giving thanks

"For all your goodness I will keep on singing,

ten thousand reasons for my heart to find."

-Matt Redman

thank you, thank you very much

A fun template for you to use as you let your attitude of gratitude overflow. The Lunchbox Buddies have personalized this picture and distributed it to several of our nearest and dearest. Whether you share it electronically (like we did!) or print it for a neat paper treat, it will be sure to set-off a chain reaction of thanks! 

capacity for amazement

As the Lunchbox Buddies mindfully seek to soak ourselves in a spirit gratitude, we invite you to join us.  

Explore the big and small things/actions that inspire your heart to sing: words, music, specific times of the day, images, tastes, smells, sensations...

Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner shared a beautiful inference in his blog post entitled "Radical Gratitude":

The playbook of tradition we know as the siddur (prayer book) is filled with gratitude about the most ordinary of miracles: a prayer upon awakening, a blessing for functional body plumbing, a series of benedictions thanking God for the ability to open our eyes, get out of bed, and put on our clothing.  Jewish  law also mandates the recitation of berakhot  (blessings) before and after food and drink of every kind, and has even established benedictions for seeing a rainbow, hearing thunder, witnessing a shooting star, or seeing the ocean for the first time in a long while.   To view this as the product of a religious tradition overburdened with ritual minutiae misses the point — it isn’t about how the poetry of being furnishes an excuse for the recitation of a formula, but how a liturgy of gratitude can help us overcome the numbing effect of the humdrum, the taking for granted that coats our capacity for amazement with indifference.    The blessing isn’t the words, but our capacity to be surprised, as the philosopher Martin Buber once put it; our recognition of the sublime poetry of God’s world in real time. 

gr{attitude}

We are taking the month of November to explore gratitude.  Growing up, whenever I started to get whiny about something, my dad would say, "Stop and count your blessings."  Eventually we had a call and response set up where he would cue and I would retort, "I can't count that high!"  I have been thinking about this attitude of gratitude quite a bit.

The holidays are always busy.  We talk about it being a season of hustle and bustle.  It is easy to rush and rush desperately seeking that sense of accomplishment found in completing the big looming checklist and miss the spectacular moments given to us in the interim.

Join the LunchBox Buddies as we intentionally seek to be present and open our hearts and minds to attitudes of gratitude.