by Brent Gavin Was, Intern Minister

A sermon given June 15, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon 

I have a large, 16-year-old Chihuahua named April in my life.  In a lot of ways, April is a nasty little thing.  Now, she is not mean.  She has asthma, snorts and chews on her feet constantly, scoots her little self across the floor in front of guests and eats tissues out of the trash. When I come home each day and she is waiting in my bedroom window where she has spent the day lying in the sun, I am grateful.  When we walk down the street her little waddle brings a smile to every face, from hardcore punk rockers to three-year-olds, I am grateful.  For all her bad habits, her quirks, her general goofiness, that little dog is teaching me a lot about living and a lot about gratitude.

I embarrass easily.  Like most of us, I struggle with self-consciousness and spend way too much energy trying to make sure that people don’t think poorly of me.  Having little April with me for the past eight years has helped me on my path to trying to live a grateful life, a life less concerned with the trappings of living, and more with living itself.  A life lived experiencing beauty, peace and joy rather than worrying that someone might think I am weird because my dog, well, is kind of weird. 

Gratitude is not just thanks; it is a realization that gifts are given and received and there is a relationship occurring.  Easy to understand if we are talking about a birthday present, a bit more difficult when we talk about being grateful for the sun. What or whom do we thank for that?  There are tiers of gratitude and I am glad for that, because for many of us, especially in our culture, gratitude is hard.

Well, it is not too hard to see why gratitude is hard to find. It is hard to be grateful in a culture where nothing seems unscathed with cynicism and plain old self-serving greed. So little seems sacred, pure, or even clean.  From the Catholic church’s abuses, our business leaders’ financial and ethical failures, to our political leaders’ lies; all are tainted.  We were lied to about the war as we are being lied to about tax cuts.  The rescue of that private was as faked as the statue of Saddam falling.  Even good old all-American baseball got dirtied by a piece of cork.

Our culture is structured in a way that gives few opportunities for gratitude to be felt. Our material wealth entitles us to be separate from one another.  Separated by single- family homes, by rigid notions of nuclear family that dictate who raises our children, by competition fostered in schools instead of cooperation.  Our successes and our failures are ours alone.

I know I have struggled with gratitude.  I come from a privileged background.  I was told over and over again that the world was my oyster, and I ate freely.  I fear now that that oyster of a world was more like a bad clam.  Because while my material needs were all met, my soul, my emotional life has been rather neglected, I have been alone.   I, like most of us, was taught a radical self-reliance, an extreme individualism that leaves no room for sharing the human experience.  When everything we do is completely our own responsibility, whom do we genuinely celebrate with?  Where is the joy in sharing successes, and where is the tenderness, care and sympathy of sharing hard times if we do this alone?

Gratitude is an experience of grace.  We feel connected to the world, connected to one another, connected to our life in a joyous moment.  Gratitude implies relationship.  Someone gives you a hug you didn’t expect, or a Christmas card, or throws a birthday party for you.  You feel connected.  You know intimately that this other person is part of your life and you are simply glad.  True gratitude comes when you realize that what ever you are grateful for you are worthy of accepting it, so you do.

It can be hard to be grateful.  Getting out of the Marine Corps, I was commander of a scout platoon.  Things had gone well in my time with the Scouts.  I loved the boys and I trusted their loyalty.  We were on our last field operation together, and one of the sergeants called a formation, “We have something we want to give you, Sir.”  So I came to the front, and they gave me a little box.  Inside was a Zippo lighter.  It was silver, had a Marine Emblem on it and it was engraved with my call sign and the slogan “Scout’s Out.”  It was really nice.  I thanked them and the formation dismissed.  I felt bad.  I felt bad because I was disappointed with their gift.  I felt bad about being disappointed in this gift.  I had thought we had gotten along well, that a deeper relationship had developed than a lighter was reflective of.  It was a long ride home to base camp in my Hummer that day.

We got home and the Marines turned to cleaning the gear.  The sergeant came in and said “Sir, the platoon is ready for inspection.”  I went out and the entire platoon had the widest grins I had ever seen through camouflage paint.  “Sir, you didn’t think we’d send you into the civilian world with only lighter to remember us by, did you?”  Well, they loaded it on; engraved shot glasses, a coffee mug with “Lt. Was, Once a Marine, Always a Marine” painted on it.  I am trying to live that down.  And most importantly, a citation that the whole platoon got together and wrote for me, thanking me for my patience, teaching and affection.  All the things I had wanted to give them, they had received.

