In our reading the morning, the poet Joy Harjo says:
“Let’s remember to thank the grower of food
The picker, the driver,
The sun and the rain.
Let’s remember to thank each maker of stitch
And layer of pattern,
The dyer of color
In the immense house of beauty and pain.[1]
In the immense house to beauty and pain… It was those words that spoke to me as I chose that reading for today’s service. Maybe it captures something on the particular moment we are in as we approach Thanksgiving. Maybe it captures the state of our world and even the state of our spirits, at least at least it does for me.
There is a lot to hold this Thanksgiving. I noted the other day that in addition to the primers on how on to prepare a turkey or the best options for pies or side dishes or the ones on how to navigate the complicated family dynamics the holidays can bring… I’ve seen all of those once again this year but in addition we now have the Thanksgiving Covid primer—how to find our way through this holiday in the context of Covid and vaccination status. The dos and don’ts, the level of risk, and how to have what may be some complicated conversations with those we love.
Welcome to our world. Maybe the thing to note here is just how much all of our lives have been changed in these many months with Covid and all of its dimensions. There is a lot to hold. There is bearing witness to the lives lost. There is bearing witness to the ways that our lives have changed—from the increased sense of isolation and loneliness for some; for the loss of connection with family and loved ones. The privilege the pandemic has brought home for all too many of us… or the awareness of our lack of it and the vulnerability we feel because of the work we do or where we live. Maybe it is some sense of safety we used to move through the world with and no longer feel. Maybe it is some diminished sense of freedom about where we can go or where we are not sure it is safe to go.
And all of this comes with the renewed awareness of the troubles of our world of so much division, the reality this week that the lives of our black and brown and indigenous siblings are all too vulnerable.
No friends, there is much to trouble in these times. It is all a lot to hold.
Which brings us to this morning’s theme of gratitude. Gratitude. I have come to believe that gratitude is an important theme—an important practice—all through the year. But perhaps it is in this season of thanksgiving that we are asked to revisit just how important it is in our lives. Gratitude is, I think, one of if not the primary elements of the spiritual life. The Hebrew term for gratitude means “recognizing the good.” Practicing gratitude is about recognizing what’s good in our lives, even when we may be facing our share of things that are not so good. Times like these, in fact, may be the very times when we need to lean into gratitude, reminding ourselves of what it is we do have, the ways that our lives are blessed, and what all of that asks of us.
I believe that it is through that expression of gratitude that we acknowledge our relationship with something larger, with the creation that includes us. Acknowledging what it is we have to be grateful for is perhaps one of the most important—one of the most essential—things we can do. And yes, maybe most of all in the midst of a troubled world that we are asked to make a practice of gratitude.
A practice of gratitude? Yes, a spiritual practice of gratitude. Something we do regularly as a way of staying in touch with our selves, with those around us and with whatever it is we might identify as something greater than ourselves. It is in the very nature of it being a practice that we are able to find our way, no matter what it is we are facing. Because sometimes there are just some things we need to do with intention. There are some things we need to be reminded of on a regular basis, like how everything is connected. And for good or for ill, I think one of the lessons of this Covid time as been a renewed awareness of just how interconnected—just how interdependent—our lives are.
Galen Guengerich, minister of All Souls Unitarian in New York describes it: “Gratitude has its basis in our awareness of all the things that have come our way from the people and world around us. We begin with this inescapable reality: we are contingent creatures. We depend on our environment for everything we need. We depend on the largess of the natural world for our very existence, and we depend on the people around us for the quality of our ongoing lives. Without the natural world, we wouldn’t have air to breathe, water to drink, or food to eat.”[2]
We are contingent creatures. We are individuals, yes, but our individual lives exist in a larger context. They are contingent on others. And perhaps the spiritual task begins there, in that recognition of our interdependence. It begins with the recognition that we as individuals really don’t amount to much outside the relationships we have with families and with communities—sometimes with people we don’t even know. Our lives are utterly dependent on our good green earth. How does that food come to be on our tables? Who are the people whose labor makes that so? And what does that mean for the earth and its resources? What is it that we need to live and what is it that makes all of that possible?
