Hopefully by the time you read this post, we’ll be on our flight back to DC! I’ll be posting around 3:00 with a recap of our morning travels (and vegetarian airport lunch? hopefully?), but until then…
I was rooting around in the bookshelves in my old room at home, which my parents have filled with some random books. I stumbled upon a book called Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, by a woman named Sarah Ban Breathnach. The book is filled with daily meditations and thoughts on awareness. In the foreword, she calls the book “a safari of the self and Spirit,” and recalls how, as she wrote the book, “On the page every morning, spirituality, authenticity, and creativity converged into an intimate search for wholeness.”
Curious, I flipped to the meditation for today: November 27th. It really struck me as applicable to my life right now, so I thought I’d share some of it with you. It deals with the blessing of health. I hope you find it as inspirational as I did!
Breathnach writes:
With Thanksgiving just behind us, the race to get ready for the next round of holidays begins. No sooner have we celebrated the season of plenty than, with the advent of the first official days of Christmas shopping, we enter the frenetic weeks of looking, finding, buying, and ordering. We feel overwhelmed by a season of lack.
So before we head to the mall, it would do our souls good to have a reality check, in the form, not only of counting our blessings, but of focusing on them. Money is going to have to buy a lot of things in the next few weeks, but it can’t buy the gifts that count most: good health, a loving and supportive marriage, healthy children, the fulfillment of creative expression, and inner peace. We forget this, not because we’re ungrateful louts, but because we get distracted with the razzamatazz of real life. Now is the time to remember.
…We can’t buy good health, no matter how much money we have. We can purchase the best medical treatment available in the world, but good health is not for sale. Health is a priceless gift from Spirit that most of us take for granted until we become sick. “One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have is to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick,” Rabbi Harold Kushner reminds us. “Even if it only relief from a headache or toothache, the health we take for granted most of the time is suddenly seen to be an incredible blessing.” Today, realize if you have nothing else but your health, you are a wealthy woman. with your health you have everything.
But health is not just the absence of sickness. Good health is vitality, vigor, high energy, emotional equilibrium, mental clarity, and physical endurance. These are the gifts to pray for. Thank Spirit for the health you have, and ask for more. If there is only one spiritual lesson I can inscribe on your consciousness, it’s to ask. Ask and you shall receive. Ask and if you don’t get it, at least you tried. Ask and be specific. today, why not ask for the creative physical energy you’ll need, not just to survive the holiday season, but to enjoy it?
Something to think about. Have a great morning!
