“Attitude of Gratitude”

A Sermon Delivered to the West Seattle UU Fellowship
November 21, 2004
Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan

READING
The Good News by Thich Nhat Hanh  in Call Me by My True Names

The good news
They do not print.
The good news
We do print.
We have a special edition every moment,
And we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
That the linden tree is still there
Standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
To touch the blue sky.
The good new is that your child is there before you,
And your arms are available:
Hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
And help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
Smiling its wondrous smile,
Singing the song of eternity.
Listen!  You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
And preoccupation
And get free.
The latest good news
Is that you can do it.

SERMON
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, for a number of reasons.  From a sensuous point of view, I love the wafting of the smell of turkey baking in the oven, and the texture of dressing sprinkled with crunchy nuts and flavorful apples, and my scoop of mash potatoes indented in the middle with the back of my spoon, making the crater for my gravy lake.  Are any of you non-vegetarians with me on this?   And then there is the pie…
On a more spiritual note, I also like Thanksgiving because it’s not about one particular religion.  Thanksgiving is a holiday and a holy day, an opportunity to reflect more deeply about what it means to be grateful and why gratitude is at the heart of all religions.  It’s about a human sentiment, a deep human need, to acknowledge our dependency, our place in the universe. 
I’d like to share a story from my life, that happened about 6 years ago, a story that has been on my mind, since I shared it in a worship service this weekend at a church conference in La Conner. 

It was a few years ago, when I was finishing up my previous career, but well into theological school.  I remember the night well.  

It was a dark and stormy night.   Oh boy, was it ever a dark and stormy night.  Heavy rain was falling.   

I am driving home from an evening meeting; it’s been a long 13 hour day, and a hard one at that.  I feel depleted.  I’m on Interstate 5 just north of downtown Seattle, in the right slower lane.  The rain is pounding down.  I am traveling below the speed limit, with other cars flying by me.  I am approaching my exit when all of a sudden my car starts hydroplaning, my wheels no longer touching the pavement.  

Before I know it, my Honda is spinning in circles, crossing all the lanes of I-5, as lights of cars begin bearing down upon me.  I have no time to think.  I have no time to panic.  I have no ability to take charge, my usual line of defense in times of crisis.   

I can only surrender.  I continue to spin through the lanes. Unknown to me, a driver of a pickup truck begins to instantly calculate that if she steers slightly right she will avoid hitting my driver door.  She is my angel. 

Our cars collide-- with the impact on my car narrowly missing a direct hit on my door.    Our cars end up on the shoulder of the freeway, facing the wrong way.   All is silent…and still.     A moment passes.   I’m alive.  I’m stunned.  I’m ok.   

In a moment the other driver comes to me, opening my door, asking me if I’m ok.  She invites me into the warm cab of her pickup, and soon I am holding a warm cup of coffee poured from her thermos.  I’m calm.  She’s calm.  We talk a little, we sit in silence a little.  It feels mysterious, like she IS some angel.  I’ve just caused her a great deal of stress and hassle, but she is generous with me.    She feels the mystery too, and wonders aloud about our presence with each other. 

We are interrupted by a State Patrolman, and a little paperwork.  Then it is time to go.  The other driver and I hug each other.  The patrolman’s eyes get big, and he says he doesn’t usually see hugs at accidents.  Then he blocks two lanes with his patrol car so we can do a U turn and proceed down and off the freeway. 

Soon I’m on my way home.  I take my emotional temperature.  I feel good.  How can this be?  I have just caused an accident, banged up a woman’s truck, badly damaged my car, and have tucked a ticket in my wallet for “going too fast for conditions.”

But the woman’s caring outreach leaves me feeling grateful.  Rather than feeling really awful, I feel spiritually held.  I feel goodly blessed.  And I feel grateful to be alive.  Boy do I feel grateful.

I whispered the prayer that Meister Eckhart, the twelfth century mystic from the middle ages, says is the ultimate prayer:  ……thank you. 

While we don’t want to have to go through a life threatening incident or illness to remind us to be grateful, we do experience our vulnerability when those experiences punctuate our lives.  And, if you are like me, afterwards--you know, by a couple days later--the busy demands and self imposed activities of your life quickly move you to forget to keep that sense of relief and gratitude up front in your life. 

