The New Gratitude Prayer
By: Ann Litts
Tags: Self-awareness, Life Lessons, Gratitude, Life, Living In The Present

Photo by Love Your Neighbour on Unsplash

August 13, 2017:

This has been a rather scary week. I’m sure not just for me. I have tried very hard since I brokered my deal with The Universe to not watch the news, to remain calm, to listen to my heart, to trust that She’s got this. To know on the other side of whatever is going on we will have learned the necessary lessons, people will be changed for the better, and Love will eventually win. Other outcomes are not options.

But news still floats into my world. Never the good stuff either. And I ponder how we got here. I was concerned we might end up standing in this very place, an unstable personality at the helm — with the best toy a cowboy could ever want right there at his fingertips to prove he had the biggest dick in the world! Especially if the pissing contest involved the other most unstable world leader who also liked to show off his junk. But these are not little boys on a playground, as much as they are acting like it.

I’m not an “I told you so” sort of person. I’m really not. So I won’t say it out loud. We’ll just leave it at that. And my deal with The Universe means I need to write from a place of Love and Compassion about this. For all of us.

First, there can be no blame placing for how we got here. We, The People, elected this person and worse — all those members of Congress long before him. The system was broken before 45 decided to throw his hat in the ring and run for the nomination way back when. Many of those senators and representatives have not done their jobs to run this country and represent the best interests of their constituents for most of their careers. Yet, they remain comfortably in their jobs because we put them there and leave them there. We should have taken a page from a popular TV show and yelled “You’re Fired!” at the lot of them. This is on us. All of us. Not one party or the other. No finger pointing.

Second, we fix it the same way. Together. We do not let hate or the media or one set of values or anyone else’s thoughts deter us from what we know to be right in our hearts. Marching with torches in your hands makes you a mob, just like the one that marched on the castle to kill Frankenstein’s monster. An ignorant, bloodthirsty, mass of mindlessness. Bombing innocent civilians do not make you a hero or a conqueror, it makes you a murderer. Unleashing a nuclear weapon which humanity has kept safely inside missile silos for over seventy years makes you a psychopath. Even threatening to do so puts you on the other side of crazy town. Humanity as a pack needs to recognize the sick animals among us and separate them from their power bases, not keep giving them more power. There still remains more Love in this world than hate. We fix this by not letting hate and fear win. We calmly, with Love and Compassion, take back our county.

Third, we start with each other. Every day. In our own world. The parts we can reach. I can not make peace with North Korea, but I can repair relationships in my immediate circle. I can begin a ripple of Love and Kindness and send it out into this world and pray it reaches Washington. I can refuse to live in Fear.

Fourth, I will love and cherish each moment of my life, because who knows where this madness leads us — but mostly because that is the way we should live our lives. We only have Now, it is the only moment of our lives we should be concerned with. The future is never promised.

There was a saying I heard a long time ago. The gist of it is this — never answer an angry word, with an angry word. It is the response that makes the fight. Never is a philosophy truer than what is going on in our world today.

I woke up this morning and the world is still here. For that — I will repeat a new mantra. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Note: I wrote this story in August 2017. Oddly — the world has not changed, but the good news, it hasn’t ended either. This week the issues were different, but our emotions still roll and churn. May Love lead us all to Peace.

Namaste.