Showing Gratitude

Showing Gratitude - Over the years, Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday. Since we do not celebrate it in Malta, or anywhere in Europe, it became more meaningful for me as the years went by to give tribute to God for all the blessings that I have received from family, friends, former parishioners and Americans in general. Thanksgiving is considered to be an art, the art of living thankfully and showing gratitude to God for all He gave us over the years. So walk with me through this list of things we so often take for granted:

- our Cathedral, warm in the winter and cool enough in the summer months, a hidden gem in the northwest USA.

- Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who gave us Microsoft and Apple respectively, as well as Windows, Ipods, Ipads, the copy and paste buttons, half a million apps and free e-mail, with no paper, no envelopes, no postage.

- digital cameras, and the possibility to take hundreds of photos without having to print any of them, but save the good ones and discard the blurry ones, then send them to friends within a few seconds.

- Freezers, so that you can freeze your favorite soup or meal, and enjoy it 6 months later.

- Do Re MI Fa So La Si - the 7 notes that can still give us millions of songs and pieces of music.

- Automatic cars, so that you can drive without having to shift gears every 3 minutes.

- for movies on DVDs, for entire symphonies on CDs, and also for the nostalgia of vinyl records, cassettes, floppy discs and even beta tapes, which are now all Museum items.

- for flying across the Atlantic in 7 hours, instead of sailing the same distance in 27 days.

- for Webcams, that allow you to see what’s going on around the world, especially for ODOT cameras that allow you to check the condition of some roads and avoid or postpone driving through the snow.

- for microwave ovens, for dish-washers, washing-machines and dryers, and also for, remember them? - typewriters!

- for the blessing of water, without which, nothing will survive, for rakes and shovels, for snow ploughs and lawn-mowers, and for the gift of moisture (rain or snow,) especially when they fall in the mountains and lakes.

- for the opportunity to share a blog around the world, all for free, and having 22 thousand visitors check it out over 10 months, with a new entry every single day.

- for courteous neighbors, for blood donors and organ donors, for patient check-out salesgirls, for concerned landlords and for priests and deacons who preach less than 10 minutes on Sundays.  There is so much more to be grateful for. And last but not least, for our parents who created us out of love, and for our children who look up to us, hopefully to receive always a good example.