Blog your Blessings Sunday

Grad­u­a­tion sea­son. It is almost over for this year.

I’ve attended a cou­ple of grad­u­a­tion and award cer­e­monies to see loved ones hon­ored. Have you? How do they affect you?

I con­fess that I’m a big softy and I get a lump in my throat when the band begins play­ing “Pomp and Cir­cum­stance.” Hav­ing grad­u­ated a few times myself, I am keenly aware of how much hard work is required to earn the right to “walk” — espe­cially if an advanced degree is being con­ferred. I remem­ber well what it felt like to put on that cap and gown and savor my accom­plish­ments for a cou­ple of hours, feel­ing suc­cess­ful, sat­is­fied and relieved. I remem­ber hear­ing the cheers of my friends and fam­ily as my name was called and feel­ing loved, sup­ported and thrilled that I had made them proud of me.

Did you have a won­der­ful Mother’s Day? Did you spend it with fam­ily? Did you honor a mother today, whether she be your own or some­one else’s? Or, if you are a mother, did some­one pay trib­ute to you?

I enjoyed a very quiet day right here at home. Just where I wanted to be. I had some […]

“We will con­tinue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sad­ness … We will prevail …”

Nikki Gio­vanni, Uni­ver­sity Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor, poet, activist

I’ve spent some time this after­noon cruis­ing the ‘Net, read­ing var­i­ous folks’ blog entries about the events of this past week. I have hes­i­tated begin­ning work on this […]

Wow, I can’t believe that a whole week has gone by since I’ve had a chance to write here. I’ve been so busy with my house guests that I have not had a chance to sit down in front of the com­puter.
I’m happy to say that my friends have now gone back home. We had a won­der­ful time, but […]

Forgiveness

If you’ve been read­ing this blog reg­u­larly, you know that I have been work­ing a great deal on the con­cept of thank­ful­ness, feel­ing thank­ful, and giv­ing thanks in a mean­ing­ful way for all things.

This week I have turned my atten­tion to the topic of for­give­ness. More specif­i­cally, I have been focus­ing on the man­ner in which we are called to for­give one another and how well I live up to that directive.

Con­sider these two passages:

Today being Sun­day, I again enjoyed some time to myself engag­ing in my own form of wor­ship. As I was doing so, my thoughts went to the one and only per­son from my for­mer con­gre­ga­tion that I can truly say I miss.So today, he is the focus of my post about my blessings.

The gen­tle­man in ques­tion is 81 years young and I don’t use that cliché lightly. He not only appears and moves as though he is much younger than his chrono­log­i­cal age, he is truly “young at heart” and in spirit. He always has a hug, and words of affir­ma­tion and inspi­ra­tion for those around him.

Last Sun­day I posted about giv­ing thanks in all things, and I had a week that included some inter­est­ing moments, as you can read about below. But I am thank­ful even for those times because I learn so much from them.

I am doing fairly well in my efforts to be thank­ful. I have remem­bered to be thank­ful each day, although I don’t always remem­ber as soon as I would like to. Some­times I have “oh, yeah …” moments when I find myself real­iz­ing that my thank­ful atti­tude in kick­ing in later than it should be. I think I am going to post a lit­tle reminder in my office. I just have to fig­ure out where to put it so that it is notice­able to me, but not nec­es­sar­ily every­one else who enters that space. That will help me remem­ber to stop and say a prayer of thanks when I am frus­trated with or aggra­vated by some­thing hap­pen­ing in the workplace.