A Grateful Heart

In November gratitude takes center stage, and on Thanksgiving, many of us take the day off to give thanks for our families and friends and to give thanks for the many blessings of our lives. Hardly anyone would argue that gratitude is a bad idea on Thanksgiving or any other day of the year. And it’s certainly hard to imagine anyone arguing that ingratitude would be a spiritually fulfilling approach to life.

Meg Riley senior minister of the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship, says, “Gratitude is the very epicenter of the life of the spirit.” Galen Guengerich, senior minister at our sister congregation, All Souls, in New York City, regards gratitude as the very epicenter of UU spiritual life. He says, “Gratitude should be the center of Unitarian Universalist theology.” He identifies two aspects of it that do a good job of defining our faith. The first is the discipline of gratitude. The second is an ethic of gratitude. According to Guengerich, “The discipline of gratitude reminds us how utterly dependent we are on the people and world around us for everything that matters. … The ethic of gratitude demands that we nurture the world that nurtures us in return.”

As we enter this time of the year in which we intentionally strive to more fully cultivate a grateful heart, we may all agree that gratitude should be the center of our UU faith. Yet, that’s not as easy as it may seem. How do we make gratitude a discipline? How do we live an ethic of gratitude?

I encourage each of you to spend some time this month reflecting on those questions and the role of gratitude in your day-to-day life. I encourage you to take a few minutes to express thanks to someone you keep meaning to thank but don’t ever seem to get around to telling. Better yet, write that person a note.

To say “thank you,” to be grateful is a way to open the heart to life’s bounty, to experience the gifts life has to offer, to nurture and be nurtured, and to acknowledge that our lives are inextricably intertwined.

Yours in faith,

Sandra