Celebrate the Human Experience by Giving Thanks at Mealtime. Try It! Count your blessings.  Today there is a deep hunger for connection with ourselves, with nature, and with the process of birth and death itself says life coach and author M. J. Ryan, creator of the  New York Times  best-selling  Random Acts of Kindness  series. What her book,  A Grateful Heart , is offering from a wide variety of spiritual disciplines and secular perspectives, is a way of satisfying that hunger by setting aside time before we eat to acknowledge the blessings in our lives. When we give thanks, we take our place in the great wheel of life, recognizing our connection to one another and to all of creation. Choose from 365 blessings and give thanks.   A Grateful Heart  is a tool to help readers reclaim and enrich the tradition of pausing before the evening meal to give thanks. Drawing from a range of religious and cultural practices, the 365 blessings in this book celebrate friendship, love, peace, reconciliation, the body, nature, joy, and appreciation of the moment. This illustrated feast for the mind includes quotations from Martin Luther King Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, Gandhi, Rumi, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Denise Levertov, the Bible, and the Tao Te Ching. M. J. Ryan wrote  A Grateful Heart  to encourage families to share the experience of being part of something greater than themselves.  With that in mind, the book includes 365 traditional and nontraditional blessings organized into four sections corresponding to the seasons. Experience the blessings in  A Grateful Heart  in a variety of ways: Just open it and begin reading one-a-day in the order given - Use the index to pick and choose topics of interest that day - Open at random and read what is offered If you have benefited from books such as  Earth Prayers , M. J. Ryan’s  Attitudes of Gratitude , Don Miguel Ruiz’s  Prayers , June Cotner’s  Graces , or Marcia M. Kelly’s  100 Graces ; you and your family will love M. J. Ryan’s  A Grateful Heart . “If you’re looking for new prayers to enliven an old tradition, try this.” — USA Today “What better time to practice gratitude than before eating! This carefully compiled little book builds on the traditional recitation of grace before a meal with a collection of short musings, from diverse sources, meant to focus our attention on things profound and simple. The writings come from traditional religious sources, from philosophers and poets, and from every day people. They are 365 “soft whisperings from the heart” intended to bring your customers daily joy.” — Anna Jedrziewski , Retailing Insight (formerly New Age Retailer ) M.J. Ryan is a wellness coach and New York Times bestselling author of several self-help series. With degrees in psychology and literature, she became CEO of Conari Press in 1987, where she published several famous motivational and positive psychology books. M.J.’s success didn’t stop there as she joined nonprofits such as Professional Thinking Partners and SheEO to help female and non-binary entrepreneurs become the strong leaders they are today. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and daughter. From the Introduction A couple of days before I was to write the introduction to this book, I was making dinner. Unexpectedly, the water main up the street broke and all water was cut off for several hours. Anyone who has tried to cook with no water knows how frustrating that experience can be. As I struggled along I suddenly realized what a lesson I was being given. Here I was, for the previous six months reading every known book (or at least it felt that way) that in any way related to giving thanks, and I had taken completely for granted the miracle of water coming out of my tap whenever I wanted it! If I could overlook that, what other blessings in my life had I not perceived? Gratefulness—“great fullness,” as Brother David Steindl-Rast reminds us, “is the full response of the human heart to the gratuitousness of all that is.” Truly every single thing we have has been given to us, not necessarily because we deserved it, but gratuitously, for no known reason. And whatever source we believe is the giver—some concept of God or simply the breathtaking randomness of the universe—when we give thanks, we take our place in the great wheel of life, recognizing our connection to one another and to all of creation. Offering a blessing, reminds Brother Steindl-Rast, “plugs us into the aliveness of the whole world.” Howard Thurman once wrote, “To be alive is to participate responsibly in the experience of life,” and for those of us who are uncomfortable within the structure of organized religion, finding a proper form for that responsibility has not been easy. We’ve tended to shy away from many of the rituals religion offers and too often have ended feeling disconnected and isolated. It is in the spirit of reconnection that this volume has been created. That there is a deep hunger for conn