Gratitude

Rev. Sandra Fees

Nov. 20, 2011

A friend of mine said recently, “if you watch the news on a daily basis, it’s hard to find gratitude.”  I know what she means. I imagine you do too. What greets us when we flip on the nightly news or follow the online newsfeed are stories of poverty, homelessness, global warming, ethnic cleansing, natural disasters, abuse, bipartisan squabbling, and financial crisis. The talk of the 1% and the 99% dominates the news cycles.

Sometimes I feel pretty grumpy about all this. Sometimes, I feel sad, other times angry. Sometimes I have an ungrateful heart. An eruption of ingratitude comes when I see the ways we humans are falling short collectively, the way we are failing to do our best, and our failure to live creatively and with integrity and compassion on this planet we share.

Other times, ingratitude wells up in me because of my own personal life. It can be something trivial – a small annoyance of some sort. It may be that I made a mistake or that someone tailgated me on my way home. I really hate that. There was the month when my dishwasher and refrigerator broke and then the roof began to leak. I wasn’t grateful for that. There was the morning when my car battery was dead and I had somewhere to be. I wasn’t grateful for that.

There are also the major personal losses. Who hasn’t experienced the death of a loved one, a broken relationship, a painful illness, or the loss of a job? Who among us hasn’t experienced hard times and major transitions as well as small inconveniences? Each of us encounters losses, disappointments, and hardships. Shall we be grateful for them?

And then there are the times when I try to talk myself into a grateful heart. Have you tried this? For me, it goes something like this. When the snowstorm hit in late October, I was glad I had my trees trimmed the month prior and that my neighbors and I didn’t lose electricity – like so many other people did.

I wonder, though, if calling that gratitude – calling not experiencing the hardships others have – is really what gratitude is about. I succumb to this thinking often enough myself to know that merely escaping problems isn’t sufficient for my happiness and well-being. I think we can’t help but experience a kind of relief at these times. And they can be helpful reminders for us to take a closer look at our lives and remember what we do have and may take for granted on a daily basis.

But I find myself needing something more. For me, it simply isn’t enough to say “thank goodness that didn’t happen to me” or to be grateful I’m better off than someone else or to give thanks that I narrowly escaped disaster. Gratitude is a response to moments when I am graced with joy and beauty and aliveness – not just to times when bad stuff is absent.

Gratitude arises in the moments when something unexpected, something wonderful or tender, something beautiful breaks through and I notice it. This may be a sunrise or a sunset, a child happily murmuring in her father’s arms, a piece of art, or learning a new word in Scrabble.

Or hiking. I hiked in Cacapon State Park in West Virginia this past week, during a few free hours amid a busy continuing education program with Unitarian Universalist colleagues. The study time fed my mind and was informing my understanding of justice work but the walk was healing. I was accompanied on the hike by a small group of colleagues.

The trail was carpeted with yellow leaves which were beginning to dry and curl. The sky was the gorgeous blue of fall and striated with a few random wisps of white cloud. The architecture of trees – trunks, branches, curves, and jagged edges – was exposed now that the leaves had slipped from them. The space around me beckoned. Several of my longings – for time in nature, peace, exercise, relationship - were being met in a soulful way.

It was easy to be grateful in the midst of such bounty. Whenever and wherever I experience such abundance, I try to rejoice in my good fortune. It’s easy to be grateful when I find myself surrounded by people and things I love, things that make me feel nurtured and whole, things that remind me that I love life and that to be alive is glorious.

Our group of hikers had left behind a difficult conversation about the future of our faith. We had been talking about the times in which we live, and what role religion has in it. We were wondering aloud about whether it’s still possible to turn back from the hard, tragic events and the unraveling of this planet. Or whether we stand at the brink of an abyss from which we can no longer draw back.

Some of us were more hopeful than others. Some imagined a paradigm shift was already beginning and that its seeds could be found in the Occupy Movement or elsewhere in the planetary quest for a deeper, more engaged, more sustaining spirituality and a renewed earth ethic. All of us recognize that there is no shortage of global problems to lament and that the environmental degradation and economic crisis are among them.

