Reading and Gratitude

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Heller writes:

Reading is a solitary pleasure. It forces people to do two increasingly rare activities simultaneously: shutting their mouths while opening their minds.

Best selling author and journalist Melody Beattie contributes the following reflection:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Not many lectures or sermons pack that much punch in such lucid brevity.