I recently began reading the book Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in The Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstien. Within the first couple chapters, I stumbled across a quote that jumped off the page and into my being.  A “gift of words” if you will.

“Even if your childhood was horrific, if you are reading this right now, at least you were given enough to sustain you into adulthood. For the first years of life, none of this was anything you earned or produced. It was all a gift. Imagine walking out the door right now and finding yourself plunged into an alien world in which you were completely helpless, unable to feed or clothe yourself, unable to use your limbs, unable to even distinguish where your body ends and the world begins. Then huge beings come and hold you, love you. Wouldn’t you feel grateful?

In moments of clarity, perhaps after a narrow brush with death, or upon accompanying a loved one through the death process, we know that life itself is a gift. We experience an overwhelming gratitude at being alive. We walk in wonderment at the riches, undeserved and freely available, that come with life: the joy of breathing, the delights of color and sound, the pleasure of drinking water to quench thirst, the sweetness of a loved one’s face. This sense of mixed awe and gratitude is a clear sign of the presence of the sacred.”