The Full and Generous Heart
Today is Thansgiving in the United States. Thanksgiving is a celebration of abundance that comes from a heart filled with gratitude. Thanksgiving, which occurs in mid-October here in Canada, is a celebration of harvest that is common to both countries, although we don't have the Pilgrims to thank for our celebration.
The Full Heart is the source of every expression of love, every purposeful act, every generous contribution and all prayers of thanksgiving and worship. Filled with gratitude for the great gift of life, the opportunity to pursue meaningful goals, and awe at the mysterious world around us, a Visionmaker is moved to match such generosity with generosity.
Where there is gratitude and generosity, there is abundance. Abundance means plentiful, full, overflowing, affluent, more than adequate. Most people think of abundance as a result of luck, skill or circumstances, like winning the lottery, picking the right stocks, or being born into the right family. Others see it as a cyclical pattern that includes periods of lack and plenty based largely on unfathomable and unpredictable forces.
A Visionmaker sees abundance as a cause rather than an effect and as a natural energy that generates and creates. It is always present, flowing like a river, searching for any opening to manifest its forms. Every human being is a conduit for the flow of abundance through acts of generosity. The great American writer, Henry Miller saw this clearly:
"The one desire which grows more and more is to give...Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent upon whether one lives opened or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life... "
Miller's insight about whether one is open or closed cuts to the heart of the matter. If abundance is the ocean, then generosity is the river of giving and receiving which continues the flow of abundance. Through full and open-hearted giving, the Visionmaker learns an important secret of transformation: any act of generosity that comes from gratitude always transforms the giver.
Happy Thanksgiving.
© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.