This is the last in my series for TweetsGiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I will return to my normal topics about associations, education, meetings and events, and social media on November 30, 2009.

Thanksgiving looks two directions at once.

It looks to the world: shopping for the family meal, retrieving visitors or being a visitor, receiving “Black Friday – shop tomorrow!” messages and deciding whether to comply, savoring time off work, and in many instances, dealing with the onset of holiday angst.

Offering thanks and gratitude this Thanksgiving.

And it looks to the heavenly: glimpses of our being interwoven with those who give to us and those who depend on our gifts, signs of unearned grace, lives connecting as if drawn together by a higher power.

Somehow, at the center of our gratitude and our delight, or our seasonal despair, is a Love far beyond anything we see or control. We cannot define it, measure it, or bar our door to it. That Love simply exists, and it graces our lives no matter what we do.

Last Saturday night, for example, as my parents, family and friends gathered to celebrate my parents’ 50 Wedding Anniversary, I sat at the “children’s table” away from the commotion with the Gen-Y generation. I was warmed by the roaring laughter of friends and family celebrating this occasion. I marveled at this gift: a kitchen where everyone felt safe, three generations in a circle, love in full bloom, those honoring their elders.

Yes, I can trace the years of my parents nursing and guiding as well as many family relatives doing their part. But I also see the mystery of a goodness that comes from a belief in a Divine Love, not from parenting. When my sister and I built snow castles and took well-worn sledding paths down a neighborhood hill several decades ago, I’m sure our parents had no idea where we would go or where our futures would lead. That flight passed through the heavens and returned to earth on wings of the Love, not theirs or mine.

In these challenging times, I hope for two things.

First, I hope that you glimpse such goodness coming toward you. And that you will know it as a higher power’s doing, not yours. For if this goodness is of Love , so to speak, then it is reliable and durable.

Second, despite the politicization of faith and the many ways every festival is turned to commercial advantage, I hope that nations trapped in war, famine, poverty and worsening inequality will remember their first Thanksgiving Day, when a harsh winter of despair turned to hope because unexpected friends showed up with food.

The first Beatitude still prevails: we are blessed, not when we have enough food on today’s table or enough credit for tomorrow’s shopping, but when we know our need of each other, faith and the Divine.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to you and yours!

Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.