In that moment I think I was truly grateful for the first time in my life.  I was, and had been before, thankful.  Thankful for the time and energy, the thought and the care evidenced in their gifts.  Thankful is thoughtful, it is a relationship of giver, gift and receiver.  Grateful happens before thanksgiving.  As I saw those grubby, smiling faces through hearing that citation read, I was with them.  With them in their wanting to give.  With them in their appreciation of something I had given them.  I was with them, fully aware of our relationship in that moment.  And those, I think, were the first adult tears I shed in front of a group of men.

The grateful life is a life lived in relation.  In relation to others, in relation to ourselves, and in relation to the great unknowables.  Being with the Marines on that desert parade deck opened doors of connection to those young men that day, and that was gratitude.  But my relationship with my little dog is also an exercise in gratitude, but a deeper sense of it.  Gratitude for simply being.

April is so important a lesson for me because she has been one of the first things I have been able to love as a whole being.  Her quirks, personality, loyalty and hilarity have rolled all together into one love.  Often we write off people who have a part we cannot accept.  A convicted felon or drug addict is often easy to write off.  It is easy to dehumanize them as simply bad, unworthy of our attention, deserving of their situation.  It is easy to forget that someone who suffers deeply or causes others to suffer is a fragile, lost human being that needs and deserves love.  I think of our president.  As troubling as he is, we cannot write him off.  We must embrace him as a human being absolutely deserving our love and compassion, though not our obedience.  How he must suffer in his soul.  What else would lead him down the path he has chosen?  Evil is too easy an excuse.

It is harder to write someone off as worthless if we know them, if we meet them face to face. We must accept their humanity, but too often we don’t accept the whole package.  You have a friend who has some part that you just can’t accept.  They are too gossipy, they have a career we don’t approve of, there is some bigoted side to them that we despise, so we ignore it.  We just block it out, don’t pay attention to it and we try to love, we try to be grateful for the rest.  I think for years I loved little April in spite of her foibles.  How many friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, even spouses have we had that we couldn’t appreciate the whole?  And no wonder it never worked out.  It is half way there, but we can’t be truly grateful for only part of someone.

Gratitude comes when the whole is embraced as a whole, the good and bad, light and dark all together.  It is not forgetting poor behavior, it is accepting that everything and everyone is a mixed bag, and we need to love them because of the unique mix we each are.  In this full acceptance, and I think only in this full acceptance can true gratitude be found.

We all have parts of ourselves that we admire, that we cherish.  Maybe we have always liked our legs, or the way we never forget birthdays, or that you really are interested in how someone else is doing when you ask.  We also have parts that maybe, if we had the choice, we would do without.  I would rather I was able to listen to people better when it is not my job to listen.  I would rather I was more interested in personal finance matters and that maybe I was a bit taller.  We can always work on things, try to improve, even height, but we are who we are.  Gratitude, that thankful kind of joy that we feel in our souls, can only be found when we embrace the whole, openly and honestly. 

Gratitude for ourselves leads to gratitude for others.  Learning to embrace the whole of another person is hard when we are part of the equation.  When we realize that another person’s faults and gifts have are theirs alone, a door opens for us to be present with, grateful for them.  When we understand that there is little we can change about how another person is in the world, we may just realize that it has got nothing to do with us.  Gratitude is possible. We will no longer need to protect them or be embarrassed for them, we just can be by their side.  Gratefully present.

As we learn to be grateful for others, perhaps we can learn to be grateful for our world.  It is hard, being grateful with all the suffering, the poverty and oppression that we see, feel and sometimes perpetrate.  But this life we have before us is something to be grateful for.  We are reminded of this in that joyful wash of emotion we feel when that perfect piece of music is heard at just the right time.  When a poem just says it.  When you come home after a long day and that little dog is waiting, or someone hugs you because you are you.  Gratitude for our world does not come by dismissing it as futile, or evil.  It does not come by ignoring the parts we just can’t bear.  Gratitude for this world comes in our embracing of all of it.  As our Universalist ancestors taught, we are in the Promised Land that God has entrusted us with.  We realize this Promised Land by doing the work to bring truth and justice into being, and we can only do this with gratitude for this place we must save in our souls.

Over the past church year I have spoken a fair amount about God; delighting some, maybe not delighting others, and most of all, confusing me deeply.  In this time in my life, I am not sure what I think about God, but I am more sure than ever that we are not alone.  What abides with us?  Surely I don’t know.  But Marilyn wrote in a sermon some years ago that when doing well, we find ourselves not needing God.  “I’m just fine by myself, thank you very much” were her words.  This has been a trying year for me, as it has been for many of us with familiar people missing from our lives, jobs are scarce, the economy is insecure, the war.  Maybe I have been needing some sense of other, something to give meaning to the suffering I see in the world.  I don’t know, but I am learning to feel this need, and through feeling this need, I am feeling the presence of something Other.  I don’t think any of us can know much about God, but in certain moments, moments like the connected joy of gratitude, we can feel it. 

