This just in

I stumbled onto on old group email I sent out on June 19, 2014, on the source of a famous idea from Meister Eckhart (1260-1328).   This is the idea that if your only prayer were "Thanks!" that would be enough.  Here is that old email:

This just in from Ashley Young, executive director of the Eckhart Society:

In Sermon 27 on page 173 of
The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart translated by Maurice
O'C Walshe (1911-1998) published by (Herder & Herder in 2009):

'You will see: "Now," St Paul says, "Rejoice in the Lord," and adds, "Your thoughts shall be known to the Lord."  Now he says, "Your thoughts" - and all
the powers - "shall be known by the Lord, thoughts of gratitude and
prayer."  If a man had no more to do with God than to be thankful,
that would suffice.

So this context broadens the perspective on the idea of the all-sufficiency of thanks.  Our "inner" life is not quite private, but "known to the Lord."  In modern language, we could just say that it counts, that it  matters, that it has a public or universal import.  

If your supposedly inner world is filled with grudges, resentments....  If your supposedly inner world is filled with gratitude....

wishing you joy,

Michael