Three hard eucharisteos - ya, I had to look it up too....a eucharisteo is a life-filling gratitude – the practice of which is exercised in recording blessings, one by one and hard ones would be those blessings found in difficult things...hmmmm.
Recording blessings one by one....well, I think I've been doing that for the past 11 days, but life-filling gratitudes, well those are pretty big I would think. I would think those would leave you feeling so overwhelmed with gratitude as to bring tears to your eyes. So to find three of them in a single day might bring me to my knees, incapacitated. I think these gratitudes, these recognized gifts, come in small things recognized in a large context.
1. I subbed in for my daughter in a Sunday school class of three-year-olds this morning. There were twenty-one of them, bless their hearts and two other adults besides me. I was sweating when I left an hour and a half later. But with a new sense of innocence that I think I had forgotten. Innocence is stolen so early from our children these days. The information highway moves at an awfully high speed and strips virtue so early that by ten years old there is a jaded quality in children with regards to their knowledge of the world. But innocence does remain...I was reminded again by these sweet, precious little bundles of energy, pure motion, and emotion and discovery. What an equisite blessing and gift.
2. Because of keys locked in a car by mistake, I had the pleasure of a half hour car ride with my dear niece. We talked of her day plans and her future plans and of family and friends and a little about life. She has been in the city on her own now for over a year....I say alone but what I mean is her parents moved a province away and her brother and his family another province away in the other direction. As a result our family has been her only blood connection here and we've had the pleasure of just being there for her in the day to day situations that occur....like the lost keys of today...and also to include her in our family times and celebrations, like Sunday dinners and birthday celebrations. As we sat around our dinner table tonight with her and the rest of us, it brought to mind the importance of family and feeling of connection it brings. I am not even sure I can express the depth of attachment between family members and what it means to me without a few dozen pages of tribute to it, but I can share that our family ties and innate understanding run so deep that even in the midst of our greatest antagonisms and disagreements and anger, we know that no one is going anywhere and we are certain that our love for one another will not fail...ever. That is a blessing, a gift that brings deep gratitude.
3. I watched the Grammys tonight and as I watched Jennifer Hudson sing I Will Always Love You as a tribute to the recently deceased Whitney Huston and I cried. For the tragic, tragic loss...just heartbreaking. This dear woman, torn apart by the lack of her own sense of worth, chose drugs to deaden her pain...She came from a gospel music background, from a legacy of faith, so somewhere she must have heard and known where true hope comes from...the tragedy is the loss of the life she could have had. Now while her death is no small occurance, it will make little difference in my life....but I choose to take the gift of the reminder from her heart-breaking death. I will not forget where my hope comes from....I will not despair, even in the worst of experiences....I will remember that while this life is temporal and I have the greatest hope beyond it, I will not waste it on regret, but forgive, ask for forgiveness and move on to something better tomorrow than today. And the gift, the blessing, the eucharisteo is the God-centred life, more adventurous and exciting and fulfilling than I could ever have on my own. That's a big one.
My goal this week is to use the word 'eucharisteo' in the course of normal conversation. Wish me luck. :)
You rock.
ReplyDelete