Good morning.  I am thankful that you have come here to read this blog today.  When I began doing this I did so simply because some inspiration beyond my full understanding pulled me to do so.  I felt then and still feel now like I am simply following directions from a Higher Power.  In the two months of goodmorninggratitude.com readership has grown beyond anything I could have guessed.  My assumption was that a few friends and family who love me would take an interest.  That’s what happened the first week when there were a dozen or less readers. 

Over time it has been humbling to watch readership grow.  As the weeks passed I saw 30, then 40, then 50 readers and it kept growing from there.  I was blown away when over a hundred people visited goodmorninggratitude.com and am grateful past what I know how to express.  With this experience I have been blessed with a grace I am unaccoustomed to and am appreciative in a way beyond anything I have previously known.  Thank you for your support of this new chapter of life for me. 

Focusing on thankfulness for 45 minutes or more each day has profoundly increased my gratitude for being alive.  The more gratitude I find, the more I find to be grateful for.  I never knew something so simple could have such a dramatic affect.  

I sense sometimes the blogs have gotten a bit long and wonder if I should try to keep them shorter and less rambling.  I also wonder if the subject matter is too banal or corny at times.  Do I get so personal it makes reading too uncomfortable for others?  I am not the best proof reader and wonder if typos distract from the content or is it easy to read past them.  First and foremost I write this blog for myself knowing my life is enriched from that effort.  Yet, I want to get better.  Now with so many readers I am asking for input and feedback, but am NOT begging for pats on the back.  Any thoughts that lend direction or I can learn from to improve this blog would be appreciated.  Leave comments here or write me at goodmorninggratitude@gmail.com.  Thank you.  As long as one person reads goodmorninggratitude.com each day, I will rise early each morning to write it. 

“Letter to a Friend” written by Fra Giovanni Giocondo (1433 – 1515) to his friend Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve, 1513

I am your friend
and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you
which you have not got:
but there is much, very much
that while I cannot give it,
you can take.

No heaven can come to us
unless our hearts find rest
in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future
which is not hidden
in this present little instant.
Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.
Take joy!

There is radiance and glory
in the darkness, could we but see,
and to see we have only to look.
I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver,
but we, judging its gifts by
the covering, cast them away
as ugly, or heavy or hard.
Remove the covering and
you will find beneath it
a living splendor,
woven of love,
by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it,
and you touch the angel’s hand
that brings it to you.
Everything we call a trial,
a sorrow, or a duty, believe me,
that angel’s hand is there,
the gift is there, and the wonder
of an overshadowing presence.
Our joys, too, be not
content with them as joys.
They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose,
so full of beauty,
beneath its covering—
that you will find earth
but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all.
But courage you have,
and the knowledge that
we are all pilgrims together,
wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you,
not quite as the world sends greetings,
but with profound esteem
and with the prayer that for you
now and forever, the day breaks,
and the shadows flee away.