Celebrate Today- ceremonies and celebrations to make your days count

I was asked to write up a post for Godspace for their gratitude theme for October and November, and this was published today:  https://godspacelight.com/2021/10/07/gratitude-letters-a-thanksgiving-tradition/?mc_cid=ca6746b6c4&mc_eid=508df85536 SPIRITUAL PRACTICES THANKSGIVING AND GRATITUDE GRATITUDE LETTERS – A THANKSGIVING TRADITION October 7, 2021 by  Emily Huff , This is what our kids have to deal with having a mom who is a teacher.  Our family assignment every year around Thanksgiving is to write a letter about what we are grateful for and to share these letters around the table. While there might be some eyes that roll when I remind them of this exercise each year, I am convinced that this is such good work for us all to build these muscles and to practice giving thanks together. The notebook where we keep all these letters from years past also serves as a pretty sweet time capsule (as we started it in 1995), and we get some good laughs looking back through diffe...

This is what our kids have to deal with having a mom who is a teacher.  Our family assignment every year around Thanksgiving is to write a letter about what we are grateful for and to share these letters around the table.  While there might be some eyes that roll when I remind them of this exercise each year, I am convinced that this is such good work for us all to build these muscles and to practice giving thanks together.  The notebook where we keep all these letters from years past also serves as a pretty sweet time capsule, and we get some good laughs looking back through different reflections, drawings and handwriting through the years.   This world dishes out plenty of things that can weigh us down so I believe it's essential to carve out intentional time to focus on the good gifts we have been given and to cultivate gratitude together. 

We write letters of what we are thankful for each year and keep them in a notebook. Having started this in 1995, it's such a treat to have these little time capsules from each year.  When we have celebrated Thanksgiving at other family's houses,  we would not ask everyone to participate, and just the four of us in our immediate family would write letters and read them together later over the holiday weekend.  Over the last few years when we have hosted Thanksgiving at our house, we have invited those gathered with us to write a letter if they wanted to (making sure they understood that there was no pressure) to read around our table after our Thanksgiving feast.   The best thing was that this year, we had Marcet Crockett with us who is a sophomore at SPU and we invited her to write a letter. I pulled out our notebook of Thanksgiving letters and was able to show her three letters from 1998 when we spent Thanksg...