Returning to gratitude

The ground of all spiritual work

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. 
                                                                                                           — 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of experiencing the retreat leadership of Anne and Terry Symens-Bucher, the founders of Canticle Farm in Oakland, California.  Canticle Farm is an intentional community and urban farm that is pioneering a sustainable form of culture rooted in ancient wisdom.  Anne and Terry combine deep grounding in the Franciscan Christian tradition and the work of Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy. 

The retreat was grounded in the practice of gratitude.  Anne and Terry reminded me that gratitude is not only a feeling, it is also an attitude that we can cultivate intentionally.  Gratitude is not dependent upon our circumstances, but rather on our choice about how to respond to our circumstances.  Terry offered Saint Francis’ great hymn of praise, the Canticle of the Sun (also known as the Canticle of the Creatures), as a beautiful example of this truth:

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord!  All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To You, alone, Most High, do they belong.  No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and You give light through him.  And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!  Of You, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms, and all the weather, through which You give Your creatures sustenance.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom You brighten the night.  He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of You; through those who endure sickness and trial.

Happy those who endure in peace, for by You, Most High, they will be crowned.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape.  Woe to those who die in mortal sin!  Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will.  The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks, and serve Him with great humility.

Terry pointed out that St. Francis wrote this Canticle towards the end of his life, during a time of great trial.  He was growing blind and suffering from the stigmata.  His disciples had rejected his leadership and, for the most part, pushed him aside.  He might well have taken his life to be a failure.  But instead of wallowing in self-pity, he turned to wonder and praise.  He focused his attention on what is right with the world, and not simply on what is wrong.  Even in the midst of suffering, there is so much beauty.

We are living through “the great unraveling” – the unraveling of our culture, our institutions, our democracy, our way of being church.  The climate crisis, the turn from liberal democracy to illiberal authoritarianism, the growing social polarization and violence, addiction and death – all these tempt us to despair.  In times of great stress and tension, turnings and transitions, it is even more important that we ground our lives in gratitude.  But how do we do this?

The first step is to be present to our experience.  When our experience is painful or difficult, we tend to retreat into denial or fantasy.  We seek to dissociate ourselves from reality.  This cuts us off from awareness of the gifts as well as the challenges we experience.  When we close awareness to escape the darkness, we also shut out the light. 

Being thankful in all circumstances doesn’t mean we deny the reality of suffering.  It means that we hold our awareness of blessing alongside our awareness of suffering, because gratitude energizes wise and compassionate action.  It expands our capacity to perceive reality holistically.  When we hold suffering within a larger wholeness, praise and blessing becoming possible again.

Memory is crucial to our ability to be present.  This is evident in the central ritual acts of Jewish and Christian tradition.  We remember the great acts of salvation history.  We recall what God has done for us in the past so that we can imagine new possibilities for the future, refocusing the present within a larger field of vision.  Scripture repeatedly invites us to remember the gifts we have received, especially the fundamental gifts of creation and redemption.

It is not enough, however, to remember as a private cognitive act.  We must speak aloud our memories of blessing, share them with our children, recite them together.  The act of remembering and sharing our blessings reconstitutes our identity as God’s beloved, as one who is desired by God, as recipients of divine and human favor. 

As part of the retreat work with Anne and Terry, we were invited to pair off with a partner and listen to each other, without interruption or conversation, as we took turns completing sentences that evoked our memories of blessing; sentences such as:

A place that was magical for me as a child was . . .

A person who gave me the courage to be who I am today is/was . . .

One of the things about nature that brings me delight is . . .

Some of the things I love about being alive on the Earth are . . . 

We were invited to repeat and complete these sentences in as much detail as possible.  Our partner was invited to listen to us with complete attention, free from any burden of analysis or response:  just being present with each other in the recitation of gratitude.

I realized through this powerful exercise that the admonition to share the stories of God’s saving acts in history is primarily for the benefit of the speaker.  In speaking my gratitude aloud to another, it became present, tangible, viscerally real.  I became my teaching in that moment.  Experiencing gratitude now shifts our perception of reality profoundly. 

At the same time, witnessing another person becoming grounded in gratitude is itself an occasion for gratitude.  It is a window into the complexity and depth of life experienced by another human being, an aperture looking out upon the immensity of divine love invisibly at work among us.  It also creates the possibility for deeper connection, intimacy, and awareness of what unites us rather than divides us. 

Anne and Terry provided an experiential understanding of the truth that gratitude is the ground of all spiritual work:  grief and healing, seeing in new ways, going forth into the world to love and serve.  Whenever we need to begin anew, the first step is to return to gratitude.