More gratitude

CERC posts two thought-provoking articles:

- one from CCC reiterates my post below:

Yet this year's economic turmoil may give gratitude a chance for a comeback. Forced to content ourselves with fewer extravagances -- the American Research Group reports that Americans plan to spend nearly 50 percent less on holiday gifts than we planned to spend last year -- we may find more impetus to savor gifts that money cannot buy...A host of dismal numbers compete for our attention these days: plunging incomes, sinking stock prices and shrinking bottom lines. Our American tradition of Thanksgiving invites us to put those grim numbers aside for a day and focus on what author Eric Hoffer called "the hardest arithmetic to master . . . that which enables us to count our blessings."

-one says this:

"Gratitude is a response to a gift. Because there is a wide range in the importance of gifts, there is, correspondingly, an equally wide range in levels of gratitude. For lesser gifts, such as giving someone the time of day, a simple expression of thanks is little more than a courtesy. But the large gifts -- life itself, a miraculous cure, sacramental gifts -- demand that gratitude include far more than a gesture of courtesy. God's generous presence in our lives lays claim to a form of gratitude that is never satisfied by the mere recitation of thanks, but requires us to express our gratitude in action. The kind of gratitude that God is hoping to find is one that includes a bond of friendship and a commitment to service."