Like many others in our current political and social environment, I am a little focused on what we have lost in education support, gutting of Obamacare, strength of our immigrant workforce, respect in the world, trust of each other.
But this holiday season, it might be helpful for our own mental and spiritual health as well as the mental and spiritual health of our friends and families, to commit to considering what we have, and release – for a season – our despair over what we have lost.
So, the challenge for the last six weeks of the year – encompassing Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Eve – is to shift our thoughts, our conversation and our actions to that for which we are thankful. This shouldn’t be too much of a challenge, since the season kicks off with Thanksgiving, a holiday that often includes expressing a litany of all of those things for which we are grateful.
Beyond the usual list, we may also want to include a deep and abiding gratitude for a faith that teaches us that God is in this journey with us, and at all times and in all ways is encouraging and supporting our spiritual seeking, our personal growth, and our acts of love and compassion.
In the end, our lives will never be measured by what we lost along the way, but by our persistence in spreading hope and joy in spite of what challenged or stymied us.
By shifting conversations to the many ways we can increase our outreach to those who are in need, or who are lonely, or in despair, or grieving their own personal losses, we can be a warrior for goodness, and not a purveyor of despair.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity. But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”
While we may have lost progress in some areas of our good work in the world, as long as we are alive, we are overflowing with opportunity to continue that effort. Our wealth is never to be found in what we hold in our hand or what we have accomplished in the past. Our wealth is only to be found in the strength of our spirit to walk persistently and confidently forward in each moment of our lives, to the end of our lives. ~ Syndie Eardly
