Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has always been recognized as a typical and unique American holiday but in actuality most nationalities have similar holidays. They are usually some form of a religious feast day giving thanks and homage to a favorite saint or deity for blessings in one's life.
For me to count my blessings is a difficult event. I doubt there are enough hours in any day to make a complete enough list of all of them. There are the obvious such as my personal faith, my family - near and far - my job, my friends, my home, my physical wellbeing after surviving cancer years ago, even my country in this time of political discontent! And then there are the not so obvious ones. Walks on the beach, here and in Italy, listening to the birds sing early in the morning as they come to feed at our feeders, watching my 19 yr cat act like he is still a kitten. My list can go on forever. The point is, we need to realize just how much of our day to day lives are filled with blessings we don't acknowlege and think about. There are so many moments we can enjoy that others cannot. How many of us go hungry at night? Do we know most of our children will die before schoolage? Are we struggling to find work? Or are we just not happy with the job we have even though it pays our bills while others can't? Do we complain that we want a vacation while others have never had one? Is that head cold annoying you - but someone else is dying a slow painful death? Or are you (like myself) complaining that our house values have dropped - but we have a home while others sleep in alleys or worse?
So as you count your blessings and I count mine, let's both remember to pray a multitude of blessings on those less fortunate, less blessed than we are -- and if at all humanly possible, share some of those blessings this season with others!