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Address of R.W.
Bro. Stephen R. McIntyre
on His Official Visit to Powassan Lodge No. 443,
October 14, 2011
"GRATITUDE"
There is a universal law: what goes around
comes around. Some religions call it karma, some psychologists call this
natural consequences, the Bible decrees it as, “You reap what you sow”.
Whatever the source, the idea is the same – there is a direct
relationship between what we plant in our minds and what we end up
creating.
Thoughts are seeds. They create a garden of
feeling in your body. Those feelings can be lovely ones, such as
happiness or joy or they can be less pleasant ones like fear and doubt.
Whether positive or negative, those feelings will create a kind of force
field that will attract other energies that are similar. This is one of
the reasons the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and why when one
thing goes wrong, other things start going wrong as well; our thoughts
end up creating energetic fields that begin to have their own powers of
attraction.
The trick is to stay conscious of your
energetic field at all times. This means staying aware of what your
thinking and feeling.
We live in what Buddhists might term a “grasping” culture. Consumerism
propagates to the belief that we need to buy, buy, buy and therefore
tries to entice us to do so by projecting image after image of what we
should have if we’re keeping up with the neighbors. In a consumer
society, we’re always being told that not only is the glass half –
empty, but that if we don’t keep consuming, the level of water will
deplete until nothing is left.
Whether the glass is half – full or half –
empty, gratitude has the power to make whatever amount of water you have
feel like a vast lake. It does this by opening your heart to the wonders
of your life. The wonders may be small but that doesn’t matter.
Practicing gratitude will put you in the field of abundance. And in
terms of being able to attract more of what you want, is hugely
important. What goes around comes around.
When we practice gratitude, we become
grateful not only for all the people and things Life has given us, but
we become grateful for the gift of Life itself. Our consciousness
becomes energized with the awareness of Life’s basic majesty and magic.
A majesty and magic that we are not just recipients of, but active
partners in creating! So, when we give thanks, we not only affirm the
glory of, The Great Architect of the Universe but our own evolving self
as well.
We truly are a blessed people, who live at a
marvelous time in the earth’s history and who enjoy a magnificent land
overflowing with privileges and opportunities. Although we acknowledge
that far too many people live at the edge of survival, still we must
admit that never before in the history of the world has the world
enjoyed such riches and liberties.
Where there is appreciation, there is also
courtesy and concern for the rights and property of others. Without
these, there is arrogance and evil. Where there is gratitude, there is
humility instead of pride, generosity rather than selfishness.
The Lord has said that “the meek shall
inherit the earth” (Mathew 5:5). It is difficult to escape the
interpretation that, rather than an attitude of self – sufficiency,
meekness implies a spirit of gratitude, an acknowledgement of a greater
power beyond oneself, recognition of God and an acceptance of His
commandments and inspired way of living. Gratitude is the beginning of
wisdom.
Stated differently, true wisdom cannot be
obtained unless it is built on a foundation of true humility and
gratitude.
Indeed, gratitude is the beginning of
civility, of decency and goodness, of a recognition that we cannot
afford to be arrogant. We should walk with the knowledge, that we will
need help every step of the way. The absence of gratitude bespeaks a
lack of appreciation and an ignorance that comes of an attitude of self
– sufficiency. It expresses itself in ugly egotism and frequently, in
malicious conduct.
Many selfish, arrogant, and usually
miserable people in the world walk without gratitude. Perhaps they do so
because they do not fully realize all they have to be thankful for.
To begin with I am grateful for the wonders
of the human body and the miracle of the human mind as creations of the
Almighty. Every time I listen to a piece of music from Beethoven I
marvel that such a thing could come from the mind of a man. In many
respects, the composer was much like the rest of us. He got hungry, felt
pain, and had most of the problems that we all have –and perhaps some
that we do not have. But out of the genius of his mind came a tremendous
blending to create rare and magnificent masterpieces of music.
Have you ever contemplated the wonder of
yourself, the eyes with which you see, the ears with which you hear, the
voice with which you speak? No camera ever built can compare with the
human eye. No method of communication ever devised can compare with the
voice and the ear. No pump ever built will run as long or as efficiently
as the human heart. What a remarkable creature each of us is. We can
think by day and dream by night. We can speak and hear, smell and taste
and feel. We can store what we experience and learn in a remarkable
retrieval system unmatched by the most spectacular computer. We can
learn and grow and progress and become better tomorrow than we are
today.
Contemplate the wonders of the age in which
we live, this greatest of all ages in the history of humanity. More
inventions and scientific discoveries have been made during my lifetime
than in all the previous centuries of human history combined. This is
the remarkable fruition of the efforts of thinking men and women who
have applied their inquisitive and dedicated thought processes in the
fields of medicine, industry, hygiene and sanitary measures, chemistry,
and research in genetics, microbiology, the environment, and other
disciplines, all involving the process of the human mind. How can we
help but be grateful for such miracles.
The earth in all its pristine beauty is an
expression of the nature of its creator. The language of the opening
chapter of Genesis is intriguing. It states that “the earth was without
form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Genesis
1:2). Perhaps at that stage in its development it presented anything but
a picture of beauty. “And God said, Let there be light: and there was
light” (Genesis 1:3). From that point the Creation continued until “God
saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was good” (Genesis
1:31). Surely this means that it was beautiful, for “out of the ground
made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight”
(Genesis 2:9)
I am grateful for the beauty of nature – the flowers, the fruit, the
sky, the peaks and the plains from which they rise. I feel thanks for
the beauty of animals. There is beauty in all peoples. I speak not of
the beauty or the image that comes from lotions and creams or facial
surgery, as seen in magazines and on television. There are beautiful
people in every one of the many nations. Little children everywhere are
beautiful. And so are the aged, whose wrinkled hands and faces, speak of
the struggle and survival, of the virtues and values they have embraced.
We wear on our faces the results of what we believe and how we behave,
and such behavior is most evident in the eyes and on the faces of those
who have lived many years.
When we walk with gratitude, we do not walk
with arrogance and conceit and egotism, but rather with a spirit of
thanksgiving that is becoming to us and will bless our lives. We should
all be thankful to the Almighty for his wonderful blessings upon us. We
have all that this great age has to offer in the world. How lucky can we
be, really? We ought to be grateful, to be thankful, to walk with
appreciation and respect for the blessings of life and happiness that we
enjoy.
Finally, how grateful I am for life, for a
feeling of purpose, for opportunities to serve, for the freedom to move
about as I please, and for living in this remarkable age. Surely we are
a blessed people, for which we ought to express gratitude and then show
the depth of that gratitude by the goodness and measure of our lives.
Quote: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the
highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them”. JFKBack
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