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Gratitude
Gratitude: The Song of the Soul
by Barbara Gilday
We have heard it said, “In all things, give thanks”. Sometimes this is harder said than done - as I'm sure we've all discovered. Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun says: The slogan "Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected. Through doing so, we also make peace with people we dislike. More to the point, being around people we dislike is often a catalyst for making friends with ourselves. Thus, "Be grateful to everyone." Well - it seems like that could be the end of sermon. Ok - maybe I should go a little further with this.
"Be grateful to everyone" is getting at a complete change of attitude. This does not mean that if you're mugged on the street you should smile knowingly and say, "Oh, I should be grateful for this," before losing consciousness. It actually gets at the core of how we perfect ignorance through avoidance, not knowing that we're putting another layer of protection over and hardening our hearts - becoming separated from ourselves little by little.
"Be grateful to everyone" means that all situations can teach us, and often it's the rough ones that teach us best. They're the ones who don't go away: your mother, your partner, your child, the person that you have to work with or see at the mailbox every single day, part of a situation you can't escape. I'm going to talk about 3 kinds of gratitude.
Because it's Veteran's Day, I'll tackle one of the hardest places to practice gratitude first. If we are to be grateful in all things and for all people, how do we make peace with our relationship with war?
Wars are fought for land, greed, honor, power, security, for so many reasons. They used to be fought by our fathers, sons, brothers, friends, and now they include our mothers, daughters, and sisters. It is in the humanity found in pockets of interactions in war that we may experience gratitude.
In trying to apply this teaching on gratitude to war, I recalled my friend Ronald, a Viet Nam Vet who witnessed his sergeant perpetrate an atrocity during his tour of duty. In Ronald's horror and disbelief at what he was seeing, he stood, rooted, frozen, and has lived for years with guilt, despising this officer. He is a classic PTSD survivor, experiencing withdrawal, night terrors and anxiety.
But here the story improves: A few years ago, he decided to make a documentary about his experiences. In the beginning, he could not think of his sergeant, without anger and hatred. But by the time he had finished the documentary, he was able to remember earlier experiences with this sergeant. He had been an Idaho farm boy. He was an officer who loved his men and protected them fiercely. But as many of them were killed or injured, his personality began to change and in the end, he became capable of what Ronald witnessed. Ronald began to see what war had inflicted on this previously caring person, and he began to develop compassion for him.
Staying with the story, working through it, rather than trying to forget it, brought him to his own peace. His family feels gratitude for this new man. Ronald went another step and returned to Viet Nam. Against all odds, he was able to find the village, meet the sons of the person who had been the object of the officer's rage, and apologize - a journey which was both painful and yet, brought him peace and gratitude for being able to come full circle. He is currently working on bringing a new well to the community - an act of atonement which is creating a measure of healing for all.
I feel gratitude for this veteran, the process and journey that he has been on since those dark days, and who he is now in the world as a result of his faithfulness. It is true that the international relationships that he is forging, would not likely have happened without the war he participated in. Is this then a reason to feel gratitude for the war? It is not the war we are grateful for, but in the war, that the seeds of healing and bridging differences were planted and later, brought to fruition. The integrity and faithfulness of Ronald's process was like the sunshine that melted the ice around his heart. I pray that other veterans, and other victims of war will find ways to their own peace. It is our job to remember and to charge ourselves with finding new ways to be whole together in the world so that war does not need to be inevitable. Perhaps preventative gratitude could be part of the answer. As Pema Chodron says: the unanswerable questions are the greatest teachers.
And now to turn to the second category: those who have little but practice gratitude anyway. The Nigerian Hausa people put it this way: “Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.”
I spent the month of September in Ghana - my 3rd time back since living there in the 60”s as a Canadian Peace Corps Volunteer. One of my projects this year was to record the stories of a wide variety of people. These are snippets of 2 of them that reawakened gratitude in me:
Esi Donkor is a market trader who sells vegetables, and has recently, with the help of a micro-lending grant, added pig's feet. She earns about 80 cents a day, lives in a 10X12 room with 2 of her 3 children, and is trying to get all 3 through school. Life has been tough for Esi - with a first husband divorcing her because she had fibroids and lost a child, and a second husband dying in a car wreck leaving her with 3 children and compromised health from 4 surgeries.
Esi struggles every day to feed her children. But at the end of our interview, she insisted that I take a packet of biscuits. She was so grateful for me spending time to hear her story. She is grateful to God for helping her meet each day and do what she is able to do. Her advice to Americans, when I asked her what she would like to share with us, was that we should love one another. Waking one night last week, unable to sleep, I found myself being thankful for water that comes into my home and is potable, for a bed, for a comfortable home with several rooms, and many other things that so many of us take for granted. I'm grateful to Esi for reminding me about gratitude. Her gratitude comes from the heart.
Another family I want to mention from Ghana is a boy of about 10 years and his mother. Emmanuel was born with a cleft palate. One of our delegates arranged for him to have surgery to repair his cleft in August. In September, just weeks after the successful surgery, some of our group members went to his village to visit the family and see how he was doing. He looked wonderful and was smiling- something he has never been able to do before. They were moved to tears when his mother knelt and kissed their feet.
Can you imagine the feelings of a poor village woman, who couldn't even conceive of the possibility of a different future for her disfigured child, and now, miraculously sees him healed? What a blessing to them! And what a blessing to us as we experienced their joy and gratitude. With such material abundance in our culture, often comes a lack of awareness of or casual acceptance of blessings. Not so for this family. Both Esi and Emmanuel's family helped me to get in touch with my gratitude and abundance.
And now to those who by the very nature of who they are, are gifts in the world. We are all here this morning because of Nanette Graham. Without her energy, passion, engaging personality, intelligence, persuasiveness and faithfulness, it might be that none of us would be gathering here today, for it was Nanette who started this fellowship.
You will see 5 of us who are strangers in your midst this morning. We are part of a Circle of Women that Nanette belongs to in Bellingham. This morning we have come to join you in celebrating and expressing our gratitude to Nanette for who she is. Nanette and I often share quotes that we enjoy. I'll share 4 of them with you, and invite you to respond to one that triggers a memory with your own thoughts about her. Here's the first one- one of her favorites:
Ideally, an old woman symbolizes dignity, mentoring, wisdom, self knowledge, tradition, learning, well defined boundaries, and experience, with a good dose of crabby, long toothed, straight-talking, flirtatious sass thrown in for good measure.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. Marcel Proust:
Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
& as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy, sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. Edith Wharton.
When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in….How beautifully they go to their graves! How gently they lay themselves down and turn to mould. They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe - with such an Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies. H. D. Thoreau.
In closing, let me say that gratitude is a spiritual practice - what we appreciate becomes more. It does not co-exist with anger, bitterness, boredom, resentment, apathy. It is sisters with joy, pleasure and peace. It is one of the lessons of “Spiritual Boot Camp” - to be practiced always, in all things, but most importantly when life is challenging us. Yes, there is a time for assessing our losses; yes, there is a time for mourning; but gratitude is to our souls, as food is to our bodies. Let us develop the attitude of gratitude in our relationships, and in our view of the world, today & every day.