Although a non-believer he found himself falling to his knees and crying out, “Oh God! Oh God! If there is a God, what am I to do?” To his utter amazement a deep and beautiful voice said, “Give thanks for every single thing – good and bad – that ever happens to you.”

Carothers, bewildered, looked around him and asked, “Who said that? Who are you?” The reply was immediate: “It is I, the one you spoke to”, and then the advice was repeated to express gratitude not only for the good that had come his way, but also for all of the mean and awful things that had been inflicted upon him by people and life’s circumstances.

After a few days of wrestling with the idea that he could be losing his mind this bitter depressed young man decided to experiment with the advice he’d been given. Somewhat embarrassed at his actions, nevertheless he kneeled down and said aloud his first words of gratitude for one of the many disasters in his life; then for his present predicament, then for more and more of the events in his past which had resulted in so much misery for him. Feeling less unsure of what he was doing, with each passing day there was an easing of the burden he carried and a softening of the heart.

Then the ‘miracles’ began, one after another, people coming forward to befriend and help him. He continued with his practice of expressing praise and gratitude for everything, the apparent good and the apparent bad. The miracles continued unabated until, within a few short years he had risen in life to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army.

Carothers initiated all of the soldiers who came to him with their troubles into the art of praying with praise and gratitude. Miracles followed in their lives too. When he retired from the Army he went on to found a powerful new Christian movement centred at Praise Mountain in California.

After absorbing 'Prison to Praise’ I followed his example, steadily increasing the frequency and fervour of my expressions of gratitude. I now give thanks when a nerve in my right palate fires up, when I trip or kick my toe, when a friend disappoints me. I give thanks for a sunny day, a rainy cold day, and I give thanks when I notice again how loving and graceful Suwanti is in her speech and movements. Sometimes I lean back from my writing and just repeat, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’, over and over as random images of my life's joys and mishaps flow through my mind, each one accompanied on its way with another wave of gratitude.

And why be grateful? To my mind it’s because surely everything must be perfect, must be part of the same exquisite order which governs the movements of the planets and galaxies, which results in a Nature so beautiful and wondrous that we can only marvel or sometimes weep at its balance, power and harmony. And are we not part of Nature too? Or as Henry Thoreau once wrote, “We are Nature’s way of looking at itself.”

I am grateful for the hammer-blows of fate which soften and mould my character, offering wisdom, compassion, understanding and courage. Like the sugarcane which is burned, slashed, crushed, boiled and then dried, resulting in sugar so sweet, I am grateful for the opportunity to discover some more of my own innate sweetness and love which until then had been hidden away behind the hard thick skin of my ego. And I am grateful for the bountiful gifts of upbringing, loved ones, friendship, opportunities, comforts and indulgences, release from pain, accomplishments and access to the world’s wisdom stories.

I can attest that each expression of gratitude releases from within me yet another level of awareness of how perfect it all is. The ongoing effect is one of increasing contentment, satisfaction and happiness.

As an antidote for those components of depression which are fed by the ‘poor me’ or ‘glass half empty’ attitude towards life, expressing praise and gratitude is highly effective. I’ll share with you another story of how powerful this spiritual self-help technique can be:

A good friend of ours – now in her late eighties – is Sister Pauline of the St. Francis Order who in a recent biography has been referred to as ‘The Mother Teresa of Sydney’. She is lauded for setting up houses for those too disturbed to be able to cope alone but whose problems are not severe enough to gain them asylum in a psychiatric hospital – those battling with alcoholism, drug addiction, schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses. When I first called in to see Sister Pauline she thought for the first two hours we had together – amidst a small gathering of residents in the kitchen of the Redfern house – that I was seeking refuge for myself. That says something of my eccentric nature at the time but more about Sister Pauline because she related to me as if I was perfectly ‘normal’, exactly how she treated each one of the household members regardless of their level of mental disturbance. She saw Jesus equally in each one of us.

On later occasions when I visited Sister Pauline with Suwanti, my wife, we noticed that the exclamation, “Praise the Lord!”, was a frequent part of her vocabulary. These words sounded out of her whenever she related some unusual happening to do with her life in the houses – she stayed at each one of them in turn. One memorable story was of how late one night there was a loud hammering at the front door of the Redfern house, in a rather ‘tough’ area of Sydney. When she opened the door a young man with wild eyes raised a large knife and yelled, “I’m going to kill you!” Spontaneously she exclaimed, “Praise the Lord!”, and immediately followed this with, “Look dear friend, before you hurt someone with that knife, why don’t you come in for a cup of coffee?”

The man’s demeanour immediately softened and changed to the look of a love-starved child. They shared the coffee, he stayed that night and then moved in for the next few months. Thereafter he became one of her most trusted assistants, in charge of a self-sufficient farming community Sister Pauline operated for ‘graduates’ from the houses of asylum.

This was but one of many remarkable stories – some clearly miracles – where her calling out ‘Praise the Lord’ transformed a situation fraught with danger into one of immediate loving docility in the distressed person.

To us Sister Pauline was – and remains – a wonderful example of the power of prayerful praise and gratitude over another’s darkness. She sees everything, every event, every person’s actions, whether harmonious or discordant, as a perfect example of the divine play, God in action, which elicits a sense of wonder and delight in her. And this is the essence of what she passed on to those who entered her life: see the perfection in everything, and give thanks and praise for that reality.