GOODPEOPLE — I have been unable to write much these last five months. Let me say here that I am greatly appreciative and grateful for your readership, companionship, friendship, saintship, commentship, and donationship this past year (Notice I didn’t say worship). I’d be writing even if you weren’t out there, but it sure makes it more enjoyable and worthwhile knowing you are. ~ Extravagant Blessings, Dan

Thanking is a true understanding of who we really are.
~ Julian of Norwich, 14th century English anchoress

I find it provocative and illuminating that despite the differences between the many religious traditions and spiritual paths humans have to choose from, that we don’t have to look very long or hard to realize that there are a handful of essential principles, values, attitudes, and actions that most, if not all, the world religions share in common. One of these universal attitudes and actions is gratitude or gratefulness. The older I get (and hold my breath, perhaps wiser), the more simple my faith has become. Simple, not simplistic. Stripped down to the bare essentials. Like a sculptor chipping away on a block of stone, I am learning to let fall away anything that is not absolutely indispensable to flourish spiritually, to become more deeply human, and to live in reverent kinship with all the earth. Gratefulness is one of the essentials. It is requisite for and the fruit of a vital and vibrant spiritual life.

It might be helpful and practical, not to mention edifying, to remind ourselves this week that gratefulness is not an exclusively American (or Christian) quality or response. It is, in fact, a global phenomenon present in virtually all religions. And if we’re honest, we see that belief in God or a higher power is not a prerequisite for being grateful. It just gives us a mailing address where we can send it.

It’s also important I think to highlight the overlooked obvious, namely, that no one comes out of their mother’s womb innately grateful (In fact, most if not all of us, came out from our safe, soothing, maternal hot tub a little cranky and ticked off). By all accounts, each and every human person is born with the capacity to be grateful. But there is no guarantee that we will grow up to become grateful adults. All of this is to say that human expressions of things like wonder, gratefulness, generosity, kindness, compassion, and joy — to name some but not all beneficent, life-giving responses or healing actions — have to be practiced.

Notice above I said “Obvious.” But notice also that I put the word “overlooked” in front of it. The actions from the list above are not certainties at birth nor are they things we back into accidentally. Observation and witnessing have shown me time and time again that the most grateful people didn’t get gratefulness genes or an extra silver spoonful of gratitude at birth nor were they imbued from the beginning with the special charism of gratitude — “some get it on their scratch-off card at birth, some don’t. Life’s not fair.”

No. It’s not like that at all. Grateful people are those who consciously and intentionally practice giving thanks, practice being grateful. They are mindful of being grateful. When they come to the proverbial fork in the road and have a choice in a tangible everyday situation of how to respond, they choose to be grateful (or kind, compassionate, and joyful) people. The most grateful people are simply and not so simply, the ones who regularly, consciously, and intentionally practice being grateful. “Gee, thanks. Dan. That’s all you’ve got for me?” Yep. One of the initial surprises and hidden disappointments for many spiritual pilgrims is to discover the further into the tunnel of love we go, the less glamorous and more quotidian it becomes. If we want bells and whistles, applause, fanfare, and confetti drops, we best look elsewhere, maybe on America’s Got Talent.

The requisite place of practice in the authentic spiritual life is one of the most solid convictions and bit of counsel I have to pass on to spiritual seekers and practitioners who are willing to listen and to have their illusions popped. It is so seemingly simple that you’d think it would be embarrassing for me to say it aloud: The way to become grateful is by practicing gratefulness. But, I’m not the least bit embarrassed, because I know any virtue, graced work, or action that is one of the essentials for an integral, vibrant, and sustaining spirituality, is a learned behavior and attitude. Grateful people are not naturally so, they are just more practiced in the art and effort of gratitude.

Sometimes it takes a brush with danger, an illness, a deep loss, or the near occasion of death to rouse us to the precious and fragile nature of life and living and gratefulness as the commensurate response. Who among us with a heart, an ounce of empathy, and personal experience of suffering and loss would not be especially mindful this Thanksgiving for what and whom we are truly grateful? Many people, abiding by the recommended precautions due to the pandemic, will feel the absence of family and loved ones this week which may make them more aware of just how grateful we are for them. Many who gather together on Thursday will do so with hearts that are equally grateful and concerned because their mother or grandfather or husband or daughter or coworker or neighbor is in the hospital struggling against Covid-19. And hopefully many people this Thanksgiving are sensitive enough to have hearts that are simultaneously grateful and full of sadness because they know a pandemic suddenly makes the planet a very small place. A place tomorrow where there will be a quarter of a million empty chairs at the table.

