“Surprise is my favorite name for God; every other name for God limits God.”  So says David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk attached to Mount Saint Savior monastery in Elmira, New York. Now age 75, Brother David serves as a spiritual inspiration to many people around the world. I listened to him speak several times last week and also had the privilege of engaging in a heart-to-heart conversation with him for an hour.

Just looking at the face of this man for whom the spiritual life is all-important buoyed my own spirit. It is a face with depth that carries an expression of peace of soul, a peace that goes beyond what mere resignation can provide. He speaks resonantly with a gently accented English that shows evidence of his upbringing in Austria.

As we talked, he ran his fingers through a small circlet of beads which he uses for the so-called “Jesus Prayer.”  “Lord Jesus, have mercy,” he repeats with unspoken words. Long ago these words became for him a kind of mantra. This prayer keeps him focused on God through the day, even when he is absorbed in conversation with other people and in other activities.

The reason why he values surprise so much is because it alerts us to the gifts that we have received. Usually, we are not enough awake. “We tend to go through life half asleep,” Brother David says; “it is gratefulness that wakes us up.”

In fact gratefulness is the focal point of his spirituality.  This has led him and some of his friends to establish a web site around this reality. Their reason for doing so is to build up a community of people for whom gratefulness becomes a centering magnet. After hearing about this site, www.gratefulness.org, I tapped into it and can report on its value. As a reader, you may be interested in doing so yourself and perhaps in joining this on-line spiritual community.

The web site explains the mission of this spiritual movement. “Gratefulness can transform your personal life,” the statement reads. “Gratefulness can even transform the world by setting in motion a spiral of kindness.”

This movement offers five kinds of interactive features: play, learning, practice, sharing, and reaching out. You can engage in these activities by following the directions listed on this web site. This sequence can be envisioned as a spiral by which we can move toward life, goodness, truth, and beauty.

For Brother David, gratefulness connects people with faith, hope, and love. After becoming aware of what we have received we become free to trust in God and become people who expect to receive further good gifts from God. We also feel impelled to love other selves, the people around us who are brothers and sisters to us.

To my objection that gratefulness is fine for those of us who live comfortable lives but not for others, this man of vision gives a sympathetic and thoughtful reply. Yes, he admits, there are huge numbers of people around the world for whom each day is full of pain, deprivation, and misery. But, usually, poor people are more grateful than the rich. “The less we have, the easier it is to be grateful,” he believes.

For those of us not subjected to deprivation, becoming aware of the suffering of others is an opportunity for us to act on their behalf. No matter how little our own ability to help, we can try to do something.

Of his own experience in reaching out to others on the web site, Brother David says, “I am much more alive than I was.”  He credits working with young people as a rejuvenating factor in his own life. In particular, a young Yugoslav software engineer who had no interest at all in spirituality, discovered its value through designing the web site and setting it in motion. Now his has become a deep spirituality built on the foundation of gratefulness.

Brother David also gives credit to the spiritual values found in Buddhism. Studying that tradition for three years led him to place greater value on religious experience.

As he grows older and continues to experience God in prayer and action, an ever greater gratefulness seems to him the most appropriate response. That includes expecting to be surprised.

Richard Griffin