“THANKS-LIVING”

A Sermon for West Seattle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
November 24, 2002
Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan

READING (Read by Douglas McCullough)

e. e. cummings
i Thank You God for most this amazing
day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

INTRODUCTION
While there were times during the early years of our nation’s history when various colonies would declare a day of thanksgiving, Thanksgiving did not become a true national holiday until we were in the midst of the civil war.  The year was 1863.  President Lincoln asked our entire country—north and south, to pause to appreciate the bounties of food still produced in fertile fields.  He asked all citizens to observe the last day of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise.  He also spoke of the wounds caused by the war, and he prayed that peace would soon be restored to the nation.  I think it is significant that Lincoln chose a time of great pain and sorrow to declare a day of Thanksgiving.

Now each year the President of the United States issues a proclamation of Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays when the whole nation is united, for no matter what our religious beliefs are, you can relate to this holiday.  We all have things to be thankful for. 

In the Boyle family as I was growing up, Thanksgiving was a day when we for sure said grace.  Then we would begin to pass the food.  Always someone would say, which way are we passing?  Then Dad would make sure we had a small knife to slice the cranberry jelly, for it was against his beliefs to spoon it.  We made that mistake once. That taken care of, we would settle in to enjoy a wonderful meal while Dad would begin telling jokes between mouthfuls.  Often they were about the Irish, like the one that goes:  Once there were two Irishmen who are out golfing, when they see a funeral procession going by.  One of them takes off his hat and holds it over his heart.  The other says, sure’n that is a nice and kind gesture Patrick.   Patrick replies, well, it’s the least I could do since I was married to her for 54 years! 

Ah, the Irish humor and the memories.

PRACTICES OF THANKS-LIVING
The good thing about an annual ritual of Thanksgiving is that it does remind us to be grateful.  But once a year is not enough, and so I want to take a look at how we can bring an awareness of thankfulness into our daily lives, making Thanksgiving a way of life, or a way of “thanks-living.”

The heartbeat of Thanks-Living is being grateful for the gift of life itself!  Too often we put off letting our hearts be glad until we accomplish some work goal, or until we find a life partner, or until we are able to have a child of our own.  Truly we need to set our minds on the amazing and marvelous gift of life.  “There is a Buddhist teacher in Thailand who would remind all of his students that there was always something to be thankful for.  He’d say, “Let’s rise and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we may have learned a little.  And if we didn’t learn even a little, at least we didn’t get sick.  And if we did get sick, at least we didn’t die.  So let us all be thankful.” 

Appreciating the gift of life!

A second practice of Thanks-Living is being grateful for all that is in our life—all that we have and all that happens to us.  Poets have a way of reminding us to appreciate the commonplace and to bless the holy when it briefly and quietly brushes by us.  Anne Sexton speaks of appreciating the common things of our lives, in her poem “Welcome Morning”   (From The Awful Rowing Toward God). 

There is joy
In all:
In the hair I brush each morning,
In the Cannon towel, newly washed,
That I rub my body with each morning,
In the chapel of eggs I cook
Each morning,
In the outcry from the kettle
That heats my coffee
Each morning,
In the spoon and the chair
That cry “hello there, Anne”
Each morning,
In the godhead of the table
That I set my silver, plate, cup upon
Each morning.

All this is God,
Right here in my pea-green house
Each morning
And I mean,
Though I often forget,
To give thanks,
To faint down by the kitchen table
In a prayer of rejoicing
As the holy birds at the kitchen window
Peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
Let me paint a thank-you on my palm
For this God, this laughter of the morning,
Lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
Dies young.

The Persian poet Rumi invites us to welcome and appreciate even the sorrows of our lives. He says:

This being human is a guest house.  Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all:
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still,
Treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

If Rumi were here I’d say to him—easier said than done!  You expect me to appreciate hard times?  Forget it!  I don’t know if we can see anything positive in our struggles and sorrows, for we like smooth sailing and we seek happiness.  But we can realize that there are times in our lives when we wake up after a sorrow, when we begin to relax our grip upon a past relationship, an unrealized dream—when we practice as the Buddhists among us would say—non-attachment, and we begin to see that the painful transition has made possible an opening to a new precious relationship, or a dream even closer to our heart—some new delight.

A third practice of thanks-living is being positive, focusing energy and awareness on good news.  Many UUs are active in movements to increase economic and social justice.  Being so affected by what is not right, with what is not beautiful, with what is not good, we could easily skew our emotions to cynicism and mistrust. For me, it is a conscious choice to permit myself to keep balance, to be just as deeply affected by the wonders, the beauty, the love and the mystery of life as I am by that which calls me to action.   Thich Nhat Hanh has a poem entitled Good News (from 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 news 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.

