I don’t do it often enough, but I intend to start the day with the following, “song.” It is original in a sense, or parts are, but much/most of it is taken from others, some more, some less obvious. Let it be like a scavenger hunt!
And what happens when we take such a song into our heart and return to it daily?

 

Thus begins another day for which I am overflowing with gratitude.
Great is my fortune and grateful I am for this life, my family, my friends, my health, and my opportunities.

I celebrate myself and the world and I celebrate that I am the world, my family, my friends, my strangers, the highest and lowest creatures, rock, loam, and lichen, countless earths and suns.
I see that the world is hidden in the world, nothing to be lost.
And what I achieve, the world achieves.
I am earth and soil cycling, sun cycling, worm cycling, mushroom cycling, air and water cycling—a non-dual eye of the world cycling.
I see that carrying self forward to illuminate the myriad things is delusion; the myriad things coming forth and illuminating self is awakening.
I am not the center, but each of the ten directions simultaneously the center.

Thus begins another day for which I am overflowing with gratitude.
I am here to be curious, not consoled; consciousness is the gift of the gods.
Beauty and love and wonder and reverence are everything.
Nature is god breathing.
Breathing out:  life given, creation.
Breathing in:  life taken back, death.

Thus begins another day for which I am overflowing with gratitude.
And I, now forty-three years old in perfect health, rooted in the present moment, endeavor to engage today overflowing with curiosity and openness, hopeful but without expectation.
I overflow with love and overflow with affirmation of the world—glorious would be eternal return.
I welcome sorrow as equally as I welcome joy.
Seeing the deep ground of grief as necessary to the rest.
Everything is a gift and nothing lasts.
And grace is the act of looking when the head wants to turn.

Thus begins another day for which I am overflowing with gratitude.
May I engage every moment playfully, earnestly as an end in itself, full of wonder, full of praise.
May I be mindful of my motivations and skillful at letting go of attachments.
May I overflow with generosity, an outward eye for prosperity, always taking the lesser, whether in quantity or quality.
May I have the strength and patience to keep to the long-view, to hold to long-term values and ends, and not succumb to short-term desires or petty pleasures.
May I forgive myself my wrongs as I forgive others’.When all is done, may I accept what comes.

Thus begins another day for which I am overflowing with gratitude.
Sacred is this day.