The Beauty and Importance of Gratitude: “My Heart Overflows”

Our world seems a little short on gratitude. We have expectations and demands, and we have entitlements. But we have so much to be thankful for. Perhaps that’s the problem – so many blessings and forgetting what the source is. 

My Heart Overflows: A Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers on Gratitude is a relatively small but beautiful book that reminds us to be grateful. Assembled by the editors of Paraclete Press, the work is 144 pages of artwork and text that each speaks to gratitude, why we feel it and show it, and how we can be thankful for it.

 

You can pray with Francis of Assisi, observe Walden Pond with Ralph Waldo Emerson, celebrate beauty with Gerard Manley Hopkins, consider what you mother has done for you with Maya Angelou, and be thankful for the rain with Luci Shaw. Helen Keller is here, as is John Greenleaf Whittier. 

 

You can feel the evening wind with William Cullen Bryant, read what G.K. Chesterton said about St. Francis, see why you should enjoy life (Charlotte Bronte did), and discover what George Washington was grateful for about his new nation. Emily Dickinson believed there was nothing without gratitude (and she wrote a poem about it). And you can pray and be thankful with Jane Austen and the church father Clement of Alexandria and discover what Abraham Lincoln was so thankful he declared a national day of Thanksgiving (as did James Madison). 

 

The paintings included in the artwork includes those by Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Claude Monet, Albert Bierstadt, Jan Steen, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Gustav Klimt, Giotto, and John Constable, among many others. The book is profusely illustrated, each painting chosen to illustrate the themes of thankfulness and gratitude.

 

I love beautiful books, and My Heart Overflows is a beautiful book. In fact, you could say I’m grateful for the time, care, and attention the editors at Paraclete used to create this volume.

 

Painting: The Thankful Poor, oil on canvas (1896) by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), one of the illustrations used in the book. 

Some Monday Readings

 

Chaos in Aurora – Christina Buttons and Christopher Rufo at City Journal. 

 

The Imminent Russia-US War – Christopher Caldwell at Compact Magazine.

 

Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass – poem by Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Writing for an Audience of One – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Things Worth Remembering: The Imperfection of America – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

Two Beautiful Lenten Devotionals

The beginning of Lent – Ash Wednesday – falls on Valentine’s Day this year. I’m not sure if there’s a subliminal message there or not, but the Lenten season is soon upon us. And two recently published resources might be, and should be, of some interest.

Women Who Followed Jesus: 40 Devotions on the Journey to Easter (Paraclete Press) by Dandi Daley Mackall may seem primarily for women, but I also found it an intriguing resource for a general audience. For each day of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday, Mackall has Bible verses, a fictional story grounded in the verses, and a few questions for reflection and deeper study.

 

The Biblical women included in the entries are Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of Jesus; Susanna; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza; the Samaritan woman at the well; Mary of Bethany; Martha; and Salome, the mother of James and John. Each has multiple entries; Mary Magdalene has the most with 10, followed by Mary the mother of Jesus with eight. 

 

Little is known about several of the women; Susanna, for example has a single reference in the Gospel of Luke and Joanna has only two; both were among the women who had been healed by Jesus, traveled with him and the disciples, and supported his ministry. But there’s enough to make some educated guesses as to their personalities and how they fit into Jesus’s ministry. 

Dandi Daley Mackall

Mackall has published more than 500 books for adults and children. She’s a speaker at writer workshops, conferences, women’s meetings, and young author events. She’s also been interviewed on television, radio, podcasts, and blogs about writing and her books, which have won numerous awards. She lives with her family in Ohio.

 

Paraclete has also published Season of Beauty: A Lent and Easter Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers. It’s illustrated with classic paintings by well-known artists, which by themselves are worth considering as Lent and Easter devotionals. (a personal favorite painting in the book, “The Straight Path” by Nicholas Roerich, is depicted above.) It’s a small (143 pages) but physically beautiful book.

