The Wild Reed: Gifts of Abundance

Saturday, May 03, 2025

Gifts of Abundance

This evening I share my adaptation (and expression in photography) of today’s lesson in A Course in Miracles:

I am grateful
for the Creator’s gifts of abundance
to me and to the world.

The photos in this post – a post dedicated to gratitude – were taken in the garden of my home in Minneapolis, at Wood Lake in Richfield, and at the Prayer Tree by Minnehaha Creek in south Minneapolis.

These images and the above lesson from A Course in Miracles are accompanied by an excerpt from Gregory Jantz’s book, Soul Care: Prayers, Scriptures, and Spiritual Practices for When You Need Hope the Most

And, yes, I could do with some hope at this time.

After all, there is just so much going on in the world right now that seems so ominous and overwhelming – the ongoing genocide in Gaza; the fascist takeover in the United States; the rise of authoritarianism in other parts of the world; the crisis in Sudan, the simmering conflicts involving Ukraine and Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rawanda, India and Pakistan; and of course the ongoing climate crisis.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, I spend time in nature, preferably by water. Here I very consciously cultivate gratitude.

Gratitude for the beauty I seek and see all around me.

Gratitude for the good and meaningful and inspiring people, relationships, and experiences in my life.

And gratitude for the many ways that God, the Soul’s Beloved, invites and draws me into ever deepening relationship, ever greater alignment with the living light of my Beloved’s presence.

I give thanks too for how, when I’m in this place of deep connection and alignment, I am transformed by what I’ve come to call the gifts of God’s abundance. And what are these gifts?

Guiding wisdom, clarity,
peace of heart and mind.

Courage, strength, hope.

Balance, compassion, forgiveness.

I trust that as I am transformed by these gifts, the world is transformed. This is because when I’m in that place of deep connection and alignment, I am not only one with God and my deepest, truest Self, but also with all of creation, with every person on the planet.

This is because the Divine Presence within all things is, in the words of Matthew Fox, “the pattern that connects.” The wholeness of this loving presence, says A Course in Miracles, “is the power holding everything as one” (Lesson 127). Because of this divine oneness, Henri Nouwen was able to write: “In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share [all things].”

And so at least once a day I take a sacred pause, go to that place of deep connection and alignment, open myself to God’s gifts of abundance, and trust that this all makes a difference. A difference not only in my own life but also in the troubled world around me.

For all of this I say to the Beloved . . .

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Writes Gregory Jantz . . .

Why should we make a habit of regularly experiencing and expressing gratitude? Because simply put, gratitude fosters optimism, and optimism fuels hope. And hope is what gives us the strength to keep moving forward on even our darkest days. That’s why it’s hard to imagine more effective soul medicine than gratitude – it’s impossible to feel grateful and hopeless at the same time!

Granted, sometimes when we’re really struggling, gratitude can be hard to muster. So start with the small things. Anyone can come up with those – and the more whimsical, the better. For example, I’m grateful for ice cream and for the inspired genius who invented it. I’m grateful that freshly mown grass is part of my world on summer evenings. I’m grateful for how it smells and how it feels on bare feet. I’m even grateful for rainy days, because I love the way the air smells after a storm passes. As you have your daily conversations with God, make a habit of thanking God for something that brings you joy.

The medieval Christian philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” And if you think about it, the list of things we can and should be thankful for – even in our darkest moments – is practically inexhaustible. So say thank you – out loud and with gusto – for teriyaki sauce or butterflies or kites or Mozart . . . anything that has ever made you smile. Say thank you for hot showers and soft towels. . . . For tulips poking out of the dirt in the spring and that magic moment when the lights go down in the movie theater.

The wonderful thing about gratitude is that it is a multiplier – not of the beauty and good all around us in the world (that never changes) but of our awareness of it and of the loving God responsible for it all. When dark thoughts threaten to push everything else aside, practicing purposeful gratitude to our Creator is a powerful way to push back.