Thanksgiving Day 2012

So much to be thankful for this year: families, and wives, and mothers, and teachers, and pets, and electricity, and a warm house, and good jobs, and beautiful weather, and forgiveness, and miracles, and laughter - and leftovers.

Gratitude is humility on a plate.
-Karen Maezen Miller

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. [NOTE: Image shows Song Dynasty statue of Avalokiteshvara from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; foxglove with pigments, gilding, quartz, and carnelian].

Happy Thanksgiving

For all beneficent karma, ever manifested through me,
I am grateful.

May this gratitude be expressed though my body, speech and mind,
with infinite kindness to the past,
infinite service to the present,
infinite responsibility to the future.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[NOTE: Image was taken this morning in the Trinity St. Paul's Episcopal Church (Anglican) in New Rochelle, NY.  The church was founded in 1688; the present building was constructed by the famed American architect, Richard Upjohn, in 1863. The temple bell shown in the foreground - rung three times to start the inter-religious Thanksgiving service - is from the Empty Hand Zen Center].