Several months ago I found myself holed up in the living room one stormy evening watching the first of a six DVD set celebrating 20 years of the Oprah Winfrey show. Now I know that this might not be seen as the most intellectual of sources - but that is how I chose to spend that particular evening and I heard something in Oprah's life story that stuck with me. In describing all of the obstacles she faced in her lifetime - from abuse and poverty and racism and sexism and the loss of loved ones - she described, also, the ways that she lived with these difficulties and eventually overcame them - she said that her outlook on life, her approach to things, has consistently been the most important tool in her toolbox. Whenever something happens to her - before she even has time to think of anything else, or even to assess it fully, she turns her head to the sky and simply says, "Thank you."
Thank you. A two word phrase to indicate her gratitude for the gift of life - thank you - for the gift of this particular challenge and all it will surely bring to her. Thank you. Two simple words that set the stage for how she will cope with what comes her way in life.
Thank you - these are the two words we heard over and over again in our reading this morning, as well. With the people streaming from their houses, back from hospitals and muggings, standing in banks and forests and cities with the crooks in office - with nobody listening - faster and faster they are saying thank you and waving, dark though it is.
There they are - there she is - offering a simple expression of gratitude in each and every situation - it's a radical concept, isn't it? And I wonder what that simple expression of gratitude would do to our outlook on life if we embraced it as they have? What might we feel like if we, too, taught ourselves to say thank you no matter what came our way? Would we notice beauty more often? Would we feel a sense of wonder just in being alive? Might we appreciate the gift of breathing and standing upright if we are able, might we give thanks for meaningful work or someone to love, or the gift of a spiritual community that accepts us exactly as we are?
The instructions in this piece of poetry are simple instructions, indeed - listen, say thank you - they are clear but not easy instructions, and ever since I first came upon them in this poem I've been trying to embrace them in my life. Listen. Say Thank You. It is a simple reminder to me and to us to notice all that we are and all that we have and all that we are given each and every day.
But I have to admit, standing up here - and I have to be honest with you - that this week as I sat down and spent some time with this poem each day, I developed for the first time, some mixed feelings about it. One morning on a particularly depressing news day of developing conflicts and wars, I read the poem aloud - and rather than hearing a teacher or a spiritual reminder - I heard and saw in my mind, instead, an idiot, standing there in the darkness waving and smiling and saying thank you blindly as life was being destroyed all around him. Back from hospitals and muggings the poet wrote, back from funerals, after the news of the dead, living in a culture up to its chin in shame - with all of the bloodshed and the violence and a planet crumbling into itself all of our own doing there is this man waving and smiling and offering thanks? Is he stupid? How can he possibly say thank you in this world as it is?
Now luckily for me - and dare I say luckily for all of you this morning as well - I did not stay in that place - but it did present a legitimate concern for me as we approach this topic of gratitude together.
You see, earlier in the week, amidst the stories of the emerging war in Lebanon and Israel and the reminders of devastating violence right here in our own city of Rochester - I found myself up late one night reading the online journal of a colleague of mine, The Reverend Marlin Lavanhar of All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[1] Just two months ago, Marlin and his wife quickly and unexpectedly lost their daughter, Sienna, to a rare illness three days after her third birthday. Her death was a shock to her family and friends and church community, and in the aftermath Marlin has been left reeling with the grief and the unfairness and the difficulty of it all - and as a minister and a person of faith and as a person simply living on this planet - he is finding himself searching for hope and meaning even in these darkest of times.
In a section of his journal titled, "Finding Light in the Darkness," Marlin writes, "At first I found myself resisting finding anything positive in light of the death of Sienna. It seemed like a kind of betrayal to find blessings in the aftermath of her loss. Obviously, if I had a choice between any of the blessings I have received over the past month and having her back, I would give everything I have received to have her back. Nevertheless, I know that getting her back is not an option. In that sense, I have come to feel that, the learning must be great, because the price is so incredibly high!" In the aftermath of Marlin's daughter's death - back from hospitals, back from funerals, after the news of the dead, he too, is saying thank you in this moment with all of its complexity. He is saying thank you - and not thank you for Sienna's death, but thank you for the gift of life, thank you for the gift of learning, thank you for the returning experience of wonder and wholeness even in the midst of tremendous grief and loss.
And in his writing, Marlin names it for me - he names the part of me that resists saying thank you when so much is going wrong in the world - the part of me that labels another stupid or shallow for feeling grateful in the midst of so much suffering. "It seemed like a kind of betrayal to find blessings in the aftermath of her loss," he wrote. And that is just how it seemed to me, one day last week when I heard our poem and raged against the author. It felt like a betrayal to say thank you, to find reason for gratitude when others were so clearly suffering and when injustice so clearly continues all around us - but by bringing this thought and feeling out into the light - this fear of betraying another with my own joy - I began to be able to look at it for what it was - a feeling, yes, but not something worthy of believing or living into.
Our sense of joy and gratitude in the world is not a betrayal of another's suffering - our joy is not acceptance of the world as it is, even. Our joy is quite simply that, joy. Joy in the pleasures and wonders of the moment - joy in our human ability to make meaning and experience and wonder and learning even in the midst of great suffering.
