A Saturday surprise from the Cottage! An audio reflection on gratitude.

“Give thanks in all circumstances…” Really, God? Really? Even these circumstances?

On Friday, at the end of a week-long retreat in Southern California, I offered the meditation in the final worship service. The event was hosted by Companions on the Inner Way. It was a thoughtful, gracious, and renewing time. We tended to our inner lives while giving attention to the challenges and calling of our difficult political and social context.

The retreat focused on a single question: What are we going to do?

Here’s my (mostly) extemporaneous gratitude reflection on from 1 Thessalonians 5:14-18:

We urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

I wanted to share it with the Cottage community — I think many of you will benefit from it. You can listen to the reflection above.

In my remarks, I share this quote from Br. David Steindl-Rast. Long time Cottage readers will recognize it as one of my favorite gratitude quotes.

If you're grateful, you're not fearful, and if you're not fearful, you're not violent. If you're grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people. You are respectful to everybody.And that changes this power pyramid under which we live.― David Steindl-Rast

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Isn’t that the case for our lives? Thank you at the beginning; thank you at the end. And apocalypse in the middle.

— Diana Butler Bass

The photographs are mine — taken at the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu, California.

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