Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk and scholar who spent a great deal of time in Christian–Buddhist interfaith dialogue, has explained, “It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment, with all the opportunity that it contains. The gift within every gift is the opportunity it offers us. Most often it is the opportunity to enjoy it, but sometimes a difficult gift is given to us and that can be an opportunity to rise to the challenge.”