So this morning, as wrestle with the subject of gratitude together, I want to be clear about something. I am not talking about the kind of gratitude that turns a blind eye to the suffering in the world and I am not talking about the kind of gratitude that allows one person to feel good at the expense of another. For simply feeling and offering thanks for the gifts of our own lives is shallow gratitude, indeed, and it is not the kind of grateful living that I am talking about today. The kind of gratitude I am talking about today is the gratitude that overflows from our hearts and moves into our hands - as we live into a simple expression of thanks for the gifts of life and of love and of wonder.
Many years ago on a walk through the woods, the Reverend Dr. Howard Thurman came across an old man planting some trees and he put the story down on paper for us to read. He wrote, "I watched him for a long time. He was so busily engaged in his task that he did not notice my approach until he heard my voice. Then he raised himself erect with all the slow dignity of a man who had exhausted the cup of haste to the very dregs. He was an old man - as I discovered before our conversation was over, a full 81 years. Further talk between us revealed that he was planting a small grove of pecan trees. The little treelets were not more than two and a half or three feet in height. My curiosity was unbounded.
"'Why did you not select larger trees so as to increase the possibility of your living to see them bear at least one cup of nuts?'
"He fixed his eyes directly on my face, with no particular point of focus, but with a gaze that took in the totality of my features. Finally, he said, 'These small trees are cheaper and I have very little money.'
"'So you do not expect to live to see the trees reach sufficient maturity to bear fruit?'
"'No, but is that important? All my life I have eaten fruit from trees I did not plant. Why should I not plant trees to bear fruit for those who may enjoy them long after I am gone? Besides, the one who plants to reap the harvest has no faith in life.'"[2]
"All my life I have eaten fruit from trees I did not plant," the old man said. It is true for all of us, isn't it?
There is, indeed, much to be grateful for in our lives. For the food we did not plant, for the earth we did not create, for the love we do not always deserve, for the beauty that surrounds us if only we can just look and listen. But even in the midst of all of this wonder, surrounded by all of these reasons to feel grateful - for most of us, gratitude is an emotion that springs into our hearts and minds and bodies only when something extraordinary happens - when a car nearly misses us or a loved one, when we get the news that an illness is not as bad as we feared, when we miss the layoff that swept through our company - when seemingly out of nowhere someone shows up to offer comfort or to do for us what we could not do ourselves.
Most of us require what feels like a truly extraordinary gift to really feel that sense of gratitude - but we know from our encounters with one another and with the poets we heard this morning - that gratitude can be felt in any situation - back from hospitals and muggings, yes, and in simpler moments, too - sitting on the front porch with a cup of hot coffee and the dogwoods in the background, imagining the soft head of a loved one on your bare shoulder. The feeling of gratitude can come over us, can literally well up in us to overflowing at any time -and I tend to believe that it is possible to expand our feelings of gratitude and the generosity that those feelings engender - that it is actually possible to train ourselves to see the beauty and wonder all around us and let it in. For I believe along with the author E. F. Schumacher in his book, Guide for the Perplexed, that "We can only see what we have grown an eye to see." We can only see what we have grown an eye to see.
So the question before us this morning is then, of course, how do we grow an eye to see the miracles, the beauty, the wonder and complexity that calls out of us that feeling of gratitude? How do we develop that eye in ourselves, that potential for feeling grateful, that it might come to us as naturally and as regularly as breathing?
The good news, as I see it, is that nearly any skill we have developed in ourselves has come from two simple things - coaching and practice - and the even better news is that both of those tools are available to us any time we choose to pick them up.
As we look around ourselves for teachers and guides in our growth toward gratitude - there are so many coaches available to us - from artists and musicians and poets to individuals in our lives who cause us to stop and take notice of what is there all around us. This morning we heard the poet Linda Pastan recounting a spring day - the smell of lilacs, children asleep or playing - and her there, not even guessing that she might in that moment be happy, focused instead on the small irritations that are like salt on melon - not knowing in that moment that the salt simply made the fruit taste sweeter. She wonders in her writing, if someone could have stopped the camera then...if someone could only have stopped the camera and asked her then: are you happy? Perhaps she would have noticed...and said yes and felt her gratitude overflowing from her heart to her hands as she offered a steaming cup of coffee.
Perhaps in her poetry, Linda Pastan is offering us one way to move forward in our own spiritual growth, one way to grow an eye to see the gifts all around us. Perhaps it is in the noticing, in the stopping ourselves and each other to ask the question - are you happy? - that we will begin to develop our eye for gratitude. Or perhaps the lesson lies in the writings of Mary Oliver, when she tells us that it is her daily morning walk as the sun rises that draws her attention to detail, to beauty and to wonder, that brings to her life a second waking each morning. Perhaps it is a daily practice of prayer or meditation, perhaps it is recalling the blessing of this interval that is our life, perhaps it is a hot cup of coffee, or a smile between friends, or generous giving of yourself and your resources to causes you believe in, perhaps it is saying thank you before a meal or after a run - whatever form it takes and whenever it comes for you - the key to developing an eye for gratitude, I believe, lies in the example of others and it lies in the practice of it ourselves each and every day - as we develop and strengthen the little or large rituals in our lives that call our attention back, over and over, to the gifts we receive - to the fruit that grows from trees we did not plant - each and every day.
Let us call forward our faith in life, friends, as we remember those trees heavy with fruit that brought us where we are today - and let us ask ourselves and one another - how will our gratitude overflow from our hearts and into our hands? What will we plant for others? May these questions be the guides before us this day.
May it be so, and Amen.
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