November ushers in a season of bright orange pumpkins, steaming cups of tea, brisk frosty mornings, and cozy evenings by the fire. It is the month we celebrate our American tradition of Thanksgiving, which has its roots in Hebrew scriptural practices offering God the “first fruits” of our harvests. We honor God whose creativity and grace has given us these gifts. We are to remember with gratitude that life itself is a gift from God. Gratitude is at the center of a healthy spiritual life, growing out of the awareness that we are all the offspring of God’s wellspring.
Spiritual gratitude involves more than simply following instructions and mustering up an obligatory ‘thank you.’ It can involve being overwhelmed with joy in moments of awe at the amazing grace of God. We may have a difficult time with this kind of gratitude in our world of ‘doing and accomplishing.’ We can be tempted into thinking it is our work alone that has given us what we have. We scurry about attempting to accomplish even more, somehow believing it will make us more secure. It is easy for us to become lost in our consumerist world of “never enough” which feeds our voracious appetites, driving us to ever more achievements. We take no time to pause, listen, reflect, and return our thanksgiving for what we have, to honor God, the author of all, and our only true richness. As we rush along to achieve more self-justification, we hardly recognize that our spirits are sadly unfulfilled, our souls restless, until we find our rest in God’s grace to us in each present moment, not in some unknown future we think we must create for ourselves.
The 16th Century writings of St. John of the Cross are difficult for us as 21st Century Westerners to grasp as they point to the reality that “all is grace.” In a poignant passage from St. John, he has God offer this explanation: “Could not lovers say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms was grace? Existence itself is my arms, though I well understand how one can turn away from me until the heart has wisdom.” If we can experience everything that happens in our earthly lover’s arms as grace, then surely, if we could actually experience Existence for what it is—the widespread arms of God—everything that happens in life is also in God’s grace.
God is sovereign, bringing good out of everything. Joy emerges from the ashes of adversity through trust and thankfulness. The wisdom of mindfulness offers us this insight. Thanksgiving for all that offers us joy from which nothing can separate us.
Gratitude brings completeness to our soul’s experience. It is the healing we have needed most. Worship can deepen our thankfulness of heart, bringing wholeness to the grace we have received. It can help us orient our living from a center of thanks, rather than the emptiness of want. May we as a community gathered in faith be able to rest in this gratitude, that we may offer ourselves to each other and to the world. And that we may pray with former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold: “For all that has been: Thanks. For all that shall be: Yes!”