LESSON 195 Love is the way I walk in gratitude.

1. 1Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. 2The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others. 3And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. 4How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts! 5For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause? 6And who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more? 7Your gratitude is due to Him alone Who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.

2. 1It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering. 2But it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to One Who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed, and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness. 3Nor could the even partly sane refuse to take the steps which He directs, and follow in the way He sets before them, to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive.

3. 1Your brother is your “enemy” because you see in him the rival for your peace; a plunderer who takes his joy from you, and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining. 2Now is vengeance all there is to wish for. 3Now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you, as useless as yourself; as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours.

4. 1You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. 2Love makes no comparisons. 3And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love. 4We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom. 5It will never be that some are loosed while others still are bound. 6For who can bargain in the name of love?

5. 1Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. 2And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you; the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. 3All these go with you. 4Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them, as they must share with us.

6. 1We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him. 2And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion. 3We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us.

7. 1Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest a while. 2We offer thanks for them. 3For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find, the way is opening at last to us. 4An ancient door is swinging free again; a long forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory, and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear.

8. 1Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love. 2For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. 3What more remains as ob­stacles to peace? 4The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. 5Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as “sins.” 6When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.

9. 1Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. 2We have been given everything. 3If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly, and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future. 4Gratitude becomes the single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. 5God has cared for us, and calls us Son. 6Can there be more than this?

10. 1Our gratitude will pave the way to Him, and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of. 2Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where one is the other must be found. 3For gratitude is but an aspect of the Love which is the Source of all creation. 4God gives thanks to you, His Son, for be­ing what you are; His Own completion and the Source of love, along with Him. 5Your gratitude to Him is one with His to you. 6For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God.