With that comes not only the recognition but also the responsibility to act out of the awareness of that relationship with others and with the earth. It isn’t just about us, in other words. What are the choices we make and what do those choices mean for others and for the earth? What is the responsibility that flows out of that recognition, that sense of gratitude?
In her book “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about the idea of an Honorable Harvest, in the native American tradition. She articulates rules that have come to shape our relationship with the natural world and also rules that ask us to rein in our tendency to consume—that the world might be as rich for the seventh generation as it is for our own. Kimmerer notes that the details of what those rules are will vary from culture to culture and from place to place. In her book she offers what she sees as some of the common themes that emerge. She says they might look something like this:
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the one who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
There is probably a sermon to be preached based on each and every one of those.
In the book Kimmerer gives the example of searching for wild leeks in the forest as she prepares a special meal when her daughters will visit. The leeks are a way for her to help her daughters reconnect to the earth and to their sense of home and place. As she looks through the woods she reminds herself that you don’t take the first one or the last one. She reminds herself to handle them with great care. How at the end, when you have leeks you haven’t used, to take them to a place in the forest where they used to grow but where they no longer live. You take those leeks you haven’t used and you plant them where they will grow and where they will someday be there for someone else.
In our world where it can be hard to know where most of our food comes from. In our world where so much of what we have around us comes to us through the global supply chain that we have been hearing more about in recent weeks. It is hard, almost impossible to get to a place of being able to imagine where it came from and the people who made it or who sacrificed so that it could come to us at a low cost. It can be almost impossible to imagine the toll that any given thing has on the earth. There is much that would make mindfulness about where so much of what we come to have in our lives comes from almost impossible. All that we take for granted.
But the spiritual practice of gratitude begins with us asking some important questions about how much we need or the sacrifices that are asked of others and of the earth. To at least make a space for so much of the story that we may not be able to know. But still for us to also ask the question of just what is asked of us in return.
A spiritual practice asks a kind of discipline of us. It asks us to stay with it even when it may be uncomfortable, or when it isn’t clear what is being asked of us. It asks a kind of discipline for us to remind ourselves of that interdependence. But it is also through that discipline that we might more fully recognize all the things we have to be grateful for. All the things that bring us joy, like when we get covered with leaves or when we with a dog or when we get caught in a downpour. Whatever it is that helps is to know ourselves, to recognize, we are part of all of life.
It begins with the simple pause that comes as we sit down for a meal together. It may be the willingness to pause and notice the sunset or the sunrise. It may be taking a moment to stop and just notice that rise in frustration or that welling up of grief for so much that seems to be broken and for our own sense of helplessness about what we can do.
It may be taking a breath and making enough space to imagine all the steps, all the people, all the processes that make our lives what they are, for good or for ill. To recognize all we know and to notice too all we can’t know. The mystery. For making the space to ask ourselves, how then shall we live?
Words again of Joy Harjo:
In the immense house of beauty and pain.
Let’s honor the maker.
Let’s honor what’s made.
From an early age we are taught to say please and thank you. Those lessons may first be about manners. But I think as we go through life they are at least the beginning of a spiritual practice.
And practice is important these days. There is much in the world to hold and much in the world that asks us to show up, first, and then to ask how it is we need to respond. To ask ourselves: How is it that I am to be in relationship with my self, with others, with the world?
In this season of thanksgiving may we find our way to those answers or to at least live with all the questions life brings to us. Through it all may live with open and thankful and grateful hearts. And may that gratitude be a gateway to ever widening circles of love and of hope and of joy. Amen.
Benediction: As you go forth into this day, remember that you are blessed. And remember that you are a blessing. May you use your gifts to bless the world.
This is the day we have been given. Let us rejoice in it and be glad. Go in peace. Practice love. Amen.
[1] “Honoring” by Joy Harjo, from An American Sunrise: Poems W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. Pp 68-69.
[2] The Way of Gratitude: A New Spirituality for Today by Galen Guengerich, pp 60. Random House New York, 2020.
Topics: Gratitude