And there we were, there I was, taking a break from a hard conversation about saving the world to go out and savor one of our nation’s gorgeous state parks. E.B. White once said, 

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. (qtd in profile by Israel Shenker, E. B. White: Notes and Comment by Author, The New York Times, 1969-07-11)

Or as Unitarian Universalist Minister Meg Riley asks: “how do I manage the Thanksgiving season, when my heart is filled with outrage and grief as well as gratitude for all the bounty which life has heaped upon me?” Her answer: “Same as I manage the rest of the year: imperfectly and awkwardly.”

Indeed, we enter this season of giving thanks imperfectly and awkwardly. We approach it not with ignorance of the problems that surround us, and hopefully not with denial of them. Gratitude does not live with blinders to the great tragedies or the small ones. In fact, it has shallow roots where there is no depth of struggle. Nor are we asked to be overwhelmed and despairing. Our hearts are filled with gratitude even amid the outrage and grief.

Most of us find ourselves torn between our mutual desires to save and to savor the world. Yet it seems gratitude encompasses both. Gratitude calls on us to savor and to save, knowing full well we will do both imperfectly and awkwardly.

On the one hand, gratitude is a practice, an awareness of awe and wonder and beauty. Through its practice we are reminded of our relationship with all beings, with all life. We know we are one, and the connections we share are essential to our existence and to our well-being. The practice of gratitude cultivates our awareness of all we have been given, that life itself is a gift we did not earn. (“Gratitude should be the center of Unitarian Universalist theology,” Galen Guengerich, UUWorld, Spring 2007)

Through gratitude we acknowledge our dependence on other people and on the soil for our sustenance and our happiness. The practice of gratitude is our mystical response to being alive. It is our direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder that moves us to a renewal of the spirit. It opens us to the forces that create and uphold life.

I have a daily gratitude practice that I have been using for many years to help me more fully savor the world. It began as a practice in which I tracked consolations and desolations in my journal. These are terms taken from Ignatian spirituality, the spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuit monk, who developed the Spiritual Exercises and Daily Examen.

I have found that during difficult periods, I often had a long list of desolations, those areas where I experience the absence of God or sadness, and a challenging time naming consolations, or areas in which I experience the presence of God or moments of thankfulness. Over time, I look for patterns. I notice which things bring me joy, and also discern if areas of desolation can be transformed into something else. In the past year, I changed my practice. I now journal only the consolations, which I now call gratitudes. I have done this with intention, and I find it has helped bring me greater peace. I don’t ignore the desolations but choose to give my energy to being grateful, as best I can. As Ralph Blum says, “There is a calmness to a life lived in Gratitude, a quiet joy.”

You may wonder what’s on my gratitude list. What appears most frequently has to do with nature’s seasonal patterns and changes which delight me – such as the way the sun reflects and sparkles off dewdrops on the grass in the early morning, the affection of my cats, and enjoyment of the textures, colors, and shapes of fresh local produce especially in the summer – tomatoes, peaches, kale – but also the squash and apples in the harvest times. Meditation time and running get cited frequently.

A few days ago, I visited my father. He’s in a secure personal care dementia unit in Lebanon. For many months he’s been calling me sweetheart whenever he sees me, and I had begun to wonder if he still remembers my name. I know he knows me, but he did after all participate in giving me this name. When I got ready to leave and was saying goodbye, he said, “Sandy dear it’s good to see you.” He calls me Sandy. I felt a profoundly sense of peace to hear him speak my name.

There is another dimension to gratitude – the saving part. This has to do with our responsibility to one another and to the earth. It is our ethical response. (Guengerich) According to UU minister Lynn Ungar, the ethic of gratitude is our effort to “[try] to shape the world toward everyone else being able to enjoy the things we’re grateful for.”

If we ourselves savor the world, then we will want the whole family of beings to participate in the joy and bounty as well. With a grateful heart, how can I not reach out in kindness, love, and compassion? How can I not strive to be a force for good, an agent of justice and equity in human relationships?

As Thanksgiving approaches, may we seek in ourselves and in each other the practice and the ethic of a grateful heart. Knowing our efforts are imperfect and awkward, may we nevertheless strive to savor and to save the world. May we give thanks this day for all that blesses our lives and for what is yet to be.

Blessed be. Happy Thanksgiving.