Thanksgiving

Twenty nine years ago at the age of 25, I lived in a small monastic community for three months. Before my first meal with the community, I anticipated a rather long grace that would render the soup as cold as that frosty January night. Imagine my surprise when the monks chanted this grace in unison:

"All that is good comes from your hands, may we live our lives in gratitude. Amen"

I was as surprised by the prayer's brevity as by the hot soup's burning my tongue. I thought, what gives, these men are professional prayers? With time, I learned to love this grace as upon reflection I realized that one could make meditation upon these few words the work of a lifetime. Being grateful is straight forward enough, but what does it mean to live one's life in gratitude?

In the nearly three decades since I first heard this grace, I've only begun to understand how I can choose to live my life in gratitude. One insight has been that to live in gratitude inspires one to give of oneself in service to others. A grateful heart is generous in opening to others in need. Not only the poor or those who want for the physical necessities of life, but open also to those who hunger and thirst for emotional and spiritual sustenance. These later can be the most challenging and sometimes frustrating of our sisters and brothers.

One New Years Eve about ten years ago, I intended to do some outreach work for my job on this most celebrated of nights. Knowing my plans, a friend suggested we have dinner together to celebrate before I started work. After dinner, he asked if we could go back to my apartment to chat for a while. As the departure time for my outreach activity drew close , I noticed he made no move to leave. Deciding to be patient, I said nothing as he talked on and the hours ticked away. I began to realized that he did not want to be alone at the dawn of the new year. Grateful for his friendship, I said nothing and made mental plans to do my outreach another night.

Living one's life in gratitude also seems to embrace satisfaction with one's "state in life". While there is nothing wrong with working to make changes for the better, it seems to me that being grateful for what I have now is important. I may not like my job, but I should be grateful for a means of support. I may want a new car, but I should be grateful the "old clunker" is still running well. A grateful heart lives in the present and seeks to limit the "living for the weekend" mentality we can so easily adopt when bored or dissatisfied.

A few years ago, a man showed up at my office asking for a few moments to speak with me about an important issue causing him concern. He laid out his story to me and shared the "one thing" he needed to be happy and explained why this could never be. What he wanted was not only not possible, but as a social worker I recognized that what he wanted was not socially acceptable. This conclusion was not a matter of my own opinion, but a universally understood taboo. This man wanted what no human being has a right to posses.

Seeking to be nonjudgmental, I took pains to list the many things he had in his life that were good and understood by most people as the ingredients of a happy life. No matter what I brought to light, he declared they brought him no joy and that only the forbidden treasure could bring happiness. This man not only did not live his life in gratitude, but he also counted his many blessings as worthless. In his predicament we see that the lack of gratitude can in itself be the cause of our unhappiness.

Without coming close to exhausting the subject, I'll offer one last thought on living one's life in gratitude. Driving home from work two weeks ago, I had my first holiday light display sighting. The holiday illuminated was Christmas, not Thanksgiving. Two weeks after Halloween, someone began their observance of Christmas. Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? One of my facebook friends has been posting Christmas videos for a few weeks now and declaring his love of the "holiday season". I wonder if living too far in the future is a sign we have lost touch with the present moment and the gift it represents?

One way we can purposefully choose to live in gratitude is to pause to reflect and be thankful even if we don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Lets all take time on Thursday to be aware of and grateful for the people, situations and possessions we sometimes take for granted. Perhaps then our Turkey, tofurkey or franks and beans will become a communion of gratitude.