Gratitude Can Be Cultivated

Just Released in English: New Light Shed on Saint Gavrilia!

Dear Reader,

I feel that I want to tell you why I have this drive to help others love BEING with God.

We are all held in Love

Why am I traveling to Patmos and Leros twice a year … leading contemplative prayer pilgriamges and retreats … teaching bookbinding and parchment-making workshops on two continents … and spending the bulk of my studio time making a handbound coptic Gospel of Saint John the Beloved to share this love?

These are questions I sometimes ask myself, too.

At the very base of this calling is gratitude. I’ve been given so many good things in my life, and i want to give back. Mostly, I’ve been given the gift of knowing that I am loved, throughout my life, and that we are all inexplicably held in love by an ineffable God (earlier post: Ineffable Love for God).

Lately I’ve been getting up early to light my candle and greet the coming day in stillness. I can’t believe God gives us the drama of a sunrise every single day, without fail. What a gift.

I became a Christian as a young child, through my grandparents’ prayers while staying with them one summer. One of my very first memories is looking out their Kansas window, singing ‘Oh what a beautiful morning … oh what a beautiful day!’ while they chuckled behind me.

My mom led a complicated life in many ways, but I knew for sure that she loved me. She suffered from bipolar illness, and my childhood was sprinkled with extreme episodes of her bursting in and out of mental hospitals. But my dad was solid, and helped me to know that my job was simply to love her in those times, not to feel responsible to solve her problems, which were hers, not mine. My job was love - a crucial lifetime message to me.

Remember the gifts

Then, as an adult I’ve been blessed with love … a loving husband, loving daughters, loving friends and relatives. Since a dramatic early trip to Dachau, Germany, I’ve always had in the back of my mind that I could end up in a concentration camp someday. So like the Orthodox tradition to ‘remember your death every day’, I feel deeply that each day is a gift. If I have a difficult ending one day, I will still have been blessed by the thousands of days I have lived my life surrounded by love. Love given by my friends and family, but ultimately, love given to me, over and over again, by God. For this I am perpetually grateful.

Writing down gifts and miracles from God is a great way to keep these things in mind. Frederica Mathewes-Green recommended it to me many years ago, and now I am recommending it to you.

Discovering Saint Gavrilia, Ascetic of Love

I suppose the ‘coincidence’ of discovering Saint Gavrilia, the ‘Ascetic of Love’ is a little present God gave me on my first visit to Patmos. That’s where she was tonsured a nun by Saint Amphilochios.

I was there to work on transcribing the complete bibliography of Bishop Kallistos for a resource library at The Gardens of Discovery Eco-Spiritual Centre. Just a few days after I left, Gavrilia was canonized a saint. Since then I have traveled to her nearby island of Leros four times, leading pilgrimages and by myself, to be with her, venerate her relics, and spend time with her spiritual daughter, Aspasia.

On my last pilgrimage, we had the joy of meeting another of her spiritual daughters, Gerondissa (Abbess) Philothei, who showed us the chapel she is dedicating to Saint Gavrilia. She is in process of completing the lush iconography of her spiritual mother’s life and work on its interior walls.

Just yesterday I received the first shipment of Philothei’s new book, The Light and Joy of Saint Gavrilia: The Legacy of The Asctic of Love¹, published by Sea Salt Books. A treasure!

Join the orphanage!

Gerondissa Philothei speaks of 'The Orphans’, a new group of those who fall in love with this saint, but have never met her in person. I am one of those orphans. Maybe you are too?

In her Introduction, Philothei writes,

Eldress Gavrilia didn’t discourage you; she encouraged you to spread your wings and overcome fears and prejudices. With a few words, accompanied by the rhythmic motion of her hand, she urged me to pray in daily life: “Feel your pulse with your hand and softly, rhythmically say ‘Lord, have mercy’ whether walking, making your bed, or eating — everywhere. Glorify God for each day He grants you and say, ‘Whatever You will, Lord.’”

As I continue to learn a deeper level of love from Saint Gavrilia, I think of her way of praying the Komboskini prayers, simply saying,

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

+++

Q: How could you carve out time and space to write down the gifts and miracles sprinkled throughout your life?

Spark: Be among the first to read this new (slim!) book, following the beloved (and thick!) book, Ascetic of Love, which has been in and out of print for decades.

Resources:

1. Gerondissa Philothei, 2025. The Light and Joy of Saint Gavrilia: The Legacy of the Ascetic of Love.

Join the Saint Gavrilia Society if you’d like to connect with other ‘orphans’ of this beloved saint.