.
With a heart of thanksgiving, what moment will you record from today's anthology?