GIVING THANKS—A REFLECTION By Lisa Brogan

It seems natural that the November reflection, encompassing as it does the holiday of Thanksgiving, should be about gratitude. It’s almost too easy, really.

Sometimes an AA meeting is deemed a “topic” meeting and the speaker chooses a topic. Easily way more than 50% of the time the speaker chooses gratitude as the topic. I always think it’s a lazy choice. It’s almost too easy, really.

I mean, everyone can find things to be grateful for. Some people make gratitude lists regularly to remember not to wallow in the problems of the day. We express gratitude to our co-workers for their help, our friends for their support, our family members for their love – and we give thanks to God, for his many blessings and graces. It’s a happy endeavor. We look at our lives, see goodness and light, and are delighted to express our gratitude and share our experience of joy with others.

So if it’s so easy, why am I struggling for words to put around it? I look outside and the leaves are falling, summer has given way to the hibernation of fall, a slowing down towards the hard freeze of winter. We reflect on saints and souls. We bundle up, curl up, turn inward as the days get shorter and seem to offer more darkness than light. My gratitude doesn’t bounce, like it does on a warm, spring day. It doesn’t shine with the colors of summer. It’s different somehow.

In this season of autumn, I hear an invitation to express gratitude for the more challenging parts of my life. Thank you, for the pain that showed me the truth of who I was, so that I can now be the person you call me to be. Thank you, for the grief that allowed me to see how much I cared. Thank you, for the struggles that helped me build strength to carry the burdens you call me to bear. Thank you, for the sorrows that compelled me to reach out to you for comfort. Thank you for being there, and for allowing me to see you there, in all of it.

And thank you to the Cursillo, without which I would never have been able to write what I just wrote. De Colores.