My Only Prayer

eric mccarty
2 min readMay 21, 2024
My Only Prayer — Thank you — Gratefulness — Headless Now — Lyrical Prose

My only Prayer:

at first it was a practice, meaning that I had to purposefully remember both words and feeling for the simple phrase “thank you’ as I awoke each morning, it was a ritual designed to invoke the presence of gratitude for the beginning of my day. This was inspired by the German mystic Meister Eckhart who once stated that if the only prayer one ever said in their entire life was thank you, it will be enough. So imagine if I started each day by cultivating that attitude of gratitude?

indeed, that would be enough.

and it is, honestly, I love this waking ritual of gratefulness, and it’s no longer really a practice now, more of a spontaneous greeting to the morning and a parting salutation to the night. I’m awake, alive, with an abundance of air to draw breath from, ample sunlight to guide me through the day, and an atmosphere that supports my very existence. My body functions well, strong, even if there’s a few aches from a high mileage life. I’m inspired, and my mind runs freely with ideas and inspiration. Each morning I wake with this prayer of thank you eager on my lips, natural now, appreciative for all that will follow through the course of my day.

whatever that might be, as it’s always a mystery to me.

even if it’s familiar in its form.

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eric mccarty

Writer, prose poetry, meditation teacher and lifetime student