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As I sit by the fire on Thanksgiving Eve with oh, so much to be thankful for, I find myself reflecting on the bounty in my life a little differently than usual. I thought I'd try to write it out in an effort to understand how giving thanks feels different than it used to.

Sometime in my young adulthood I realized that despite "earning" a lot of my luck, it wasn't all "mine." So I started giving thanks, when prompted at times like this wonderful holiday, and in other more spontaneous ways. The older I got the more I gave thanks, I guess because I'd just gathered up so many more special moments and people over the years.

Until very recently, my thanks were tossed out of me, like little stones into a pond.

Thanks for my family. Plop. Thanks for my friends. Plop. Thanks for a good job and house. Plop. Thanks for the opportunity to live a fulfilling life. Plop.

Some time ago, I started imagining each little Plop to send ripples out into - what? A sortof universal pool of good will among humans, I thought. This image delighted me and encouraged me to toss more Plops. Tossing gratitude became a little game I played silently in those moments where I felt truly lucky, and even in those moments I didn't but "knew" that I was and wanted the discipline of the gratitude practice to reprogram my more cynical thoughts. It worked and gratitude is now something I feel often. Carrying my little bag of gratitude stones has made my world brighter and me happier.

But it turns out gratitude isn't just a little game. It's not something that I just "do". Like living in Presence, Gratitude has changed me.

Tossing out little Thanks Plops feels good. I like it. I do it. But now when I stop and really focus on what I'm grateful for, something else entirely happens. Instead of tossing the thanks out of me into some nameless pool in "the Universe", I pull what I'm thankful for inside and hold it.

You see, it turns out that the deep pool of gratitude lives within me.

And so the process of giving thanks is different now. I don't feel right listing off a long line of "things out there" that make my life so nice. I don't "give" thanks anymore. I AM thanks, and I invite what is outside in. All the people, spirits and circumstances that make my life so joyful are welcomed inside me to be with me in my pool of gratitude. Together we send out calm ripples of love everywhere and we are all the more powerful a force for good in the world because of it.

And so tonight in my thankful heart I hold my family, my friends, and the angels on earth and elsewhere that fill my life with magic and help me grow my soul while fueling the growth of others; I hold all of nature, seen and unseen that fills my lungs and my tummy and that I rest on, move through and dream about. In my thankful heart I hold God and am held in return.

And if you are reading this, I hold you, too. Thanks to you, beautiful soul, for being here with me.

Photocredit: I don't know, but I hold them in my heart too.