Synopses & Reviews
This collection of beautiful blessings, contemplations, and prayers offers grace and gratitude for everyday mealtime, holidays, and parties. Drawing from a wide range of religious and cultural practices, these 365 blessings celebrate friendship, love, peace, reconciliation, the body, nature, joy, and appreciation of the moment.
A Grateful Heart emphasizes the universal spirit from a variety of traditions, including blessings by St. Augustine, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, Helen Keller, Walt Whitman, May Sarton, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Beatles, among others, and from such diverse sources as the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, and Native American prayers.
Review
"What better time to practice gratitude than before eating! This carefully compiled little book builds on the traditional recitation of grace before a meal with a collection of short musings, from diverse sources, meant to focus our attention on things profound and simple. The writings come from traditional religious sources, from philosophers and poets, and from every day people. They are 365 "soft whisperings from the heart" intended to bring your customers daily joy." -Anna Jedrziewski, Retailing Insight (formerly New Age Retailer), October 2013
Synopsis
Celebrate the Human Experience by Giving Thanks at Mealtime. Try It Count your blessings. Today there is a deep hunger for connection with ourselves, with nature, and with the process of birth and death itself says life coach and author M. J. Ryan, creator of the New York Times best-selling Random Acts of Kindness series. What her book, A Grateful Heart, is offering from a wide variety of spiritual disciplines and secular perspectives, is a way of satisfying that hunger by setting aside time before we eat to acknowledge the blessings in our lives. When we give thanks, we take our place in the great wheel of life, recognizing our connection to one another and to all of creation.
Choose from 365 blessings and give thanks. A Grateful Heart is a tool to help readers reclaim and enrich the tradition of pausing before the evening meal to give thanks. Drawing from a range of religious and cultural practices, the 365 blessings in this book celebrate friendship, love, peace, reconciliation, the body, nature, joy, and appreciation of the moment. This illustrated feast for the mind includes quotations from Martin Luther King Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, Gandhi, Rumi, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Denise Levertov, the Bible, and the Tao Te Ching.
M. J. Ryan wrote A Grateful Heart to encourage families to share the experience of being part of something greater than themselves. With that in mind, the book includes 365 traditional and nontraditional blessings organized into four sections corresponding to the seasons.
Experience the blessings in A Grateful Heart in a variety of ways:
- Just open it and begin reading one-a-day in the order given
- Use the index to pick and choose topics of interest that day
- Open at random and read what is offered
If you have benefited from books such as Earth Prayers, M. J. Ryan's Attitudes of Gratitude, Don Miguel Ruiz's Prayers, June Cotner's Graces, or Marcia M. Kelly's 100 Graces; you and your family will love M. J. Ryan's A Grateful Heart.