Brother David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk very concerned about gratitude.  He calls it a full appreciation of something altogether unearned, utterly gratuitous – life, existence, ultimate belonging – this is the literal meaning of gratefulness.  Gratitude is akin to grace, we have this deep feeling of joy realizing we have been given a gift simply because we are who we are.  Gifts come in all forms: the next breath we take, a smile from someone pretty, the chance to learn about someone else’s life.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.”  To whom do we owe our next breath?  To whom do we owe the chance to make someone smile?  Who holds the debt we incur for sharing our story with someone who cares?  That is the god I am feeling grateful to today.  That is the god I need to worship in thought and prayer and deed.  That is the God I humbly hope to serve.  The grateful person knows that the Spirit of Life, God, whatever we call it, is good not through reading or talking or even thinking about it.  We know it is good through the direct experience of this grateful life.  We each face difficult challenges and immense joys.  Pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness confront each of us in our lives. When we realize that for better or worse, this is the life we have to live, these are the demons we have to face, all of them, we can be present for ourselves and others, and we will be grateful.

But my time to go is nearing.  In two short days I will have Portland in my rear view mirror as my car heads East.  I have nothing left to do this summer but enjoy General Assembly in Boston and sit in my little tent on the river back in Amherst and think about this past year.  I have a lot of gratitude in me right now.  I am grateful to my intern committee, who, through my stubbornness and fear, helped me when I needed it.  Thank you.  I am grateful to the staff of this church.  You have a wonderful group of people serving you in this church office and sexton crew.  We had a staff party and the amount of love and dedication these people feel for all of you is remarkable, and I have received love and care and support that I will take with me from this place.  This is how church is supposed to work.  Thank you.  I offer special gratitude to Nancy Olson, whose patient, steady presence saved me (and perhaps some of you) on more occasions than I can remember.  Namaste Nancy.  The God in me honors the God in you.  For Tom, for his quiet guidance and his house, I feel gratitude.  And Marilyn.  I offer gratitude to you for caring.  Through this difficult year for all of us, you made me a priority.  Your energy and compassion will help me become the minister, and the man I need to be.

I offer my gratitude to the many friends I have made here in Portland.  Some of you are among the best friends I have had in my life.  I have learned that making friends is the process of offering your whole self to someone expecting nothing in return.  From you, friends, I have received.  And to the best friend I have ever had… Our relationship takes yet another form this week as I leave, but to you Windy, my gratitude is boundless.

And to you, First Unitarian Church of Portland, I am eternally grateful.  I am grateful that you are here.  Be proud of what you have built here.  The love, the community, the generosity that flows in these halls is what they teach in seminary that church is supposed to be.  Blessings to you for that.  Portland, and the world, needs you.  I am so grateful to you.  You have blessed me with a most precious gift, your acceptance of me as one of your ministers.  I have felt embraced and loved here, and through this am learning the meaning of St. Francis’ prayer “grant that I may not so much seek to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive.”

On Friday morning, as I was procrastinating on this sermon, I found a poem that says it perfectly.  Jane Kenyon writes in her poem Otherwise:

I got out of bed

On two strong legs.

It might have been

otherwise.  I ate

cereal, sweet

milk, ripe, flawless

peach.  It might

have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill

To the birch wood.

All morning I did

The work that I love.

At noon I lay down

With my mate.  It might

Have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together

At a table with silver

Candlesticks.  It might

Have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed

In a room with paintings

On the walls, and

Planned another day

Just like this day.

But one day, I know,

It will be otherwise.

My life will be otherwise this week.  Each moment we pass through is slightly different than the one before and the one to come.  We don’t have a lot to do with where the world takes us, but we have the chance to give and receive the greatest gift humans have to give.  Gratitude.  Be grateful for this church.  Feel the joy in this room now.  Be grateful for friends and partners.  Open and present yourself freely.  Be grateful for that breath you just took.  It was good.  And be grateful for whatever it is that makes us us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

PRAYER

Dear God, for the sun that warms us, for the friend that hold us, for the breath that makes this sweet life possible, we bow humbly before you, grateful for the gifts we receive.  Help us receive these gifts fully.  Steady our spirits so we may carry our gratitude into the world.  Make still our soul so we may feel your presence in our lives.  In the name of all that is Holy, amen.

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Copyrights 2003, Brent Gavin Was, Intern Minister.  All rights reserved.