Rabbi Heschel insists that the will to wonder and the intention of awe, however noble and efficacious, are not enough. He states, “The sense of wonder, awe, and mystery is necessary, but not sufficient to find the way from wonder to worship, from willingness to realization, from awe to action” (God in Search of Man, 108). Cultivating and living a contemplative life requires radical amazement but it is what persons do with this amazement that determines whether or not they will engage in an ongoing mystical lifestyle and whether or not that life will impel them to compassion and sympathetic action.
If wonder is not simply intellectual curiosity but the first indication that something is asked of humans, then “Be grateful” is the first answer to the question, “What do you do with your ultimate wonder?” and the second answer is like it: “Practice gratitude.”
“To live within the core,” as Heschel refers to authentic religious living, requires the ongoing posture and the intentional practice of gratitude. Unlike radical amazement which is variously the antecedent, impetus, and reply of faith, gratefulness is a conscious response and full-fledged sign of faith. In an effort to help others recover “the ancient instinct for astonishment,” Ron Rolheiser recommends a concrete praxis:
. . . the first exercise we must do to restore our contemplative faculty to its full powers is to work at receiving everything—life, health, others around us, love, friendship, food, drink, sexuality, beauty—as gift. Becoming a more grateful person is the first, and the most important step that there is in overcoming the practical atheism that besets our everyday lives (Shattered Lantern, 182).♦
Source: Daniel J. Miller, Radical Amazement and Deep Sympathy, © 2007, p. 489-90.
Reflection:
I don’t know of anyone who was born inherently grateful. It is a learned behavior or more accurately an intentional response as we experience the gratuitousness of life or the excessive generosity of a Giver. Heschel says that “It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.” The profundity of some wisdom lies in very simple truths: If we want to be grateful (full of grace), then we need to practice gratitude. It is those who are grateful in all seasons of life, who are most awake to the blessings of life and the most truly (that is, beatitudinally) happy.
Practice:
Decide this Thanksgiving to make thanks-giving an intentional, daily spiritual practice. Keep it simple or be creative, but be grate-ful.
On that ♫, I give thanks for all of you,
Dan