On Thanksgiving, Three Essential Prayers

Thanksgiving is a prayer.  

Think about it.  By giving thanks we step outside ourselves and acknowledge that we are vulnerable. 

And as we take time to offer our prayer of gratitude today, I would like to share a book that novelist and spiritual guru Anne Lamott wrote this year. The book, which gives us great insights on prayer, is entitled Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.  Here is an  excerpt  from an interview with Renee Montagne from National Public Radio about about asking for guidance, offering gratitude and expressing wonder.

"Prayer is not about saying, 'Oh, I think I'm going to pray now.' Or, 'Oh, I see I've made a notation here to pray at 2:15.' It's about getting outside of your own self and hooking into something greater than that very, very limited part of our experience here — the ticker tape of thoughts and solutions, and trying to figure out who to blame. ...

"It's sort of like blinking your eyes open. ... It's sort of like when the Wizard of Oz first — when Dorothy lands in Oz and the movie goes from black and white to color, and it's like having a new pair of glasses, and you say, 'Wow!' "

Read more and listen to audio clip from NPR
  And here is an excerpt from a piece about Thanksgiving that she wrote in The New York Times.