One of the problems with thanksgiving is that it is usually described in one of two very closely related ways:   either a feeling or emotion, or as an exercise in accounting.  Our mothers told us that we should feel thankful for those soggy Brussels sprouts getting cold on the plate when there were starving children in China.  And, as most of us recall this logic did nothing to increase our feelings of gratitude for Brussels sprouts which we would have been more than happy to ship to China in order to equalize the balance sheets. 
 But there is another way of approaching gratitude which is a way of living…a way of understanding the world and our place in it.  This is the Biblical approach.  Gratitude is what begins to flow when we’ve have made a profound and significant revision of our world view…..when we learn how to see that the universe doesn’t exist to grant our wishes but that we are part of an awesome matrix of life and wonder where generosity brings forth abundance and abundance leads to generosity….a world where the generosity of God is so mind-boggling that to ponder it for a nanosecond brings you to your knees with wonder at the amazing realization that you are alive in it.  That fact alone is enough blessing for a life-time.  To recognize that means that every breath is a prayer of thanksgiving.  Tens of trillions of years of universe in the making and you are here in this moment in part simply to be able to appreciate it.   But most of us were never nurtured in this…in how to see and live like this but it’s never too late to learn.  It just takes practice.

 Maybe you had a mother like I had who was relentless in her insistence that her children write thank you notes for gifts whether we were thankful or not.  At Christmas time the notes had to be in the mail before school started in January which meant we often spent New Year’s Eve writing notes.  Sometimes, in order to get out of this chore I would suggest that this was an exercise in hypocrisy and  it would be better to say nothing than to say something I didn’t mean?   Clearly this was an iron-clad argument.
 “No,” my mother would counter.  “It’s better to say thank you.”  She had this quaint idea that sometimes you have to say what you don’t feel and practice what doesn’t come naturally because our behavior shapes our character as much as character shapes behavior.  And the same is true of the way we live in the world.  As we practice the art of seeing this world for the mystery and wonder and cornucopia of abundance that it is we begin to grow into people who are grateful.  And Paul goes so far as to suggest that whether or not we and the world do well together and go forward in healthy ways is built on the foundation of gratitude. He said in his letter that it is precisely the life of gratitude that becomes the well-spring of generosity that keeps life connected and flourishing.  This is the way it is set up to work.  Do you see how different this is from sitting in your counting room tallying up how much you have as opposed to others?  Even in the intangibles this is the way it works….in gratitude for freedom we are generous with our safeguards of freedom.  In gratitude for mercy and justice and compassion we live these virtures generously….
In both the Psalm and Paul’s letter it is the generosity of God that sets in all in motion. God fills the rivers with water and the valleys with grain and they….nature, responds in joy…which is very close to thanksgiving.  Nature itself is part of the larger matrix of thanksgiving and the cycles of generosity and gratitude continue to bless the earth and all creatures.

To cultivate and nurture the intentional spiritual lifestyle of  thanksgiving….to give thanks….even in those life circumstances when we don’t feel it in great measure, shoots holes through our illusions of self-sufficiency and orients us toward a larger reality and it shapes us into more mature, loving, hopeful people.

 In Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, Celie  says, “I think it [makes God mad if you walk by the color purple and don’t notice it.”  What else have we not noticed?  Would we have thought to create the color purple if it had been up to us?  It is an awesome world.  Its an awesome life full of all sorts of little miracles and wonders which are often unnoticed. So notice the purple and the red and the yellow and the blue and white and the sound of the wind and the marvel that gravity tethers you to this place, and that people love you and do it all not as an exercise in accounting but as a way of reconnecting with the source of life, and to encourage the tender and careful handling of that which God has made precious by the act of creating.

 In a world of push and shove, of tensions and stresses, of cultivated and manipulated dissatisfaction, we are called to the practice of thanksgiving for life….for all of it….for acorns and chipmunks, for stardust and dark matter, for beauty and art and music, for the mystery of human touch, for growth and challenge and maturity, for birth, for death which opens us to even greater mystery..all that puts us back in touch with how vast and wonderful and mysterious it all is and then join our voices with the earth and all the universes and all universes still unknown to us in songs of joy and gratitude.

Mary Gaut

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