Giving Thanks
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There’s an old joke—perhaps you’ve heard it. A man and his granddaughter are walking along a beach. It’s a wonderful day, although it seems there’s a squall just over the horizon, and it looks like it’s coming toward them. Even as the man thinks perhaps it is time to call it a day, a giant wave crashes into them and before he can do a thing the child is carried away. Filled with horror he looks up to the heavens and shouts, “God, how can you do something so terrible?” And even before the words slip from his lips another wave comes washing over him and as it recedes deposits the child in the man’s arms. He looks at the little girl to make sure she is okay. She smiles at him and locks her arms around his neck. The man then looks back up at the heavens and shouts, “Hey! She had a hat.”
We laugh. Okay, I laugh. There’s something so human in this. A slice of homemade apple pie is great. But, hey, where’s the scoop of French vanilla ice cream? We can be grasping creatures, missing the apple pie, missing the saved child. We can be resentful and angry about, well… there’s just a ton to be resentful and angry about. But lost in the waves of those feelings something slips away from us, something lovely and beautiful. Gratitude gets washed away in the waves, along with the hat.
It seems our English word gratitude comes to us through the French and back to the Latin gratus, meaning thankful or pleasing. It turns out gratitude is closely related to the word grace, with its various meanings of showing favor, pardon, mercy, elegance, songs, praises, announcements. I really like that—announcements.
But first, a pretty good way to understand something really important is to notice what surrounds it, what can turn our hearts from some deeper matter, what some of my friends call the near enemy of that which is important. And so, what is the near enemy of gratitude? I know how I’ve experienced people who seem to be expressing gratitude for something I’d had a part in, but afterwards I’m left with an uncomfortable feeling. It comes across as flattery, with a sense of manipulation hanging in the air after the conversation.
Here, to really get to the heart of the matter, we need to open our hearts, and perhaps even confess. And, so, yes, I’ve even been that person who expresses gratitude to flatter, to manipulate, often barely conscious of what I’m doing. Maybe some others among us here have also been that person, have embraced some facsimile of gratitude for any number of reasons, maybe even sometimes for good reasons. The world isn’t a very safe place, and a little flattery addressed to the powerful can be a smart thing.
But we need to be careful. There is something astonishingly important, I feel, in the act and the experience of genuine gratitude—the spontaneous arising of those feelings of thankfulness, of pleasure, of being present to the announcement of things. Cicerco claimed “gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others.” I think this is so. And if it’s true, we need to attend.
But then, is this gratitude a noun, a state of being, something we achieve? Or, perhaps, does it come mostly as a verb, something we do?
Galen Guengerich, senior minister at All Soul’s Unitarian in Manhattan, delivered a sermon at his home church in 2006. In the following year it was adapted as an article in the UU World, our denominational magazine. Galen asked a very interesting question. “What should be our defining religious discipline?” He goes on:
While obedience, love, and even submission each play a vital role in the life of faith, my current conviction is that our defining discipline should be gratitude…. In the same way that Judaism is defined by obedience, Christianity by love, and Islam by submission, I believe that Unitarian Universalism should be defined by gratitude.
Now, I actually think gratitude lies near the heart of all three of the great Near Eastern faiths—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—not to mention perhaps all the great religions of our world. Still, as a discipline, as something we consciously do, I think he’s calling us in an important direction.
Wandering around the web I’ve found all sorts of advice as to how to cultivate gratitude. There are four-step plans, five-step plans, ten-step plans. For the most part they seem to center on stopping and noticing. With a dash of fake it ‘til you make it. As I consider that stopping and noticing with a dash of fake it ‘til you make it to be the heart of spiritual disciplines, I think most all of them are probably useful.
But reading the lists I found myself thinking of a one-step program. Many, many years ago I came across a small book called Wisdom of the Desert, which is a selection of sayings from the fourth and fifth century Christian monastics and sages called the Desert Fathers, and for those who pay attention, Mothers. This particular volume was collected and translated by Thomas Merton, who brings not only a great eye for matters of depth, but also a style sympathetic to a world religious perspective. I consider it one of the central books in my spiritual life.
And one of the characters who shines out from that collection, and whom I’ve encountered again in other translations of the actions and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, is someone called Abba John the Dwarf. Abba or Abbot John was born around 339, studied under the direction of another of the great Desert mystics, Abba Ammoes, for a dozen years before wandering further into the desert, where, despite his best efforts, people came to listen to and follow his guidance. There are lots of stories about him.
Abbot John would recount the story of a pagan philosopher who told his student that for three years he should give money to anyone who insulted him. When the three years passed the philosopher told the young man to go to Athens, as he was now ready to really learn. At the gate to the city he encountered an old woman who insulted everyone as they passed. When it was his turn and he was insulted, the young man just laughed. The old sage looked closely at him and asked why the laughter. The young man replied how for three years he’d paid for this sort of abuse, and now at the gate to the city of wisdom he was getting insulted for free. The old woman smiled and replied “Enter the city of wisdom, young man. It is yours.”
Okay, maybe that might prove a harder discipline than the three or five steps you can get online. But here’s an easier discipline, this time from that late thirteenth/early fourteenth century German Dominican friar Meister Eckhart. The master once said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Want to be grateful? Then just say thank you.
Now, I think there’s another mystery hidden within why just say thank you is enough. It has something to do with that noun and verb thing.
Leonard Cohen was once asked about his song “Hallelujah,” which is one of those divine thank yous that have caught my heart. He was asked what the song really meant. Cohen replied, “It explains that many kinds of hallelujahs do exist, and all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have equal value.” Gratitude takes many shapes. There are many kinds of thank yous. Some are perfect. Many, even most, are broken. I think of those near enemy thank yous that are so broken. But, here’s a secret. In fact, at bottom, at the end of the day, even those almost fake thank yous have value. All in some deep and true sense arise with equal value.
The reality is that within the web of relationships, within the world that we live in with all its horrors and all its joys, the moment we stop and notice, we discover we are bound up within a great mystery of intimacy. As natural as our breath, gratitude arises. And in my own experience, I find gratitude, kindness, and generosity all arise together. The mother virtue may be gratitude, but her sisters kindness and generosity walk with her.
I find motivation and sustenance through acting in the world out of this practice. I see the connections. I am horrified and I am grateful beyond any words. And I want to do something. Here, I suggest, is why our own tradition is so caught up with the work of justice in this world. The intuition of connection, of gratitude, calls us to service, to care, to love and action.
So we are caught by noun and verb, our actions and our being. When we attend to gratitude, we find something fundamental, something deeper than the hurts and longing.
We open our hearts to what is; we don’t turn away. And we discover a strange and mysterious and wild beyond imagination universe. And, we find the secret: we’re totally and inseparably a part of it. Noun and verb. One thing.
And as we notice, how can we not open our hearts, and open our mouths, and from that place, say thank you?
James is the author of several UU pamphlets as well as five books mostly addressing Zen as a spiritual practice. His most recent is Introduction to Zen Koans: Learning the Language of Dragons.
- Giving Thanks - November 1, 2019
- In the Presence of God and One Another (Excerpt) - March 1, 2017
