Overflowing with Gratefulness

When we are grateful, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, our hearts fill up and overflow like a bowl with joy and contentment. Our culture teaches that we should fill our bowls with material goods, and when the bowl is full we should get a bigger and better one and buy more goods to fill it. But then it never overflows.

We have learned, in these later years, to find joy and contentment not in material goods, nor in prestige or power or accomplishments. We have left behind the need for more and more as we divest ourselves of all that used to propel us but now seems hollow.

It is easy to see our older years as filled with losses – the loss of physical abilities, the loss of those who die or move away to be near children, the loss of being needed. But what if we looked instead for opportunities for gratefulness where we never expected to find them, even in the losses.

 In our exploration into gratefulness, we will:

• consider how we can live these years knowing that what we have and what we are is all that we need.
  
• learn to “hold space” for the possibilities for joy and contentment our God reveals to us.
  
• look at practices that open us to awareness of blessings that call forth grateful living.

We will gather on Zoom each week for a brief teaching, using material from A Network for Grateful Living and other sources, then break into small groups for discussion and reflection. As we gather, we will be attentive to the Holy Spirit, learning from each other and from the revelations of our own life experiences.

We invite you to join us. We welcome people of all faiths. There is no cost for the study.

To learn more about this study or about The Wisdom Years,
send an email to Marjorie George at marjoriegeorge62@gmail.com or marjorie.george@dwtx.org.

This study is offered by The Wisdom Years,
a ministry of those in the last third of their lives, but is open to people of all ages.

To learn more: Wisdomyears.org