 

The poems and readings have been written by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Hildegard of Bingen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Merton, William Cowper, the Psalms, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Christina Rossetti, Julian of Norwich, Luci Shaw, Rainer Maria Rilke, Saint Patrick, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Saint Francis, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Bronte, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Wordsworth, Charles Wesley, and many others.

 

One of the entries is this first-millennium Celtic prayer:

 

You are the peace of all things calm

You are the place to hide from harm

You are the light that shines in the dark

You are the heart’s eternal spark

You are the door that’s open wide

You are the guest who waits inside

You are the stranger at the door

You are the calling of the poor

You are my Lord and with me still

You are my love, keep me from ill

You are the light, the truth, the way

You are my Savior this very day

 

Both books make wonderful resources for the Lenten and Easter season.

 

Top illustration: The Straight Path, watercolor (1912) by Nicholas Roerich; Nizhny Novgorod State Museum of Fine Arts, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

White Noise – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Out of Egypt: 50 Holy Wells #17 – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

“Love Never Fails” – a spiritual journal by Hilda St. Clair

For some years, I have kept a journal, which has now become a series of lined notebooks. They are filled with poems, book lists, draft book reviews and blog posts, quotations I want to remember, sermon notes, notes made from presentations and speeches, and really anything that I might want to write down. It’s not a spiritual journal per se, but it does include spiritual thoughts and questions.

Paraclete Press has been taking a more directed approach to journals, and specifically spiritual journals. Author Hilda St. Clair has created a second spiritual journal, Love Never Fails: A Journal to be Inspired by the Power of Love, that focuses specifically on the idea of Christian love (her first, All Shall Be Well, has the theme of hope and encouragement).

The journal’s approach is simple. Using beautiful (and original) artwork and quotations, the journal presents a series of simple exercises and questions. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive Bible study or an exercise requiring extended periods of time. Instead, the journal encourages simplicity and reflection.

The sources for the quotations include, various books of the Bible, St. Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Bernard of Clairvaux, Martin Luther King Jr., Wendell Berry, Henri Nouwen, Mother Teresa, C.S. Lewis, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, among many other Christians. And the quotations also come from more secular sources, like Elie Wiesel, Victor Hugo, Maya Angelou, Charles Dickens, and Jewish and Swedish proverbs.

The exercises are simple. “Think about a tough decision you once made. What made you do it? What role did love play?” is an example. The purpose is to encourage reflection about the role spiritual role plays in our lives, our actions, our relationships, and our thoughts.

St. Clair is an author and artist who lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Love Never Fails is a book of quiet, thoughtful exercises, designed for completion while you sit by yourself with a cup of tea of coffee, reflecting upon the role love plays in your life.

Related:

My review of All Shall Be Well, a spiritual journal of hope and encouragement by Hilda St. Clair.

Photograph by Daria Sukhorukova via Unsplash.

Paraclete Press E-Subscriptions for Lent

Paraclete Press, the publisher of several books that I’ve reviewed here, has two e-subscriptions ($9.99 each) for the Lenten season.

God for Us: Discovering the Meaning of Lent and Easter, is edited by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe. The writers contributing to the daily emailing include Scott Cairns, Luci Shaw, Kathleen Norris, James Calvin Schaap, and Richard Rohr, among many others. There is also a companion book of the same time, edited by Gregory Wolfe.

According to Your Mercy: Praying with the Psalms from Ash Wednesday to Easter is by Father Martin Shannon (and it, too, has a companion book with the same title). As the title implies, the newsletter and the book use the psalms to explore and illuminate the days of the Lenten season.  Father Shannon is an Episcopal priest and member of the Community of Jesus, an ecumenical Benedictine community on Cape Cod, Mass., where he lives with his family. He received as M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies from the Catholic University of America.

The books I’ve reviewed that are published by Paraclete Press include A Well of Wonder: Essays and The Arts and the Christian Imagination, both by Clyde Kilby; All Shall Be Well: A Spiritual Journal and Love Never Fails, by Hilda St. Clair (the review for Love Never Fails will be published tomorrow); and The Paraclete Poetry Anthology 2005-2016, edited by Mark Burrows.