thankful thursday

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ok, here it is, i have skirted this issue for quiet some time now. for what reasons, i am not sure. it's no secret that i am not super religious, despite being raised in a traditional catholic family, you know church every sunday, sunday school on sunday and wednesday, and when i was staying with my grandmother....well she went to church everyday. needless to say, i spent a lot of my childhood trying to understand religion, not just understand all the rules and memorizing all the things that we had to memorize.... what i was trying to understand is why you 'had to be religious to be a good person'.

now i know that many of you at this point are wanting to stop reading, but let me reassure you that this is not a rant about religion being bad or good, or any of my personal beliefs. simply it is going to focus on one thing....gratitude.

in my recent research for my weekly "thankful thursday" i have found an overwhelming common denominator....God.  why is it that the majority of the quotes regarding gratitude have such a religious undertone?  while i have no problem and somewhat understand....you know the whole message of the bible thing, the problem that i have is the lack of non-religious material about giving thanks. where is the support from the other side? i'm feeling a bit out numbered here folks.

today's quote nailed it! "your beliefs don't make you a better person, your behavior does".  i really couldn't have put it better myself.  so many people look at my husband and i and assume that we must be bad people....you know all covered in tattoos, nose rings, and alternative appearances and lifestyles...but give us two minutes to actually get to know us and you will find that there is much more to us.  we are some of the most caring and gracious freaks out there! hehe.  our religious beliefs, or lack their of, do not determine how we treat people and the world around us.

as a society we need to get past 'giving thanks' being something that we only do at church (or on turkey day) but something that we live everyday, where ever we are. behave in a manor that others know you appreciate the things around you. and on the flip side of that....some of you bible thumpers need to take a good hard long look in the mirror and practice what you preach.

the moral of the story is this: be good to people, give thanks for what you have, share your gratitude with others. plain and simple, religion or not. living a gracious lifestyle will bring you to a better place.