Gratitude Is Not A Practice

Gratitude is not a spiritual practice. It is a subtle thread of flame that binds your pulse, through sensations of sweetness, to the heart of God. Gratitude is not something you need to "do." Just follow one faint breath of thanks until you dissolve.

Into what? There is no answer. You must find out for yourself, with the quietest kind of courage. Be grateful for the least most insignificant blessing: last petal on the autumn rose, a lock of golden fur from the little dog who died, a tear for no reason, the sound of a hummingbird on a Winter afternoon.

You'll spiral down a dark stairwell to the wine cellar, where Jesus has been aging his careful blood in a cask of delicate unbroken bones. Don't look for his face. The grape was crushed long ago. Meet him in the pure bouquet of silence, savor the hollow of not knowing. His poverty will makes you rich.

The secret? In the smallest is the vast. A photon the width of an angel's wing inscribed with distant nebulae. The flavor of Mary in bee nectar. On your tongue, a morsel of bread dipped in the Pleiades. You have everything, my friend, absolutely everything, in one faint breath of thanks.

 

Face of Christ by Rembrandt