It didn’t take too many term papers to have my head fully immersed in intricate theologies and pastoral ethics, to move my heartfelt gratitude away from my consciousness. 

I believe that we are all able to feel gratitude, but that it is a choice, a choice that needs to be renewed every day.  And I also believe, as theologian L. P. Jacks does, that gratitude is essential to being spiritual.  He said it this way.   “Religion is primarily an affair of gratitude.” 

What does that mean, “religion is primarily an affair of gratitude”?  Our prominent minister from All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, Rev. Forrest Church—son of former senator Frank Church of Idaho, has become well known in UU circles for his definition of religion, that religion is our response to the dual reality of being born and knowing that we will die. The dual reality of being born and knowing we will die. 

I believe that it is this awareness-- that we will one day die, that our lives and all that we cling to here will one day end--which moves us to experience life as precious.  And what gets us more deeply into our religious feelings is the awareness that we cannot know how it is that we came to be born, and that as much as we have tried, we do not have much control over our aging and eventual death and what happens to us after we die, --our lives from birth to death are awash in mystery—oh, I know we know about sperm and ovum, and we know about evolution, and we’ve made giant medical leaps, but where did the first stardust come from that eventually evolved into living cells, and later developed into multiple cell organisms, and then plants and animals and then, from the same ancestor, evolved our cousins the chimps, bonobos and ourselves in all our humanity?   

Where did this first stardust come from?

It reminds me of the scientist who was bragging to God that God was no longer needed.  “We can make a human now.  We don’t need you.”   “Oh, says God, you think you can make human all by yourself?”  “Yes, do you want to watch?”  And the scientist reaches down to gather up some dirt, when God interrupts her and says “No, No, get your own dirt!”  

We are born in mystery and the night each child is born is a holy night. 

And isn’t it amazing when we think about it, that here we are, little people on a little planet made up of star dust that came from who knows where, spinning around a star on the edge of a galaxy, among more galaxies, in an immense universe.   Isn’t it amazing, and isn’t it clear that we are not in charge? 

And so as we consider our place in the universe, we realize that we are dependent on a force or forces larger than ourselves, larger than our earth.  We are not self-sufficient, and we are not in charge of it all.  And when we realize that we have not given ourselves life, we are moved to pray the pure prayer:  Thank you.

You may ask, to whom do you utter:  thank you?  And I say, I don’t worry about that—I just take care of my side of the equation. 

And amidst our lives, between birth and death we are gifted by receiving bodies that breathe, and spirits that laugh, and hands that touch, and legs that dance.  And we are given lives to live, and life happens to us.  Sometimes we get confused.  We think that we are supposed to be happy all the time, instead of realizing that in life there are moments of happiness, just like there are moments of sadness and downright pain and trouble, and these moments evolve and change.   

There is a story of the Buddha, about an elderly woman and a mustard seed. The old woman is beside the road, complaining of the pain in her joints, the sickness in her body, and the grief in her heart for the death of her husband. The Buddha walks along and the old woman cries out to him to help her in her pain and suffering. The Buddha says all life is suffering, but the woman doesn't want to hear that and she continues to plead with him.

So the Buddha says, bring me a mustard seed from a house where there has been no suffering and I will help you. The woman goes off to the village. At each house, she asks the question, have you been free from suffering? And at each house she is told no, and invited in to hear the story they have to tell.

A week later, the Buddha comes across the old woman washing clothes at the river, humming a song. He asks her if her pain is gone, since she is humming, and she says no. Then he asks her if she found the mustard seed and the woman says no, but that she had stopped looking. She says she had discovered that so many people had so many problems far worse than hers, that there was work to do. She was washing clothes for a mother of six children of whom three were very ill. The Buddha left her, knowing that she had learned the lesson of the mustard seed.

Some of us get dealt much more luck in the form of things like good looks, intelligence, health and inherited money than others.  But the sustaining meaning of life comes not from how good or bad our luck is, but rather how we choose deep within us to respond to the luck or lack of it that comes into our lives.

Have you noticed that there are some people that seem to be happier than others? And there are some who are grouchier, some always whining and going around complaining about how others are responsible for their unhappiness.     Experiencing life with gratitude does not depend upon luck or the actions of others.  It depends upon our attitude of gratitude.   It doesn’t depend upon our circumstances, our gender or anything else we do not control.  Attitude is more important than the facts of our lives.

