The spirit of thanksgiving continues on. It cannot be confined to a single day of celebration, however memorable. Ideally, thanksgiving is an everyday attitude that shapes the way we feel about our life and about the world.
A grateful heart not only ennobles human life at all times but enables us to see more deeply the world around us.
When gratitude marks your stance toward the world, you notice things that otherwise would pass you by. Recognizing yourself as a gifted person, you see the events of the day stand out in bolder relief as their meaning becomes clearer. The people you meet can also be more fully revealed to the eyes of gratitude.
Ann Ulanov, Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, hits the mark when she calls for “an ethics of overflow.” If we love God first, she said at a recent morning prayer session, “it spills over to the love of the self, and of our neighbor.”
I believe in the power of thanksgiving to kickstart this overflow. That is why I value the approach of another spiritual master, Brother David Steindle-Rast. This Benedictine brother runs a website called “Gratefulness” that expresses his approach to the inner life.
Here, at gratefulness.org, is his home page introducing the subject:
“In each of us there is a spark that can reverse the trends of violence and depression spiraling within us and in the world around us. By setting in motion the spiral of gratefulness we begin the journey toward peace and joy.”
In this season I give thanks for whatever inspiration has been given me. Like the sun shining through cloud banks, this gift enlightens the mind and heart. Inspiration cannot be manufactured by oneself; it must be freely given. As Jesus says of it in John 3, 8: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
It comes at the strangest times, catching us unawares. We can be walking along, without much going on in our head, when all of a sudden – bingo – we see into a situation that previously remained obscured.
The gift of compassion also stirs thanksgiving in me. Without the delusion of thinking myself nearly enough compassionate, I still recognize some growth in sympathy toward other people. For this I feel grateful while wanting to have more of this precious quality of heart. Perhaps recognizing my limitations here is itself a gift.
I also feel thankful for the spiritual seekers who inspire me. Some of them are colleagues in the field of aging: Tom, Rick, Susan, Bob, Bernie and others have recently shared insights with me and revealed their own efforts to open to the light. What a gift to find scholars like them at professional meetings who bring me into their lives! They sit down with me and we talk about our personal challenges and our occasional breakthroughs.
For the gift of understanding I feel grateful. Limited though my brain is compared to that of some other people, it still continues to be a marvelous instrument. It enables me to grasp the wonders of the world and to appreciate the thoughts of other people past and present. I can pick up and read the writings of William James, who once lived only a few city blocks from my home, and who one hundred years ago published a classic book on spirituality called “Varieties of Religious Experience.”
Through the gift of faith, I see God as the source of all good gifts. That is why a sermon of Meister Eckhart, the German mystic who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries, speaks to me:
“In every gift, in every work, we ought to learn to look toward God, and we should not allow ourselves to be satisfied or detained by any thing. . . Above all else, we should always be preparing ourselves, always renewing ourselves to receive God’s gifts.”
A grateful heart can be a font of joy even in the midst of suffering and hardship. But we come to a grateful heart only by stages, as Brother David suggests when he speaks of “the spiral of gratefulness.” It goes up, but only in a round-about motion that continues to carry us higher.
Richard Griffin