It's a good day

Yesterday at the soup kitchen I volunteer at, Pastor Brad showed us a video made by Louie Schwartzberg. It was an amazing video with beautiful pictures, heart warming music, and a great message embedded within. It is a video about gratitude and contentment, and a video that remind each one of us just how blessed we are. All we need to do is open our eyes and look around us, open our ears and pay attention to the sounds around us, open our hands and feel the various textures surrounding us, and open our heart to the beauty of the day. My words cannot express just much this video struck me, so please check out the video yourself by clicking on the link below. I've also posted the narrative in this post in case you need a second glance. I hope after you finish the video, your heart will be filled with thanksgiving and gratefulness. Not only that, I pray that gratefulness will turn into a blessing to all those around you. Enjoy.

Gratitude - Narrarated by Brother David Steindl-Rast, pictures by Louie Schwartzberg, music by Gary Malkin

 

Gratitude

It’s not just another day in your life, it’s the one day that is given to you today. It’s given to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it were the first day of your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well.

Begin by opening your eyes and being surprised that you have eyes you can open.

Look at that incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us for pure enjoyment.

Look at the sky; we so rarely look at the sky, so rarely note how different it is from morning to morning, with clouds coming and going. We just think of the weather, and even of the weather we don’t think of the many nuances of the weather. We just think of good weather and bad weather.

This day, right now, has unique weather, maybe a kind that never in that exact form will come again. The formation of clouds in the sky will never again be the same as it is right now.

Open your eyes, look at that.

Look at the faces of people who you meet. Each one has an incredible story behind their face, a story that you could never fully fathom. Not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors. We all go back so far.

And in this present moment on this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world, flows together and meets you here, like a life-giving water if you only open your heart and drink.

Open your heart to the incredible gifts that civilization gives to us. You flip a switch and there is electric light, you turn a faucet and there is warm water and cold water, and drinkable water. It’s a gift that millions and millions in the world will never experience.

These are just a few of an enormous number of gifts to which you can open your heart.

And so I wish that you would open your heart to all these blessings and let them flow through you, that everyone who you will meet on this day will be blessed by you. Just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch. Just by your presence.

Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you.

Then, it will really be a good day.
—Brother David Steindl-Rast.