Grateful for Hillary and for the 64 million Americans who voted for her and supported her Presidency.
Grateful for the volunteers and staff who worked on her Campaign.
Grateful for the newspapers that supported her.
Grateful for the world leaders that supported her.
Grateful for the aspirations and sometime achievements of this country.
Grateful for our President and First Lady.
Thank you for supporting this site and working to make our country and our world better and fairer.
We hope that your holiday brings you reprieve and pleasure even in this challenging political environment.
O America. O world.
During a town Hall in New Hampshire, on Feb. 4, 2016, Hillary was asked this by Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett : "How do you cultivate the ego, the ego that we all know you must have, a person must have to be the leader of the free world, and also the humility to recognize that we know that you can't be expected to be wise about all the things that the president has to be responsible for?"
"It's not anything I've ever talked about much publicly," she said. "Everybody knows that I've lived a very public life for the last 25 years. So I've had to be in public dealing with some very difficult issues."
Sometimes she "roars" and sometimes she "retreats," Clinton answered, alluding to some of the public scandals she and her husband have endured. Clinton focused her response on a professed adherence to a contemporary theology popularized by Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen: the discipline of gratitude.
"And it basically is: Practice the discipline of gratitude," she continued.
"The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy," Nouwen wrote.
The philosophy that follows dictates that giving freely of oneself—not necessarily regular, systematic, even strategic—is a conscious choice to be a good steward of God's blessings. It is a reminder that believers are not free possessors but acting out of obligation to their faith. It is a recognition that all of life is a gift, according to Nouwen.
In this, as in many other aspects of life, let us follow Hillary.
Annette Niemtzow and Ted Smyth
Editors, Voices4Hillary
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November 24, 2016
