Thinking about Gratitude
prayer at its very core is an intentional being-with god. just being with; not demanding anything at all. prayer is listening, and it is silence, and being still while allowing oneself to be held, and transformed.....
prayer and gratitude are both ways of being in the world. they are not activities we do; they aren't even attitudes we aquire. they are shifts in our very way of being. ((to use the big words.) to learn a posture of gratitude is to accept a shift in one's ontology--or maybe i should say a realignment with one's original ontology.)
in this way, gratitude is infinitely harder than we imagine because it requires so much more of us than noticing pleasant occurances and being thankful for them.....
- Tamie, Thinking about Gratitude
3 comments:
I think Tamie is right. I also wonder if the thought could be extended to generosity as part of our way of being especially if we are trying to think of being in the kingdom of God.
The reciprocity that Jesus enjoins in the LP (or DP as some have suggested it be called) I think starts us on this kingdom path - "forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us. God's generosity and grace to us is an echo of how we choose to live; do unto others...
Sam,
Perhaps a bit off topic, but you noted "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."
Is there something of a hidden obligation and/or contractual arrangement in the above description of forgiveness? An economy of forgiveness? I scratched your back, so can you scratch my back? In other words, I seem to be picking up on something of a underlying sense of obligation: I forgive those who sin against me, so please to the same.
What do you think?
Not sure Jon, there's often something very challengingly enigmatic about Jesus (a bit like Emily Dickinson) we could take it as a reverse rebuke - God certainly won't forgive my sins unless S/He first sees me forgiving mine. Or as a challenge to God - I'm being forgiving and so, so should you; Or, as we in fact owe everything anyway to God, as a reminder to ourselves that we are to deal with debtors as we wish God would deal with us, or ...
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