Reflection: October 13
Thanksgiving, 2019
As many of you know, I’ve long admired Brother David Steindl-Rast’s work in being a proponent of gratitude and living from a place of thankfulness and gratefulness. He started an online presence of gratitude at gratefulness.org. The reflection for this week as part of the weekly email I receive was timely for Thanksgiving even though it wasn’t written for our Canadian Thanksgiving. It was from an interview that Brother David gave way back in 1983. And it is still timely today.
In 1983, Brother David was much more involved in the monastic tradition and was in dialogue with Eastern traditions around meditation and spiritual practices. In 1983, he said:
The end—in all of the monastic traditions, of both East and West—consists of cultivating mindfulness, being mindful… I think “wholeheartedness” is the English word that expresses better what mindfulness as a technical term means; that you respond to every situation from your center, from your heart—that you listen with your heart to every situation, and your heart elicits the response.
If you’re really mind-full, and if you underline that aspect of fullness, wholeness, or wholeheartedness, it reveals the gift character of everything. The full view consists of seeing each situation as purely gratis (free), and if you get that in mind, then your »»
the neighbourhood; handicapped parking and access to the church office are at the rear of the building.
