Are you blessed?

"You know, these are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness. It's not happiness or unhappiness, it's either blessed or unblessed. As the Bible says, 'Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.'" That's one of my favorite quotations from Bob Dylan. In "Are you Happy?" Elizabeth Scalia, who blogs as The Anchoress, makes much the same point:

When my Elder son was very small, and was trying to figure out facial expressions, he would ask me, or my husband, or the lady at the grocery store, “Are you ‘appy?”

He was missing his h’s for a little while. ....

It’s a sweet question, and it always makes me smile, for the warm memories of my son at such a young age. But sometimes I wonder if, rather than asking people if they’re happy, we shouldn’t ask them, “are you grateful?” Because joy, or ‘appiness, I am convinced, comes from a capacity to actually see the good things in one’s life, and acknowledge them as good, and then be thankful.

Gratitude that one is employed; gratitude that one can walk across a room, unassisted. Gratitude for the senses. Gratitude for love, where we find it.

Are you ‘appy?

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

Are you Happy? | The Anchoress