May our hearts that are full of gratitude and deep sympathy go out to those who have died from this indiscriminate virus;

to those who have lost loved ones, many without being able to say goodbye or to honor them with a meaningful ritual or funeral;

to those hands-on professional caregivers who in the last 8 or 9 months have lived through more up close and personal trauma and death than would typically be experienced in a long medical career;

and to all the behind-the-scenes people and all the unrecognized and unheralded folks, paid and volunteer, who have risen to the occasion and given us living testaments of what humanity looks like when fully realized and completely given away for the good of others.

FOR SLOW DEEP PRAYERFUL REFLECTION on Gratefulness:
Like the pandemic and it’s contagiousness, gratefulness is also a global phenomenon. It too has the capacity and potency to be a super spreader. So I thought it might be a good and unifying gesture to offer a sample of thanksgiving prayers, reflections, and quotes on gratefulness from around the world and from different religious traditions to show that we are all related and inextricably connected by the essential sanctifying and humanizing response of gratefulness. The Beloved Community is always the grateful community.♦

SONG

Imela, Imela, Imela, Okaka
Imela chineke   
Imela onyeoma.

~ Nigerian Chant
Pronunciation: (em-ay-la), (O-kah-kah),   (own-yo-ma)
Translation: Thank you, great God. Thank you, because you are so good.

AN EXCERPT from An Interrupted Life by Etty Hillesum.

“As life becomes harder, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more the good things of life become unexpected gifts which we accept with gratitude.”

~ In 1943 Etty Hillesum was deported and killed in an Auschwitz concentration camp. She was 29 years old. Less well-known and older than Anne Frank, her more recently published journals and letters describe the persecution of Jewish people in Amsterdam and her spiritual awakening

EAGLE FEATHER PRAYER

~ by Linda Hogan, a contemporary American Chickasaw novelist, essayist, and environmentalist

EXCERPT FROM A LETTER
By the 16th century Basque founder of the Jesuit Order, St. Ignatius of Loyola

It seems to me in the light of the Divine Goodness . . . that ingratitude is the most abominable of sins . . . . For it is a forgetting of the graces, benefits, and blessings received. As such it is the cause, beginning, and origin of all sins and misfortunes. On the contrary, the grateful acknowledgement of blessings and gifts received is loved and esteemed not only on earth but in heaven.

~ From “Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola to Simon Rodrigues”

BLESS THIS FOOD

O Lord of the Universe
Please accept all this food
It was given by you
Let it be of service to all
Only you can bless it.

~ Bhagavad Gita

BE GRATEFUL

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything God has given us – and God has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from God.

Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

~ by Thomas Merton, 20th century American Trappist monk

THANKSGIVING PRAYER

O God, when I have food, help me to remember the hungry;
When I have work, help me to remember the jobless;
When I have a home, help me to remember those who have no home at all;
When I am without pain, help me to remember those who suffer,
And in remembering,
help me to destroy my complacency;
bestir my compassion,
and be concerned enough to help by word and deed,
those who cry out for what we take for granted.
Amen.

by the 20th century American Disciples of Christ minister Samuel Pugh

QUOTE by the 19th and 20th century French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor Henri Mattisse

I didn’t expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I’m living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.

HOMAGE

Salutations!
O Merciful God who provides food for the body
and soul, you have kindly granted what is spread before us.
We thank you.
Bless the loving hands that prepared this meal
and
us who are to enjoy it, please.
Homage, homage,
homage to thee!

~ Tamil Prayer  (South India and Sri Lanka)

QUOTE

For all that has been — Thanks!
To all that shall be — Yes!

~ Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish economist and diplomat, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations (1953 – 1961).

POEM

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

~ Jane Kenyon (American poet, 1947 – 1995)

♣ INTERESTED IN SPIRITUAL DIRECTION ONLINE?
I offer spiritual direction online. If you, or someone you know, are interested in beginning or returning to spiritual direction CLICK HERE where you will find both practical information and explanations of spiritual direction. Use the form  HERE to contact me.