By Sr. Doreen, SSJD
“The human heart desires happiness that lasts. Is this a wishful dream, or does harsh reality admit of lasting happiness? It does indeed. Joy is lasting happiness, a happiness that does not depend on what happens. And the key to joy is gratefulness.” (You Are Here by David Steindl-Rast)
“If the only prayer you say in your entire life is “Thank you,” that would suffice.” (Meister Eckhart)
Life, love, care, and everything else come to us as gift, not as owed. To take as owed what is offered as a gift, lies at the root of many of our deepest resentments. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that I will have another moment, with all the opportunities that it contains. To see this is to awaken to gratefulness, and as a result happiness, contentment. It is embracing reality, and counting our blessings, and in this discovering that we are all connected. Dag Hammarskjold said “For all that has been – thanks. For all that shall be – yes.” Musing on this quote as I thought about every moment is a gift, it seemed to me to be an opportunity that would enable me to move into a gratitude space, and change the way that I saw things around me. In a very real way gratitude turns obstacles into opportunities. These thoughts made me ponder a poem by a thirteenth century Persian poet Rumi, who talked about waiting patiently and gratefully:
“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all: even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still,
Treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
To be open to being able to greet each obstacle, be it whatever arrives as a reaction or feeling internally as a new arrival with something to teach us, to enable wisdom – welcomed gratefully in that sense – this is a deep desire. This gift of seeing that gratitude turns obstacles into opportunities finds a real Lectio Divina meditation when we see that Jesus is offering us the chance to be in the reframing business in the sermon on the mount in the Beatitudes. Here we are invited to see blessedness even in the midst of tumult and suffering. They invite us not to be trapped by circumstances, to get up and be active looking for the grace, the possibilities, to explore new opportunities and new growth. Jesus gift of the Beatitudes is encouragement, to encourage us to live as Easter people: re-framers of life, people who see with new eyes, people who count their blessings.
Gratitude also opens our eyes and opens our hearts to the blessings of small things. With open hearts, in our own fragility and brokenness we begin to notice the blessings of small things we have never noticed before! Enough is enough. When we learn to live with enough, we might be able to live peacefully and undisturbed lives in the midst of chaos and turmoil. Gratitude moves us beyond feeling that the world owes us – that we are entitled to what is best or better than what we have. It gifts us with a choice – we can either bemoan our circumstances or be grateful for our blessings!
At the end of the day rather than asking myself what more I could have given or done for others, it is more fruitful to ask: what is it that people and life were trying to give me that I did not pay attention to ? I then allow myself to receive these gifts with a grateful heart. And if I am aware of the love that came to me that day, I remember it also with gratitude every night before I fall asleep. Falling asleep with gratitude in my heart will make my unconscious a pool of gratitude and it give me the opportunity to increase my capacity for receiving love. This love, of course, will overflow into life without my even knowing it.
I found myself immersed in a question: what might it mean to live together as a thankful society? As a community and culture of gratitude? We need each other, depend on each other, care for each other and because of this we are a safer and happier people. Diana Butler Bass in her book “Grateful” wrote: “ … how we appreciate the ties that bind us as a larger society matters greatly to everyone. How we live together in and with gratitude makes all the difference in the world. Indeed, living gratefully makes the world different.”
“Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder and lightning” (Karl Barth) It is interesting to note that the words ‘gratitude’ and ‘grace’ come from the same root word, gratia in Latin and kharis in Greek. In pondering Karl Barth’s quote I thought of how grace is a gift, a free and undeserved gift, a gift given without being earned and with no expectation of return … it is indeed amazing grace! It is this that fills the heart with gratitude, a gratitude that has the power to transform the way that we see the world and experience life. It opens our hearts towards greater goodness and love
“There are always reasons not to be thankful. Always. Seeking but the small things for which I could give thanks, however, change my field of spiritual and emotional vision. I learned not to focus on what was lacking. … Gratitude is defiance of sorts, the defiance of kindness in the face of anger, of connection in the face of division, and of hope in the face of fear. … Gratitude calls us to sit together, to imagine a world as a table of hospitality. To feed one another. To feast, to dance in the streets. To know and celebrate abundance. Gifts and gratefulness … [the hard work of] in all things, with all things, through all things.” (Diana Butler Bass, quotes from her book “Grateful”)
Today more than every before we are, I believe, called to the grateful way of life. Indeed, with Rumi I would say to myself and to you, “gratitude is the wine of the soul. Go on. Get drunk!”