To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything he has given us—and he has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of his love, every moment of existence is a grace,
for it brings with it immense graces from him.
(Thomas Merton)
for it brings with it immense graces from him.
(Thomas Merton)
I Am Nothing by Thomas à Kempis
I will presume to speak to you, My Lord, though I am mere dust and ashes. If I imagined myself to be anything more, you would confront me with my sins, which bear witness against me. But if I humble myself and acknowledge my nothingness, if I cast away all self-esteem and reduce myself to dust, then your grace will come to me, and your light will enter my heart. So let the last trace of pride be swallowed up in the depths of my own nothingness and perish forever. Let me see myself for what I am and what I have been, as mere nothingness. Now,...
read morePrayer And Thanksgiving by Francis of Assisi
All-powerful, most holy, most high and supreme God Holy and just Father Lord, King of Heaven and Earth we thank you for yourself for through your only Son with the Holy Spirit You have created all things spiritual and corporal and, having made us in your own image and likeness, you placed us in paradise. And through our own fault we have fallen. And we thank you for as through your Son you created us so also, through your holy love, with which you loved us, you brought about his birth as true God and true man by the glorious, ever-virgin,...
read moreA Prayer Of Thanksgiving For Creation by George Appleton
O God, I thank thee for all the creatures thou hast made, so perfect in their kind— great animals like the elephant and the rhinoceros, humorous animals like the camel and the monkey, friendly ones like the dog and the cat, working ones like the horse and the ox, timid ones like the squirrel and the rabbit, majestic ones like the lion and the tiger, for birds with their songs. O Lord give us such love for thy creation, and all thy creatures see in man their priest and friend, through Jesus Christ our Lord....
read moreWild Gratitude by Edward Hirsch
Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey, And put my fingers into her clean cat’s mouth, And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens, And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air, And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight, I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart, Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing In every one of the splintered London streets, And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke’s With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude, And his grave...
read moreGratitude by Mary Oliver
What did you notice? The dew-snail; the low-flying sparrow; the bat, on the wind, in the dark; big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance; the soft toad, patient in the hot sand; the sweet-hungry ants; the uproar of mice in the empty house; the tin music of the cricket’s body; the blouse of the goldenrod. What did you hear? The thrush greeting the morning; the little bluebirds in their hot box; the salty talk of the wren, then the deep cup of the hour of silence. When did you admire? The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy...
read moreThanksgiving by Lancelot Andrewes
Blessed art thou, O Lord, who has created and brought me forth into this life, and hast ordered that I should be a living soul and not senseless matter; a man, not a brute; civilized, not savage; free, not a slave; legitimate, nor spurious; of good parentage, not of vile extraction and as vile myself; endued with sense, not an idiot; sound in sense, not blind or deaf; sound in limbs, not halt nor maimed; educated, not neglected; a Christian, not a pagan; preserved from dangers and infamy, not overwhelmed thereby in the days of peace, not...
read morePied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things — For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscapes plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise...
read moreHow Can I Repay You by Tychon of Zadonsk
How shall I repay your generosity, O my Lover? How shall I repay you for all you have given me? If I had died a thousand times for your sake, it would be as nothing. You are my Lord, and I am just clay and ashes, a worthless sinner, who deserves to die thousands upon thousands of deaths. How shall I thank you, who suffered dishonor, insult, mockery, scourging, and death for my sake? How shall I, who has nothing, reward you who gave everything? I have ruined my own soul, which was given by you. And now the only merit my soul possesses is that...
read morethanksgiving, God, and love by e. e. cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my...
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