‘What is forgiveness?’
asked the pupil to the master.
The master smiled, picked up a stone and placed it in front of him:
‘the violent man would use it as a weapon to do evil.
The builder would make it a brick on which to build a cathedral.
For the weary traveller it would be a chair where he could find rest.
The artist would sculpt the face of his muse.
The absent-minded would stumble upon it.
The child would make a game of it.
In all cases, it is not the stone that makes the difference, but the man.
With forgiveness, man chooses to transform the stones of life into love.’  (*)

The topic of gratitude is more and more popular. It seems that to practice gratitude has many benefits. And it also a good topic for concluding the year 🙂
What are you grateful for? We normally practice gratitude by focusing our attention on what is positive in our life, and this may already be a challenge : to train the attention to focus on what is nice, rewarding, beautiful, welcoming, or just alive is not evident.

You may have noticed that the text I am quoting above talks about forgiveness as a way to transform ‘stones’. I would like to link gratitude with the transformational power of love in my today’s reflection to bring in an ingredient that may make the difference in the practice of gratitude: forgiveness.
As difficulties are part of our lives too, and they can veil the positive aspects of it, I invite you to reflect also to what has being difficult this year. Because when we face difficulties – big or small, subjective or objective – we have also the chance to experience our values, our strength and resilience. We can learn about ourselves and others. Our perspective can shift and open up to new options and new opportunities. Finally, difficulties are also a remind that we are still alive and life can not be predicted – at least, not entirely.

So like the stone in the Sufi story, we can decide how to ‘use’ and live a certain situation or a certain experience. To express our gratitude for the learning that the stone brought to us, we need to let go the hard feelings the difficult experience may bring up and to forgive the pain and discomfort we perceived.
Then, we can keep nourishing our intention and our attention on what is important in our life by practicing gratitude and experiencing the transformational power of love.

(*) Sufi story from Biologia della Gentilezza di Immaculata de Vivo e Daniel Lumera, p. 97. (available only in Italian and Spanish)