Gratitude Filling

Saturday Of The First Week of Lent

The only value of our life is that it is a gift of God.  

Gratitude shows reverence to God in the way it makes use of His gifts. 

   

                                                                      Thomas Merton: No Man is An Island

           I thank you, Lord, with all my heart; in the presence of the angels to you I sing.                                                                                                              Psalm: 138: 1


Snow all day again.  The pale draping of the earth.  A deep pearling peace diffusing the landscape, the intricate etchings of tree lines, the small red barn, the silhouette of the horses eating their hay.  This evening I went back to the barn and pitch-forked piles of manure, flinging them over the fence like hot coals, the sheer physicality invigorating.  There is such a sense of calm doing chores around the horses in their stalls; a meditation and a working through of tangled thinking; untying bales of straw like memory; throwing down the summer fields in thick layers from the loft.  The snow falling intricacies, quietly: my focus simple, helpful and needed.  What a wonderful combination for labor.  I pray to labor for the Lord this way: sweating in my efforts, breathing in deeply when needed, pausing to notice His love falling and transforming all, feeling gratitude filling like the horses’ manes with snow.