Welcome to Sunday Stillness, a few minutes each week to meditate on one idea that will bring us closer to who we want to become.

I used to follow this person on Instagram who always on every one of her posts used the hashtag,

gratitude is my religion.

And at first, I'll be honest,

it sort of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit, like it felt like a little bit like heresy.

Or it also felt like it was snubbing its nose at religion or something.

I don't know. I can't really describe exactly why I kind of chafed over it.

But I did for a while, even though I really loved her posts and how they were

often steeped in some kind of gratitude practice.

And then as time went on I felt like something about that

hashtag that had really stood out to me. I mean how often do hashtags really stand out to you?

So there was obviously something about it

that I needed to learn from, I needed to listen to,

and it felt like, you know, several years into noticing this, following this person, sort of having

this idea rattling around in the back of my head.

It felt like suddenly gratitude was my religion. That's what I really felt like and

the deeper that I've gotten into a mindfulness practice over the last few years,

the more I've reached for gratitude

in a tumultuous time, like time in history, and also just personally, there's been a lot of ups and

downs in the last few years. And so I return to this idea of gratitude being sort of the center of my life in many ways.

And I want to clarify that I think sometimes we can hear messages about gratitude and expressing

gratitude and keeping gratitude journals and all of these ideas that might be spoken about when we're

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