Harvest Gratitude

Here is a practice for harvesting gratefulness.

Make a list of everything in this moment for which you are grateful. Feel what is good about your life – relationships, people or pets, security and safety, health, occupation, growth and movement, the natural environment around you, your very lifebreath…

Do not spend a long time. Do not think hard about this. Just write as fast as your hand can move pen across page. When you have exhausted the moment, put the list away.

Go outside and make something beautiful in the natural world – a stone pile (cairn), arrangement of twigs, gathering of shells or leaves. It can be be small and simple, or as ornate as you desire. 

Say a short sentence, in the presence of that beauty, expressing gratitude for something from your list.

To the cairn, twig formation, heap of leaves or shells offer an intention for action – something you will actually do to add beauty to somebody else’s life:  give some assistance, compose a photograph or poem, share a loving word of thanks, make a donation to a charity.

Follow through with that intention.

Share this entire experience at your Thanksgiving table.

All blog images created and/or photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.