Strung Out 73 Thankfulness: the new Mindfulness of Prayerfulness

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Welcome to a special Thanksgiving edition of Around The Campfire with Pastor Drew Jacques, the pastor of St. David's Presbyterian Church in Campbellsville, Ontario.  We look at taking the much touted idea of gratitude and turning it on its head. 
 
Pastor Drew starts by using the word Thanksgiving or Thankfulness. Thankfulness and not gratitude enables a complete surrender to a higher power in our lives.  

By replacing gratitude with Thankfulness, we can avoid some of the modern pitfalls associated with the former: expectation of reward for gratitude, gratitude without taking the time to center oneself and gratitude-platitudes or "dialing it in whenever convenient."

Thankfulness, argues Pastor Drew is a daily ritual of being in a state of awareness of the gift and the responsibility to share that gift.   It is an exercise in being centered in the presence of awe --what Christians would refer to as "the Holy Spirit." 

Starting with simply breathing, we can condition our human bodies to opening up to the presence of the spirit.   This requires a bit of work on our end, though, not merely writing down ideas on a notecard.  

By being the spiritual beings we are, sharing the human experience, Pastor Drew points out that Thankfulness allows us to maintain a state of Mindfulness.   Walking on that path helps channel the otherwise too human aspects of the "monkey-mind" or our more animal based responses to the world around us.   Prayerfulness then is the state of grace that takes both Thankfulness and Mindfulness and, if properly practiced, can help us walk through our lives aware of the gift, acknowledging the gift, sharing the gift and completely surrendering in the trust that the gift given is more than sufficient in our lives.  A deeply thought provoking podcast. 

To reach Pastor Drew, email [email protected] 

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