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    Grateful Table: Blessings, Prayers and Graces
    Grateful Table: Blessings, Prayers and Graces
    Grateful Table: Blessings, Prayers and Graces
    Ebook164 pages2 hours

    Grateful Table: Blessings, Prayers and Graces

    By Viva Editions

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    About this ebook

    What would happen if you sat down to dinner with the likes of Alicia Keyes, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Lynch, Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kingsley, Alton Brown, Neil Gaiman, Deepak Chopra and David Foster Wallace? Fascinating conversation, without doubt, and one of the things that all these folks have in common is that they practice gratitude and have a lot to say about it. These thinkers and luminaries included in The Grateful Table make this a thoroughly modern book of blessings, both heartfelt and deeply profound.

    Saying grace is one of our loveliest traditions and one that has stood the test of time for good reason - it simply feels wonderful. Whether holding hands and praying to the heavens above or waxing poetic about the bounty of food, these blessings turn any group of people into family, connected by the power of gratitude. Compiled by the editor of and collaborator on the runaway bestseller Attitudes of Gratitude, Brenda Knight has employed the practice of gratitude for years. The Grateful Table is not your grandmother's book of graces. Filled with fresh voices and contemporary expressions, this book of blessings will make every occasion more meaningful.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherViva Editions
    Release dateOct 15, 2013
    ISBN9781936740659
    Grateful Table: Blessings, Prayers and Graces

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      Book preview

      Grateful Table - Viva Editions

      INTRODUCTION

      I come from humble circumstances, and for this, I am grateful. My extended family lived on nearby farms in our sylvan part of West Virginia, so there were always aunts and uncles and cousins stopping by with an extra bushel of corn or some freshly canned tomatoes for a sit-down and a nice, long chin wag. It may have been my great-aunts and uncles, however, who most influenced my childhood mind. To these survivors of the Great War and the Great Depression, even modern conveniences such as ready-baked bread you could buy in a store were the stuff of amazement. They had to grow their own food, bake their own bread, make their own clothes. They were D.I.Y. when it was not fashionable but essential. Aunt Stella and Ida and Uncle Arthur were up with the sun milking cows and tending vegetable patches. Whatever needed doing to keep food on the table and a roof overhead, they did so, and happily. I can imagine my Uncle Delbert’s roar of laughter that butchery is now a trendy new hobby undertaken by hipsters in Brooklyn, Portland, San Francisco, and other foodie meccas. I had to help with the sausage-making and I have to agree with my forebears—butchering your own livestock is not glamorous (especially when some were your four-legged farm friends)!

      I do think my aunties and uncles would appreciate the recent return to the homely arts, and not because of any cultural zeitgeist but for this simple reason—what you make with your own hands, you’ll appreciate more.

      You see, they were grateful for the little things in life—nice weather, good health, an abundant harvest. I feel a sense of pride that my family also did a lot of inner work and were fairly accomplished. Aunt Stella was a great dancer and made lace the Etsy crowd would go crazy for. Uncle Wilber was a theologian and great orator—people would come from miles around to hear him preach. Pretty much everybody played piano or organ and all were avid readers who did not bat an eye when I started reading and never stopped. (I even managed to escape a few chores this way by disappearing inside a book and becoming oblivious to all else.)

      My elders also said grace at every meal over food they had grown and cooked themselves, sometimes adding a poetic or biblical quote to the mealtime prayer. I learned to be thankful back then on the farm by listening to stories of hard times when folks did without, a rather stoic all-purpose phrase these Depression-era veterans employed to encompass the lack of food, very little money, no new clothes or shoes, and only hand-me-downs. When I think back to those stories, which seemed mythological to me, they were not complaining. Instead, my elderly relatives related these stories with humor and, surprisingly, gratitude.

      I am writing this on Thanksgiving Day, after enjoying a bountiful meal shared with cherished loved ones. And for that, I am filled with gratitude.

      I also learned from my dear mother Helen that you only get what you give. I remember well her tithing even when we were having hard times. She would not hear of skipping a week, and I witnessed her do without new things for herself. So, I too will share some of the proceeds from this book to those who might be in need of a helping hand.

      A portion of the proceeds from The Grateful Table will go to Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS). BOSS operates a network of housing and support services in Berkeley, Hayward, and Oakland, California, working directly with at-risk youth and families to help them get back on their feet. Their programs provide whatever level of support people need and request in order to build health, wellness, and self-sufficiency, whether they’re seeking onetime assistance or help for longer periods of time.

      You can donate to BOSS via their website (www.self-sufficiency.org), or by mailing a check made out to BOSS to 2065 Kittredge St. Ste. E, Berkeley, CA, 94704. All donations are tax deductible.

      With true gratitude,

      Brenda Knight

      003

      january

      A NEW YEAR FOR GRATITUDE

      We pray tonight, O God, for confidence in ourselves, our powers and our purposes in this beginning of a New Year. Ward us from all lack of faith and hesitancy and inspire in us not only the determination to do a year’s work well, but the unfaltering belief that what we wish to do, we will do. Such Faith, O Lord, is born of Works. Every deed accomplished finishes not only itself but is fallow ground for future deeds. Abundantly endow us, Our Father, with this deed-born Faith.

      —W. E. B. DU BOIS

      BE KIND

      Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

      —OG MANDINO

      THE KEY TO A HAPPY LIFE

      Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy, because we will always want to have something else or something more.

      —BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST

      IN ALL YOUR GLORY

      These times of great upheaval are truly gifts unto you. You are constantly surrounded by an environment that is conducive for bringing out your most fulfilling form of expression. Your ego, the part of you that is in service to yourself, is giving way to a much larger, grander you—the you that is in service to others. You are blossoming in all your glory, and it is this blossoming that you have always longed for. Be open, be available, and, in the meantime, be at peace. Your prayers and intentions are all being

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