A hands-on practice for cultivating gratitude

Each fall as we consider the season of harvest, we take some time to make note of what we are thankful for. While we are certainly thankful for the beautiful MacIntosh apples that have come from our orchard growers in British Columbia, our gratitude extends to the many parts of our lives.

Pumpkin pie.
Vaccines.
Recovery from COVID.
Music.
Ideas.
God’s goodness.
Watercolour painting.
Scripture.
Volleyball.
Morning glories.
Sandhill cranes.
Nature.
Provision.
Wasps.
Loving family and friends.

Each day we have the opportunity to use our breath to say thank you to God for the new day, the breath that is in our lungs, the ability to form thoughts in our minds, and to form hugs with our arms.

Being able to trace the hand of God in our lives from year to year helps us to savour God’s goodness to us in the land of the living. This retrains our human brains to notice what is good rather than following the brain’s usual search for the terrifying…

…and if our brains can notice the ways that God has been with us even in the challenges of life, we can settle in to the presence of the Divine with us, and our nervous systems might be able to find calm in that dear, loving Divine presence!

It’s possible that I could go on and on (and on) about this, and it is actually more important that you do the Spiritual Practice than that you read me ramble on about it. So, without further ado, we would love to share with you our 2021 Gratitude Tree Practice. You can download it *here.*

Download it. Save it. Print it. Write the little pieces of what you are thanking God for. Post the actual project on your wall or your fridge. Post a photograph of the project on your socials, too!

I’ll post our family’s Autumn 2021 tree on Instagram tagged with #gratitudetreepractice. Would you join us there?