Grateful Gathering

Theme Eight: Cherishing Our Connections

(Feel free to bring your lunch. You are also welcome to leave early if you need to get back to work.)

Grateful living helps us to unleash our most generous selves as we practice taking nothing and no one for granted. ~ Kristi Nelson

Join us for another deep dive into experiencing gratefulness more fully and more frequently. At our last meeting, we focused on the truth that every single individual is infinitely worthy…EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL. Can you imagine the impact of silently acknowledging each person you encounter throughout the day as “infinitely worthy?” I, for one, am going to find out.

This month we explore and experience gratefulness and our connections. You may access the links to the below information at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XRCqaJDIo850smqqCY9GkfLttk9sG3u7/view .

Summary
We all belong to the world in concentric circles of relationship — some more distant and others close, some with people different from us and others with people more similar. Living within this web of connectedness can bring us the greatest of joys and the deepest of challenges. The preferences, patterns, and habits we have learned and exhibit can both build relational bridges and create great divides. Much of how we operate in our relationships can be unconscious and beneath our awareness, and so we go through life feeling perpetually “at the effect of” others, rather than intentional and effectual.

Grateful living helps us to unleash our most generous selves as we practice taking nothing and no one for granted. Through gratefulness, we have the opportunity to bring our full attention to how we relate to others. Our practice can open our hearts to one another in ways that break down barriers and facilitate connection. Humbled by the great fullness of life, we more easily respond rather than react, inquire rather than judge. In this awakened field of compassion and appreciation, our relationships are nourished and transformed.

Resources

Media

Cherishing Our Connections (3:30): In this essay, Kristi Nelson, executive director of A Network for Grateful Living, calls us to gratefulness for the breadth of connection that inextricably ties us together and for the ways in which relationships transform our lives.
“Love Your Enemies!” What Does It Mean? Can It Be Done? (3:30): In this essay, Br. David offers guidelines for how we might exist in right relationship with our enemies, using helpful definitions for friend, enemy, love, and hatred.

The Connection Between Harmony with Yourself and with Others (4:00): In this audio clip, Br. David suggests that harmony with oneself and harmony with others is interdependent and that this state of harmony contributes to a felt sense of belonging and peak experience.

Poem
The Lanyard by Billy Collins

Practice
Connecting Gratefully with Others: This practice helps us cultivate presence, appreciation, and compassion for the connections in our lives, with gratitude for the profound opportunity we have to be in relationship with one another.

Additional Resources
More Together than Alone (2:30): In this article, Mark Nepo bridges the gap between the ways in which cherishing our selves helps us cultivate healthy, thriving relationships.
The Present (4:20): This heartwarming and surprising award-winning short film explores how connections with others (whether human or otherwise) that are built on compassion can open us up to what it means to be fully human.

Questions for Reflection and Discuss
o Throughout the day, how might you practice tuning into your interactions with others — cultivating greater awareness of the ways in which you respond and react in your encounters and the factors that influence those responses/reactions?
o What kinds of reminders help you to have a more grateful perspective about your relationships? How can you demonstrate to others that you are taking them less for granted and appreciating them more?

This event is free.
Facilitated by Karin Cross.