Gratitude, Blessings and Grace from The Grateful Table

Every night , as we sit down to dinner, we share our goodnesses. Each one of us recounts something we are grateful for, something good that happened and in our own way, we give thanks. It’s a bit like a grace, I suppose. A recognition the things that are working, of what  we have. An appreciation for the food before us and the people we share it with. When we gather for Thanksgiving too,  we will start by Giving Grace. Then again, we will speak our gratitude. It’s never failed to make the meal, and the moment better.

Gratitude is like that. When you begin to notice the goodnesses, and give thanks, you find even more to be grateful for.  I think that’s why this book “The Grateful Table, by my friend and publisher Brenda Knight spoke to me. Not only is it fascinating to read how some of our most famous personalities and deepest thinkers show grace and gratitude through their words, but it also reminded me again, of how we can all find moments, no matter what the circumstance, to be grateful.

In honor of Thanksgiving and in gratitude, please enjoy these words from The Grateful Table: Blessings, Prayers and Graces for the Daily Meal  by Brenda Knight,  today and in Wednesday’s post.  –pc

From the introduction to The Grateful Table, by Brenda Knight:

I come from humble circumstances, and for this, I am grateful. My extended family lived on nearby farms in our sylvan part of West Virginia, so there were always aunts and uncles and cousins stopping by with an extra bushel of corn or some freshly canned tomatoes for a sit-down and a nice, long “chin wag.” It may have been my great-aunts and uncles, however, who most influenced my childhood mind. To these survivors of the Great War and the Great Depression, even modern conveniences such as ready-baked bread you could buy in a store were the stuff of amazement. They had to grow their own food, bake their own bread, make their own clothes. They were D.I.Y. when it was not fashionable but essential. Aunt Stella and Ida and Uncle Arthur were up with the sun milking cows and tending vegetable patches. Whatever needed doing to keep food on the table and a roof overhead, they did so, and happily. I can imagine my Uncle Delbert’s roar of laughter that butchery is now a trendy new hobby undertaken by hipsters in Brooklyn, Portland, San Francisco, and other foodie meccas. I had to help with the sausage-making and I have to agree with my forebears—butchering your own livestock is not glamorous (especially when some were your four-legged farm friends)!

I do think my aunties and uncles would appreciate the recent return to “the homely arts,” and not because of any cultural zeitgeist but for this simple reason—what you make with your own hands, you’ll appreciate more.

You see, they were grateful for the little things in life—nice weather, good health, an abundant harvest. I feel a sense of pride that my family also did a lot of “inner work” and were fairly accomplished. Aunt Stella was a great dancer and made lace the Etsy crowd would go crazy for. Uncle Wilber was a theologian and great orator—people would come from miles around to hear him preach. Pretty much everybody played piano or organ and all were avid readers who did not bat an eye when I started reading and never stopped. (I even managed to escape a few chores this way by disappearing inside a book and becoming oblivious to all else.)

My elders also said grace at every meal over food they had grown and cooked themselves, sometimes adding a poetic or biblical quote to the mealtime prayer. I learned to be thankful back then on the farm by listening to stories of hard times when folks “did without,” a rather stoic all-purpose phrase these Depression-era veterans employed to encompass the lack of food, very little money, no new clothes or shoes, and only hand-me-downs. When I think back to those stories, which seemed mythological to me, they were not complaining. Instead, my elderly relatives related these stories with humor and, surprisingly, gratitude.

I am writing this on Thanksgiving Day, after enjoying a bountiful meal shared with cherished loved ones. And for that, I am filled with gratitude.

I also learned from my dear mother Helen that you only get what you give. I remember well her tithing even when we were having hard times. She would not hear of skipping a week, and I witnessed her do without new things for herself. So, I too will share some of the proceeds from this book to those who might be in need of a helping hand.

Blessings, graces and prayers from the book:

Be Bigger

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

—Henry Ford

Balancing Act

We also deem those happy, who from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills and without descanting on their weight.

—Juvenal

 Quiet Mind

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.

—Jonathan Edwards

 By the Light of the Moon

As the moon brings sun to those turned from the light, the opened heart brings love to those struggling through darkness. It is important to remember here that the moon is not the source of light but a reflection.

—Mark Nepo

 

Excerpted from The Grateful Table: Blessings, Prayers and Graces for the Daily Meal by Brenda Knight, 978-1-936740-56-7, $ 15.95, published by Viva Editions, www.vivaeditions.com