A last practice of thanks-living  is to be open to the sacred—the holy—right in our simple rituals of life.  Holly Bridges Elliott (Beholding God in Many Faces) wrote of her surprise to find intense joy while feeding her children peanut butter sandwiches. 

I remember this illumination happening to me one noontime as I stood in the kitchen and watched my children eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  We were having a most unremarkable time on a nondescript day, in the midst of the most quotidian of routines.  I hadn’t censed the table, sprinkled the place mats with holy water, or uttered a sanctifying prayer over the Wonder bread.  I wasn’t feeling particularly “spiritual.” But, heeding I don’t know what prompting, I stopped abruptly in mid-bustle, … and looked around me as if I were opening my eyes for the first time that day.

The entire room became luminous and so alive with movement that everything seemed suspended—yet pulsating—for an instant, like light waves.  Intense joy swelled inside me, and my immediate response was gratitude—gratitude for everything, every tiny thing in that space.  The shelter of the room became a warm embrace; water flowing from the tap seemed a tremendous miracle; and my children became, for a moment, not my progeny or my charges or my tasks, but eternal beings of infinite singularity and complexity whom I would one day, in an age to come, apprehend in their splendid fullness.

GRATITUDE IN MORE DEPTH
Gratitude.  Gratitude is the heart of thanks-living.  It is one of the essential elements of a deep spiritual life.  It is a foundation that supports all elements of our spiritual life.  Gratitude helps us when we hit hard times.  It gives us perspective.  President Lincoln knew this when he asked the whole country to gather for Thanksgiving. 

But there are two difficulties with gratitude.  One is that in order to be grateful we must pay attention and be alert to the good around us; but let’s be realistic!  We have a lot on our minds and many time pressures-- getting to work, looking for work, taking care of children, taking care of our health—lots of duties and responsibilities.  When do we have time to remember to be grateful? 

The way of gratitude needs to be a spiritual practice—a spiritual practice is any regular activity or plan that reminds us of our deepest aspirations and highest values.    We need ways to remember our gratitude, times structured into our lives when we focus on our thankfulness. 
One family I know had a gratitude ritual while their daughter was growing up.  During dinner, each night, they each named things from their day for which they were grateful.  They each kept grateful journals.  Now as a young adult, their daughter Meghan still treasures her journal.

Of course we could go back to the tried and true method of bowing our heads and expressing gratitude each time we eat.  Or we can say a prayer of thankfulness each time we are waiting at a stoplight.  I call this my stoplight theology.  Rather than being frustrated with missing a light, be glad.  Use the time to your advantage.   Meister Eckhart, Christian mystic, said that to utter “thank you” is to utter the only real prayer that is.  He is suggesting that our underlying spiritual perspective of gratitude is prayer.   To say thank you is the ultimate prayer.  We have time for that at a stop light! 

But maybe you have a problem with uttering a prayer of gratitude—especially if you don’t believe in a personal God.  But I’m suggesting that we express gratitude for not gratitude to.  We are grateful for life and its many gifts, a personal God does not have to even be in the equation.  The expression of our gratitude reminds us what is most important.

The other difficulty with gratitude is that inherent in gratitude is an awareness of our dependence, and we don’t always like to be dependent.  It used to be in our culture that we would receive a gift and say “much obliged.”  That was a recognition that to receive a gift is to establish a connection and an obligation.  We don’t use that phrase “much obliged” anymore.  But gratefulness still implies that we are dependent, not able to control everything.   Are we comfortable with dependence?  Not always!  Do we want independence?  Sometimes! 

Brother David Steindl-Rast (Gratitude:  The Heart of Prayer) has written that this dilemma is not really between dependence and independence, for  independence is just an illusion. Instead the dilemma is between interdependence and alienation, and I believe he is correct.  We are not independent. Everything we eat and have and are, is the result of someone else’s work, someone else’s care and someone else’s mentoring.  This reflects the truth of our seventh Unitarian Universalist principle -- the interdependent web of all of life.  We live an interdependent life, and I am grateful for the richness that it brings me.

CONCLUSION
When we let ourselves feel gratitude for the gift of life and for all that is in our lives, we acknowledge our connection to the mystery of life, and we acknowledge the fact that we were not in control of the making of ourselves, nor are we in control of how long we will live.   It is just this acknowledgement that brings us to our knees in deep gratitude for being alive and for the lives of those whom we love. 

Thanks-living is a way of perceiving our lives just so, and daily gratitude is the heart of it all. 

I give thanks for most this amazing life.