Counting Your Blessings

During hard times it is good to remember our blessings.

The same is true in good times. 

Well, actually, it's true in any times.

I have written about Blessings before, and how folks can feel uncomfortable using or hearing that word.  It feels a little too religious, maybe, or can feel put on.  But as I think more and more about grateful living, unearned and earned gifts in my life, and in everyone’s lives, blessing is a word I actually use more and more.

A while ago, I shared some of the Daily Blessings I’d been writing in my journal every day. The inspiration and the format came from David Steindl-Rast and his lovely book, 99 Blessings: An Invitation To Life (which you can find here).

For some reason, maybe because of everything disrupting our lives, in mid-March I began posting some of these in our other blog, The Profound Bartender. I decided I would do that until the end of the month, and you can find what I came up with here. Each has a haiku and each is in the format Br. David uses in his book, modified just a little.

If you are interested, you can find these daily posts here:

• Comfort When Comforts Flee
• We Are Blessed With Humor
• Time To Reflect Upon Time Unsettled
• Thank You For The Lessons Of Life
• Form, Delivery, Purpose, Substance
• Growing Up In Kansas
• In This Crucible Of Life And Death    
• Deer Tracks and Socks
• Blue Flowers Are Too
• Called By The Bird's Song
• Artists Draw From Deeper Wells
• May I Greet Each Day Like Opening Night

These are just what I was thinking about in late March, when the world was engaged in dramatic, unsettling change. It’s easy to forget what we have and will always have, even when other things we thought were inviolate, well, it turns out they weren’t after all. 

It is comforting to me to think each morning about the gifts, large and small, timeless or temporary, that surround me each day.This is what I wrote just a couple of mornings ago.  What would you write each morning?  I just write down whatever comes to mind, and I don’t worry too much about grammar, punctuation, and the like, as you can tell.

Even a pine cone, if one stops and thinks about it, seems a miracle of nature. How fortunate we are to have pine ones in our lives for goodness’ sake!

Peace and Blessings, Fellow Travelers.