Along with trust there must be gratitude — the opposite of resentment.\u00c2\u00a0 Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve.\u00c2\u00a0 It always manifests itself in envy.<\/p>\n
Gratitude, however, goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift.\u00c2\u00a0 In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline.\u00c2\u00a0 The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.<\/p>\n
Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice.\u00c2\u00a0 I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment.\u00c2\u00a0 It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint.\u00c2\u00a0 I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness.\u00c2\u00a0 I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly.\u00c2\u00a0 I can choose to listen to the voices that forgive and to look at the faces that smile, even while I still hear words of revenge and see grimaces of hatred.<\/p>\n
— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, <\/em>p. 85<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Along with trust there must be gratitude — the opposite of resentment.\u00c2\u00a0 Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve.\u00c2\u00a0 It always manifests itself in envy. Gratitude, however, goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,20,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiveness","category-gratitude","category-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}