This Thanksgiving
This Thanksgiving, I’m reflecting on gratitude, as I’m prone to do. In fact, gratitude is at the forefront of my little brain a lot of the time. During my two-month deep illness and spiritual crisis this summer, my gratitude practice was one of the primary things that saved me … when you’re really sick, it’s easy to downward spiral. Instead of allowing myself to do that, I reflected on all the things I was grateful for, while being stuck in a place I really didn’t want to be. It takes conscious effort but is soooo worth it.
Gratitude, to me, is directly from God; numerous bible verses have contributed to this belief … ‘give thanks in all circumstances …,’ ‘giving thanks always and for everything to God …,’ ‘overflowing in many expressions of thanks …,’ ‘thank God for this gift too wonderful for words …,’ and finally, though there are more, ‘every good and perfect gift is from above.’
As a contemplative-spirited human, I think a lot about the Divine. I reflect with the help of the Bible, other sacred texts, words of the saints, mystics, those further on the path than I, and of course, lived experience. I serve an all-loving God who ministers to me in despair, and delights in my joy. I take comfort in a God who loves all of the created world, because the natural world is a reflection of God’s very being.
As a novice on the spiritual path, I used to think God wanted certain things and specific actions from me … if I behaved in particular ways, I’d ‘be good’ in the eyes of the Divine. I also used to think I personally needed various things to be happy. Lived experience, though, has taught me that all of those things are inherited (unserving) beliefs, stories and conditioning, lived out in a society of lack.
Today — this Thanksgiving — is not like those of the past. This Thanksgiving is quieter. Less hustle and bustle. More introspection. My family of origin hasn’t celebrated Thanksgiving together for years, and this year our daughter (our only child, an adult) has to work, so J and I are preparing an intimate surf and turf dinner for two. As you might imagine, a sadness lingers. And it’s a sadness not just of today, but in anticipation of the years to come. Things change. I’ll never be the mom of a small child again.
Life is funny … when we are raising a family, we look forward to pockets of solitude. And when we grow older and have lots of the solitude we craved, we reminisce on the earlier, busier years. But if we stay in that energy, how do we grow? Aren’t we just projecting further into the society of lack I mentioned earlier? I think so. Spiritual practice has taught me to be content, grateful and accepting of the life I’m living. Today. Perhaps I should be grateful for this life, today … a husband I adore who is happy to spend Thanksgiving with me alone, an adult child who is happy, healthy, kind, beautiful and living a successful life, many friends who I cherish deeply, extended family also happy and healthy, dogs snoring at my feet + a beautiful home, land, and work I enjoy. But as I reflect further, these things only reflect a personal thanks-giving. What of the other blessings so freely bestowed upon us? The trees, mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, seasons, sun, moon and the rest of creation?
The conditioned world of lack teaches us to focus our attention on ‘me’ and ‘my,’ but we don’t live in a ‘me’ and ‘my’ world. We live in a shared, connected world, full of wonder — and destruction. Today, I am grateful for this broken, terrible, beautiful, awe-inspiring world in which we live. We live in a world that wants us and needs OUR help, not the other way around. Perhaps in our own personal sadness, we should be one with the grief of the world … a palpable deeply wounded earth-grief that is much bigger than ourselves, much bigger than we can fathom.
I am convinced that the biggest thing God wants is US — at our cores, at our naked vulnerable worst — so God can love us as we are and so God can change us from the inside out, turning us into ‘thanks AND giving creatures’ who love others and the world as it is. Everything is gift. Truly. God wants nothing more than a grateful heart at one with the world. But how do we do that?
Perhaps the first step is to begin to remove ourselves from the structural, cultural, societal story, and to insert ourselves into God’s story, into the natural world and ‘the great chain of being.’ It’s our birthright. And like so many things I write about, it’s not either/or. It’s both/and. We can’t entirely remove ourselves from society but we can choose to focus on ‘the real’ and posture our hearts toward the Divine and creation. Of course, how to put that in action is another story altogether, but spiritual practice seems the place to start.
Something shifted for me related to all of this during my spiritual crisis … that is why I’m calling it a spiritual crisis. I began to see through ‘the matrix’ that is this life, and in this seeing through, I began to change. That’s God. All God. Posturing the heart toward God and gratitude, as opposed to the world, me and my, feels much more embodied and whole. I’m so far from perfect, so far from ‘getting it right’ that it’s not funny, but God doesn’t care. That’s why time exists … to hopefully mold us into the humans we’re meant to be.
Further food for thought from the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Daily Meditations today: ‘In most of his talking to the created world, Francis sees an interdependence between the different layers of creation, and he always praises them for what they give one another. In a sermon addressed to birds, Francis said’:
“Birds, my sisters, you owe God a great deal. You ought to praise God always and everywhere for the freedom you have to fly everywhere, … for your ornate and colorful clothing, … for the song given to you by your Creator…. You neither sow nor reap, yet God feeds you. God gives you the rivers and springs for drink; the mountains and hills, the rocks and crags as refuges; the high trees for nests; and even though you do not know how to sew or weave, he gives you and your children the clothing you need. Therefore, your Creator who gave you all these benefits, loves you very much. You be careful, my little birds, don’t be ungrateful, but try to praise God always.”
St. Francis of Assisi
This quote instills in me a deep peace in the simplicity of worshipping an awesome God. Nature ‘gets it.’ Nature worships by being what it is. Nature goes with the flow. Nature is beauty. Nature just is, and is a reflection of the Divine and the all. And aren’t we a part of nature too? Yes. I choose to learn from nature. Yes, this Thanksgiving and all of the days that will (hopefully) follow, I choose gratitude — for all that is — exactly as it is, trusting and thanking God — for all that is.
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank You,’ it will be enough.”
Meister Eckhart
Photo by Mark Olsen on Unsplash
