A Week Of Thanksgiving at Dragonfly Cottage...

 "If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice."
~ Meister Eckhart ~

I am happy and grateful to live with
funny pugs. Sampson always makes
me laugh....

In the week ahead I have decided to make each day a day of thanksgiving, each hour a time of prayer, every moment a time to celebrate each dear, delightful, funny, wonderful thing in my life. I have so much to be thankful for and Thanksgiving is too big to contain all the things we are grateful for in one day. Join me, if you would like, to celebrate Thanksgiving all week long. I will try to update the blog here as close to daily as possible this week.

So this morning I sat down with my coffee and I was having thoughts. I had spent 90 minutes caring for the four small parrots, the four dogs, the BIG parrot and other early morning chores. Ahhhh, I thought as I sipped my coffee, slipping into that comfortable early morning mode of silence, response to those who contact me and whom I would like to share with. I always have Sam, my snuggle pug, with the big tongue up top, glued to my body. Now I have two early morning helpers...

With my laptop on my lap desk, coffee next to me to the left, pug to the right, up came a very large bird, climbing down off of his play-stand to walk across the floor a few feet, when I feel a tug as he begins to climb up my afghan and perch on my feet saying a big, bright, "Hello Flounder!" as soon as we make eye contact. I swear the bird is smiling at me!

I am grateful for a life blessed with animal companions who make me smile, laugh, in whose feathers and fur I have cried and kissed and hugged and loved. I am thankful that I never really feel alone because my 9 sweet animal companions are always near, and in a sad moment there is a soft velvety nose pushing into me, or a giant bird lays his soft white cheek against mine and makes kissing sounds. I am filled with gratitude for all that I am blessed with, far too much to list here.

This year I am especially grateful for Flounder, the funny named gorgeous Greenwing macaw who needed a home after his beloved owner died and miracle of miracles somehow or another ended up here with me, very nearly 2 years to the day that I lost my beloved African Grey parrot Henry. I thought I would never survive that and I haven't been the same since. In a deep dark time a funny gentle giant of a bird flew into my life, and I have not had a sad day since. You cannot look at that face and not feel love and joy and delight.

Thank you God for the gift of happiness, for a lightening of spirit, for giving me wings to soar because now I have a teacher to set me on the path. Thank you for this great big bird.

And now there are funny little people everywhere here at the cottage who follow me everywhere I go, watch over me, will not budge until I do, making me feel the most loved human being in the whole universe. How could you not when you have these faces looking up at you?

Harvey is up front trying to stick his nose in
the camera and Sam is in back...

You tell me that you could have those two faces + one more pug + Big Dog Moe looking up at you like that and feel lonely. I believe it is impossible.

Thank you God for giving me the gifts of a full home and a full heart. Despite whatever might happen in my life I have been blessed with a house full of angels and I am constantly floated on their love and presence, I am comforted, feel more peaceful, and my heart opens wider. Sometimes I feel like the most blessed person in the Universe. Others may have more of this or that, or things that most of the world crave or feel incomplete without. I, barefoot in my little cottage, surrounded by these small ones, know that I have so much to be grateful for if I continuously said "Thank You," for the rest of my life, like the continuous beads on a rosary, or mala, there wouldn't be enough beads, enough time, to express all of the gratitude I feel. A single "thank you" in each moment that I am awake and alive and aware enough to remember to say it will have to suffice. My cup runneth over...

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I keep my beads moving, my lips silently form the words, a pug snuggles in closer to me and a big bird turns his head around and tucks his beak into his feathers. He is at peace, he has gone to sleep. Thank you God for helping me provide safe haven for the little ones in need.

Thank you for giving me the strength, for helping me in incomparable unseen ways, to save very tiny ones on the brink of death, to see life come back into them. I have been witness to many miracles. I am ever and always filled with a sense of awe and wonder...

Very tiny Quaker parakeet, helped out of the egg,
having been abandoned...

 

 

A very tiny zebra finch who fell out of the nest and
was rejected by parents. I named her Tallulah and
fed her with the tiniest dropper imaginable. She
thought I was her mother...

And for all the little ones I loved and cared for and tried to save but couldn't, who broke my heart but taught me lessons about life and death and love that I couldn't have learned any other way, I whisper softly... Thank you.

In this moment I am filled with such tenderness, over-flowing gratitude, thankful for all of my blessings that I have run out of words and will now sit in the silence, meditate and pray. But thank you dear reader, for sitting in this space with me. May you be showered with blessings, and may you be awake, alive, and aware enough to recognize every one. This is my practice now, to be able to see, to acknowledge, to be ever aware of even the smallest blessings that might otherwise go unnoticed. I am grateful for all of these things, and so much more.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Amen.