November marks the American Thanksgiving, the annual national holiday celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Americans generally believe that their Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people. This is the basic understanding of Americans but to the Indigenous people of America it means something totally different. We have all heard and even some fell those feelings but I would like to go a different direction and simply ask you to ask yourself, What are you Grateful for? 

The reason why we need to ask this question is to remind ourselves of the very things that have at least been given to us or made by us in the midst of what pretty much everyone says, has been a very difficult year.  We need to focus on the things in our life that do make use grateful or at least the things that we can appreciate in our lives than continually focus on what is so negative.

I am sure I know what most people hope will happen in the next month that they will be grateful for, but we need to think outside of the all this hate and negativity. We need to grasp onto the things we truly are grateful for.  This year is history making in such a way that we have to stand back and at least appreciate being a part of it, good or bad. We are seeing things in our lifetime most have not witnessed and now at a very pivotal point in our lifetime that will either make us or as some think, break us. Nothing truly should ever break us unless we allow it. I have seen and talked to so many this past year focus on both sides of these feelings. I have to admit, I have even had them, but still I work to come back stronger, even when I cannot believe the horrors I see and good people I know, turn their backs on truth and justice for the sake of money, greed, fear, prejudice and their beliefs.  We have to do better than this. But in the same turn I have seen people blossom, grown and become amazingly, giving, spiritual people in the midst of all this as well. Sometime, Evil can make Good even stronger, because at our base nature, we really do want to be good and do good and not let the evil acts prevail.

My list of gratitude is long, very very long. I am grateful to have a home, family, food on my table and clothes on my back. I am grateful to be able to serve and be a source to help shed some light into peoples lives, all over the world. I am humbled in that gratitude that people say and do such wonderful things for me when it is not needed, just your thanks and support are enough. I have a good life, I have my health and I have free will. I am not rich, but I am able to take care of my bills. All these things I am grateful for because spirit has helped me to have and maintain these things. I am grateful to have life even at a time that is fill with so much negativity. I am grateful to have a mind to know the difference between good and evil and to know when I am wrong. I also am grateful for being me. I could go on and on, but you get the picture. 

So, I ask you, what are you grateful for? What can you take this moment and be grateful for so that you can at least fill your spirit and soul with a wonderful gift, not negative one. If you take a moment and let some of those good thoughts in, you will have the power and strength to get through anything. Don't give up on the day, the week, month or year. It was a year we need to focus on being stronger and better for and in the end, be grateful for what you will become after this and what you will see change. Change is good for us, so be grateful, because a change IS coming and we will grow and become better.

Hold on, the ride is not over.

Blessings,

Steven