A way of live - Gratitude!

As I went inward in contemplation last night, something rose in me with a quiet certainty—

that what we gather for today is far older than any holiday, older than any headline, older than any name we’ve ever given it.

Long before we placed a date on the calendar,

long before we carved turkeys or set tables,

there was already a sacred rhythm moving through the human spirit:

a way of thanking life simply because life was happening.

Gratitude was once a living practice—

not a performance, not a ceremony saved for one season—

but a natural expression that rose when:

• the seasons shifted

• the rains arrived or receded

• a lesson found its way into our lives

• a triumph lifted us

• a defeat humbled us

• a child was born

• or a grief cracked us open

It was practiced without needing permission.

Without needing a holiday to make it official.

Without needing language to validate it.

It lived in the bones of those who walked the earth long before us.

And as I sat with this knowing, I realized something tender and true:

It is the human hardening that made gratitude a single day.

Somewhere along the way, we turned a living prayer into a date on a calendar.

We forgot that thankfulness was never meant to be scheduled.

It was meant to be breathed.

The human mind—protective, weary, conditioned—sometimes forgets its softness.

It forgets how to bow to the simple things.

It forgets how to receive the teachings that arrive through both blessing and unraveling.

It forgets that grace is not an achievement—it is a way of being.

But when we soften—

when we choose to remember—

gratitude becomes what it always was:

a great fullness.

A grace that fills us, not because life is perfect,

but because we are awake to the sacred inside it.

This is what today’s gathering is truly calling us back to.

Not the tradition.

Not the table.

Not the performance of gratitude.

But the remembrance of it.

A remembering that asks:

Can I be grateful in the change?

Can I be grateful in the becoming?

Can I be grateful in the breaking, the mending, the mystery?

Can I be grateful for what this season is shaping in me?

Because gratitude is not a day.

It is a devotion.

A devotion to noticing—

to listening—

to allowing life to speak through both its gentle moments and its exacting ones.

So today, as we gather, eat, laugh, pause, or simply breathe,

may we return to the practice that existed before any holiday:

the practice of living with a heart that remains open—

even when it trembles,

even when it questions,

even when it doesn’t know the way.

Gratitude is not the celebration.

Gratitude is the awakening.

And today…

for me, I am grateful as a witness—

grateful to see how all of us have shifted into such a light,

grateful to feel the quiet transformations happening in each of you,

and grateful that, according to the calendar, I’m “off” today 😆

yet still held in this beautiful hum of connection.

My deepest love—

beyond words, beyond the page, beyond the days

Pauline 💞