Have we lost the ability to express gratitude?

The questions of the week:

• Have your ever imagined a life without blame and complaints?

• Will valentine’s day be just another reminder of the things you didn’t get?
• How commercial is to commercial when expressing your feelings of love and gratitude?

Have people lost the ability to feel gratitude?  In these economic times of reduction and lack, the rise of discontentment and feelings of inadequacy is mounting to overwhelming proportions.

In this sea of discontentment, fear is breeding thoughts of lack and sadness over things lost or that are out of reach.  As lifestyles of excess spiral down to basic necessities so does the idea of gratitude for the things that still exist.

Can we use these times to express our love and respect for one another with a gift of kind words and an inspiring notion?  We will see as a huge commercial holiday of lavish gift buying approaches if we will fall into our old habits and try to buy love and gratitude.  In the meantime, these things are steadily consuming the lives and bliss of the weary.

• Suicide is rising
• Divorce rising
• Abuse and neglect rising
• Crime rising

Sometimes we forget how strong the human spirit can be, because we are burying it beneath material goods and worldly notions of consumer, consuming.

We are created in the spiritual image of a God, cloaked in human free thought and will.  Our hearts desires are where we find our treasures.  The feeling of abundance is based on the treasures of your hearts desires.  So if valentines day desire is to inspire love does that always mean material gifts?

I currently, reside outside of my home town.  I love where I live and the friends I have here in Virginia, but it is extra special to me when I hear from people that I grew up with and experienced my formative years with.  All the candy in the world (and I love candy), all the cards in the world and lavish gifts can make me feel any better than hearing the words I was just thinking about you and decided to give you a call to see how you are doing?

If we woke up everyday with the ideas of  love, honor and gratitude in our minds our spirit would lift to unknown heights.  If we thought of how we could make others fill wanted and appreciated we would in turn feel wanted and appreciated.  We would become that beacon of light that inspires the true human spirit.

In the past few weeks me and a group of friends have examined our lives to raise our awareness of the power of our spirits.  We wanted to examine our sphere of influence and our interactions with our family, friends and community.  We set out to create positive change in how people saw our lives and actions.

In the exercise we had to place a penny in a jar every time we blamed, complained or justified a wrong action.

The results were eye opening.  It is amazing how our language has evovled to naturally swing towards blaming others, complaining about our circumstances. and justifying our short comings.  We also took a pledge to renew our relationships with others.  Has it been easy… no, (old habits try to linger).  Has it been fun…yes, (because we are doing it together).

So when we get together, we are aware that we are operating from a trustworthy vantage point, that we will take responsibility for our actions and we are committed to our lives, friendships and community in hopes of waking up everyday with love, honor and gratitude on our minds.  We are created in the image of God.  It is our responsibility to cultivate that image, take care of it and polish it so that it shines

May this inspire

Peace, Abundance and Bliss

Trustworthy Pledge

We will begin to repair relationships where we have not acted trustworthy (starting with family, friends, business associates and then the world).

We will exercise the attributes of  “life” in order to have trustworthy and full filling encounters.

We will only engage projects and relationships were we can act in a trustworthy fashion by excersing our freedom to choose to say “Yes” or “No” to past, present and future obligations.