Gratitude

Thank you Jesus for this spiritual life.  Help me always to remember that I'm a spiritual being living in a material world. Thank you God for creation, for all the colours, and sounds, and smells that come to me every day.  Even when I think my life is a cartoon I appreciate all the time and energy that cartoonist have to put into just creating the characters and background. Thank you for the universe. Thank you for my dog Gilbert. Thank you for his health and enthusiasm and entertainment.  Thank you for my family. Keep the children safe and the adults fulfilled and growing.  Thank you for this wonderful country of Canada and may it remain something of what my father and mother lived and worked through world wars and depressions to maintain. Thank you for my friends. I am so blessed to have the wisest and biggest hearts and sometimes the funniest friends a person can imagine. I'm so thankful to for the daily inspiration of my friends on Facebook and the family and friends I would see and hear from less if it weren't for their sharing their journals and pictures. It's fun to follow Anne overseas, Susan down under, the nephews out east, my brothers amazing photography, the guys I know here in Vancouver but wouldn't see. It's extraordinary to watch Michelle's belly grow.  Were it not for Facebook I'd have to wait for another high school reunion to see Wes and there he is a new grandfather. I love seeing his backyard and remembering sitting with him there myself when I visited. I like the nurses I knew in Saipan, Joy's uplifting God messages, and just all the people I have known and now continue to know through this communication. I also enjoy the people I didn't know till we shared in social media or on cyberdocs or list serves for authors or caregivers. I just love meeting someone I've been reading for months. It's like meeting famous authors and sometimes they're that as well.  I love Marion's pursuits in Mexico and the contacts from the Sunshine Coast.  It's lovely to know I am not alone. I 'm thankful for the work and people in my life. I like that I have work that I believe is important and good. I like that I have much of the 8 fold path of Buddhism and know the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus in my life and can relate to the teachings of Hinduism and Judaism and Taoism. I'm so thankful to have the libraries and the digital books on my Kindle or in my phone.  I am thankful that I can remember when I had to go to a place to learn something and now I can google the correct answer, even just a dictionary, or a skin disease on my iPhone and have the answer to the question I was asking. Thank you God for the technology. Thank you God for money and the means to make it and spend it and save it.  Help me become better able to manage it and less likely to lose and waste it. I feel like after years of being a good steward with electricity, fuel energy and fresh water, and food and waste disposal on my sailboat existence where I so appreciate that if I break something I'll have to repair it in time and that everything has wear and tear, thank you now for helping me understand 'money' as a similar energy and that it's connected to time and thoughts and attitudes like all else in existence. Help me to be less wasteful so that I can serve you more in my day to day life.  Thank you for the travel I have known and for the routines. I am thankful for the sunshine today and the lake and the good service in this wonderful resort. Now I'm going to the hot springs once again and thank you for the relief from pain this brings and the opportunity for exercise in the pool. Help me to be able to swim more this year but thank you for the swimming yesterday and the scuba and pools and water and seas.  Thank you for the night and sleep and dreams and memories and help me to focus more and more on what is of good worth. Thank you for learning. Thank you for the teachers and the courses.  Thank you now for the languages I'm learning Spanish and now Hebrew. Thank you for Latin and French. Most of all thank you for English. Thank you God for all the gifts you give and the lessons I learn.  Thanks for this day and help me to live in such a way as to celebrate your creation.  Thank you God.