Thanksgiving

Very good reflection from the On-line Guide to St Benedict, about, among other things, a side benefit to Thanksgiving, to Eucharist
http://www.e-benedictine.com/

Embracing victimhood can become self-indulgence awfully quickly, can't it?
I went to the Right to Life prayer service last night, veeeery sparsely attended. Excellent speaker.
I fell into the trap I too often do.... hell, I didn't fall, I took a running jump.
I was so careful not to do this in my performing days, because I so often found my colleagues doing it and it was either rude or it was pretentious. I could just sit and take in a play or a musical and enjoy it and the performances for what they were.
But I often find myself "outside" of religious ceremonies.
Sometimes this is from necessity.
I must guard against be so immersed in the EP, for instance, that I don't hear my "cue" to play the priest's pitch for him to chant the mysterium fidei, I cannot while we are "praying" a hymn ignore the fact that two basses seems to be singing from the wrong music, and that another, the loudest, instead of actually reading and singing , to quote H., "just aims his voice in the general direction of the pitch and pulls the trigger."
So that's excusable, indeed, necessary.
But sometimes, it's just sitting in judgement, as it was last night.
And it did stem from an unwarranted sense of victimhood, (the D of L asked me to save the date 3 months ago, has mentioned it since, asked me again at the last LitCom meeting to play, I gave up something else, and then she called the day before and essentially said oh, good, you have a cold, than you will be happy that I have arranged for someone else to play.)
And what could be more self-centered?
And so I found my mind, no wandering, but questioning.
Everything.
From postures, to pitch, to the objects of our prayers.... not good, not prayerful.
So after that ENDLESS digression, here is this wise reflection:

Thanksgiving is liberating. It frees us from at least two crippling stances. First, from the tendency to feel that we're victims; and, secondly, from a self-centered view of reality. Clearly, the two are related: apart from genuinely being a victim, the victim, by desiring to be so called, has found another way of putting him or her self at the center of everything. Gratitude has to be worked at; for some reason it seems easier for us to center everything around the self. Thanksgiving, such as forms the heart of the Eucharist ("Taking the bread and giving thanks, He broke it and gave it to them" Luke 22:19) is the expansive alternative that sees all as gift, centers life around Another. What we offer God in the Eucharist, bread and wine are God's gifts to us, symbols of all God has given, before they ever become our gifts. Paradoxically, it is just some loss like that of a family member or close friend that often inspires us to recognize life as a gift. Such losses teach us to treasure life with thanksgiving. When all is said and done, we must choose thanksgiving over the alternative, resentment and self-pity. Is thanksgiving itself perhaps a gift that we need to ask for, for which we should pray?
— Don Talafous OSB


Lord, grant, I beg, that I shall always be thankful to You, and bless me with a grateful heart.