What is the best part is that we have a choice each day as we awake and begin to ready ourselves—a choice as to how to respond to our day and all that happens.  It’s about 10% what happens, and 90% attitude.  It’s remembering the Good News that Thich Nhat Hanh expressed in our poem earlier that Julie read for us—the good news is that you and I are alive, that the Linden tree is still there, standing firm in the harsh Winter. 
Some of us indeed are feeling that this is a time of harsh winter, politically speaking, but let’s not lose sight of the good news all around us.  Thich Nhat Hanh says: “Look at each of our special editions.  We always offer the things that are not wrong.  We want you to benefit from them and help protect them.”

Let me tell you of a man who figured this out, with a little help.  Jim Porter has spent the last seven years of his life in a wheel chair or in bed. Most of the time he is in pain. Yet, he loves life and displays a positive attitude. How is he able to do this? Here is his answer, in his words:

“Strange as it sounds, it is all in my mind. When I became disabled, a nurse who was helping me adjust said: ‘It’s your move, Jim. You can go all out and squeeze joy, happiness and fulfillment out of life, or you can atrophy. It is all in the way you decide to view your situation.’ Although difficult to accept at first, I realized just how right she was and learned how to focus on the positive factors. I hope it is obvious that I chose the right road.” (Elwood Chapman’s book Up Your Attitude! Changing the Way You Look at Life,  p. 9)

It’s your move, Jim.  So true that is.  And it is true for all of us.  It’s Jim’s move, but it is our move too!  Our choice.

And here is the paradox:  When things go well, gratitude helps us to savor things going well.  When things go poorly, gratitude enables us to get over those situations and to realize they are temporary.  So many of us need to know this deep in our bones as we grieve for the dashed hopes of the election.  Most of us struggle to not lose heart when we review the results of the referendums on gay marriage. 

But yes, gratitude is a choice.  And so Edna St. Vincent Millay must come to us again this Thanksgiving and remind us to keep perspective, and to give thanks for the courage we have had and must continue to have. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay “A Poem for Thanksgiving.”

Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings;
To sit at the bright feast, and with ruddy cheer
Give thanks for the harvest of a troubled year.

The clouds move and shift, Withdraw to new positions on the hills;
The sky above us is a thinning haze—a patch of blue appears—
We yearn toward the blue sky as toward the healing of all ills;
But the storm has not gone over; the clouds come back;
The blue sky turns black;
And the muttering thunder suddenly crashes close, and once again
Flashes of lightning startle the rattling windowpane;
Then once more pours and splashes down the cold discouraging rain.

God bless the harvest of this haggard year.
Pity our hearts, that did so long for peace;
Deal with us kindly: there are many here
Who love their fellow [people] men (and may their tribe increase).

But cunning and guile persist; ferocity empowers
The lifted arm of the aggressor; the times are bad.
Let us give thanks for the courage that was always ours;

And pray for the wisdom which we never had.

Our spiritual challenge is to keep this courage and thanks alive, each and every day.  How might we, amidst great disappointment, succeed in remembering to live a life of gratitude?  How might we keep up front in our consciousness all that is going well, including the fact that we have been given the gift of life? 

How might we develop a spiritual practice of gratitude?  A spiritual practice is any regular practice that reminds us of what is deeply important to us.  What would work for you?  Some families talk to each other over dinner about what was the most challenging part of their day, and what part they were most grateful for. 

Some people keep gratitude journals.  Some couples share gratitude calendars, recording each day something they are grateful for about their mate, and reading it on their date night.  Some people each morning say a prayer about their gratitude for the gift and mystery of life.  Some people pray before each meal, remembering their dependence upon the earth and other plants, animals and people to have food on their table.  Some people write a thank you card or e-mail each day., to someone who has touched their life.

Remembering our gratitude, expressing our gratitude, sharing our gratitude.  May the people of this Fellowship feel awash with gratitude, from within ourselves and as expressed between us, and may we each awake in the morning to whisper Meister Eckhart’s ultimate prayer, whispered to the mystery, ….THANK YOU!  …THANK YOU! ….THANK YOU!

May it be so.  Amen