In this article, I give to you a very special invitation to cultivate gratitude and gratefulness as your basic attitude toward life; as the very ground of your being.
Gratefulness is powerful. It’s one of the most powerful forces in the world. Gratefulness makes all the difference between just going through the motions and really being alive. In spiritual terms, gratefulness is the difference between having a heart of stone and receiving a heart of flesh from a loving God who created you with a plan and a purpose for your life.
Theologian Deitreich Bonhoeffer said that it’s only through gratitude that life becomes rich. The Koran says that if you count God’s blessings, you will not be able to number them. And there’s a Jewish proverb that says we will never know all that we should be grateful to God for.
Gratefulness is extraordinarily powerful. Thomas Merton in his book, No Man is an Island, said that someone who is ungrateful admits that they don’t know God. And he goes on to say that if we are not aware of our gratitude, we don’t really know who we, ourselves, are; and, he goes on to say if we’re not aware of gratitude, we are not in touch with our life and what it means to be alive and to truly be. To be grateful is to be the recipient of a gift. And the most basic gift is life itself. Today, this present moment.
One of the most powerful ways to open up our hearts, to allow God freedom to remove our heart of stone and to give to us a heart of flesh, is by softening it by becoming in touch with our thankfulness, our gratitude.
Now, sometimes this is really easy, right? It’s easy when things are going just how you want them to go or when something surprises you in a most delightful way, then, it feels spontaneous.
Gratitude just wells up in us and we feel joy. But at other times, every now and then, it’s a little tougher.
A Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast, has come up with three steps that he says can always be found in gratitude. These steps happen spontaneously when things are going well, but at other times they require our conscious intervention. The three steps rely upon the work of our intellect, our will and our emotions.
The first step needs the work of our intellect. In order to feel grateful we recognize the gift with our intellect. Again, sometimes this is really easy, and sometimes it’s hard. In order to recognize the gift we need to wake up, we need to notice, we need to see: Ah! A gift!
God has planted, sprinkled, placed uncountable gifts in every moment, but our intellect needs to recognize them as gifts. (Remember finding pictures hidden within a picture?) We need to wake up, be aware, to get our nose out of whatever we’re doing and step back just for a moment to see.
The second thing we need to do requires our will; that is, we need to acknowledge the gift. First we need to recognize the gift and then we need to acknowledge it. We need to say, “Ah, you! I know you!”
To acknowledge a gift means that we’re acknowledging something outside of ourselves because a gift doesn’t come from us, it comes from someone or somewhere else. To acknowledge a gift is actually very powerful because when we acknowledge a gift, we are stepping outside of our isolation and our aloneness. This is an act of our will.
There’s a tendency in us human beings, especially we Americans, to believe that we’re self-sufficient and totally independent and that we don’t need others. We might not think this with our minds, but we live this with our hearts thinking that we’ve got it all together. “Leave me alone. I can do it.”
Being able to acknowledge a gift is stepping out of our sense of isolation and aloneness. And when we are able to do this with our will, we are able to connect and form a common unity and step into intimacy.
And the third thing we need to do in order to experience gratitude requires our emotions. We need to accept the gift with our whole heart. We need to say, “Yes!”
Recognizing a gift is like being asked to dance. Someone is saying, “Dance with me,” and we accept with our whole heart and say, “Yes, I will step into this crazy, wild, chaotic, confusing, sometimes-distressing dance.”
The best way to say yes and accept the gift is with open arms. It’s difficult to accept a gift with your arms folded across your chest. You can only accept a gift with your arms wide open. Yet we all know it’s scary holding our arms wide open, don’t we?
How many of you remember going to your high school dances? I doubt this has ever happened to any of you … but, let’s say you’re at a dance and it looks like someone across the room is looking at you and smiling at you and the impression you have is that they are asking you, “Will you dance with me?” And you say, “Yes!”
And then, it starts to unfold, they walk in your direction, getting closer and walk right by you and ask the person behind you. You feel crushed and humiliated and embarrassed. But not all is lost – you were open. So what does this have to do with gratitude?
Being grateful doesn’t protect us from embarrassment, humiliation, pain and sorrow; it doesn’t protect us from any of that. But if we’re able to incorporate gratitude into our basic attitude toward life and make it a part of the ground of our being, it gives us a place to go spiritually … it’s a fertile foundation.
Counting your blessings doesn’t mean that you no longer feel the grief or the confusion or the sorrow. It means you’re feeling all of that and you’re also feeling a sense of warmth, peace, purpose and connection.
So, in life, when where we’re mistakenly thinking that we’re being asked to dance, how can we find gratitude in that moment? Well, we can be grateful that we realized that we wanted to dance. And we can go out and find other ways to bring dancing into our life.
As many of you know, my morning routine involves my neighborhood Starbucks. There’s not always parking – and two mornings a week there’s street cleaning, making even less parking. Many mornings I go with a positive attitude that I’ll find a spot right by the front door – so this week, I had to park a long block away. My mind starts muttering, but then I get out and feel the cool breeze but the warm sun; notice the changing color of the leaves; said hi to two people walking their dogs – and it was a good morning to be able to walk and enjoy a beautiful morning – then I realized that I’m walking – and have that ability! And that I have a car to get me to the parking space in the first place! And that a Christmas Blend (before Thanksgiving) tastes so good! Maybe it was because I was working on this piece that these little thoughts came into my head … but I hope not. I want gratitude to be always my response! That’s why I’m sharing this with you.
I might not always be able to park right in front of my destination. Life isn’t always like that. I realized a sense of entitlement rising within me. Then I let go of it and recognized the gift. I acknowledged the gift and I started naming it. And once I started I saw another gift and then another and then another, and I saw that my gifts were countless. I practically forgot what I was doing because I was so excited. I actually went to the creamer station without my coffee cup!
I was appreciating the moment. And then I got an extra bonus because I realized that I could use this as my example for you.
There are, countless ways to incorporate these steps of gratitude into our daily lives; but here are three quick ones.
First: This is the day God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! You can say that to yourselves every morning when you wake up. What a wonderful way to start the day and invite gratitude in.
Second, when you say a prayer at your evening meal either by yourselves or with family members have each person name one thing that they’re grateful for that day and incorporate the answers into your prayer. Remember that all gratitudes are accepted, from the most basic to the most profound.
Finally, throughout your day if you find yourself getting irritated or upset, challenge yourself to find gold in that moment and in that experience. That doesn’t mean that you have to be grateful that things are not going the way you wanted them; you don’t have to be grateful that you can’t find a parking place. But do find gratitude in the experience.
Have it be a treasure hunt with you and God. Remember those puzzles where you had to find objects hidden in the picture?
Take this as a challenge then. Whatever the experience, find the gratitude in it. And let that gratitude touch you and fill you. It will not wipe away the painful feelings, but it will help you feel some peace and joy at the same time.
Let’s join the psalmist saying:
It is good to give thanks to you, God,
To sing praises to your name, O most High;
To declare your steadfast love in the morning,
And your faithfulness by night,
To the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre,
For you, O God, have made me glad by your work;
At the works of your hands I sing for joy.
How great are your works, O God!
Your thoughts are very deep!
Amen.
Rev. Dan Koeshall is the senior pastor at The Metropolitan Community Church (The Met), 2633 Denver Street, San Diego, California, themetchurch.org. Services every Sunday at 9 and 11 a.m.
