From the book of Psalms:
Thus have you prepared the land,
Drenching its furrows,
Breaking up its clods, softening it with showers,
Blessing its yield.
You have crowned the year with your bounty
And with abundant harvest.
The allow meadows overflow,
The alleys are blanketed with flocks.
They shout and sing for joy.

In this season of thanksgiving, we come to celebrate all that life has brought us. In this house of gratitude and hope, may each of us find our place at the table.
Come, let us worship together.

Sermon

We get the message at an early age that it is important to say thank you. When a child receives help or when they are given something, we encourage them—indeed we expect them—to say thank you. And before that, if we are asking, to say please.

Much of that is just, well, good manners. And if there was ever a time in history to be teaching children about good manners, well I dare say this is the time. But that may well be a whole different sermon.

But that practice of saying thank you is a good thing to learn early on. It is in fact what we might call a good spiritual practice.

And as can be the case with things we do on a regular basis—things that can become more or less automatic—well, we may not really think much about what those words mean when we say them. The words just become habit. I know that when I get into the business of my day they often become just that, a habit.

But I think there’s a lot more to it than that. Cultivating a deeper sense of gratitude, an awareness of a deeper sense of connection, that sense of awareness for the blessings in our lives, that sense of awe at the wonder and mystery of life—I think is pretty foundational to the spiritual life. It was the mystic Meister Eckhart who said that if the only prayer we ever learn to say is “thank you,” then that’s sufficient.

And on my better days I think I manage to do that. But I also notice that when I find myself a little cranky about the state of the world, or maybe something one of our leaders has said that day, maybe introducing a sense of chaos once again—let’s just say as an example—well, that I can find myself pulled in a whole different direction and gratitude isn’t at all what I find myself feeling. Gratitude can be difficult in a world of greed, of brokenness, in a world where much of our discourse seems to be dominated by lies and falsehoods. Sometimes when I find myself pulled into all that, no, finding my way to gratitude can hard work.

Of course the irony is that when the world is the way it is… well that is perhaps when we need that spiritual practice of gratitude most of all. I know that for me, when I don’t know what else to do, if I can try to go to that place of gratitude, the rest of what’s happening seems to slow down just a bit. It helps me to see things in a fuller context. In that moment I may close my eyes, I may find myself taking a deep breath and asking the question, what is it that I can offer thanks for? And I find that more often than not it calls me into the present moment and asks me to take stock.

There is, I think, a kind of primal religious impulse, the awareness that we are alive, that we are part of the world, that all of life is a gift that we have been given. Gratitude is the response to that impulse. It asks us to take nothing for granted but to live in the awareness that each new day is a gift we have received. It asks us to strip away all the stuff that really isn’t so important and to be first of all aware of all that is in front of us.

As we bear witness to life—our own and the life of the world around us—we come to see how our lives are through and through connected with the whole of life. And as we can do that we can better see our own lives in the context of that whole.

When we feel isolated and alone, it is easier to look at what we don’t have than at what we do have. If we come at life full of expectations about what we are due, the things we want to have, the way we want the world to be ordered, we’re probably going to be disappointed because things just won’t measure up.

It’s a little different, though, when we can look at all of life through the lens of gratitude and see what we have been given comes in the form of an unexpected blessing. Opening ourselves in this way is not always an easy perspective to find, but it does bring us see the world in a new light.

But that may take some time. When we cannot make sense of the events around us, or do not know what to do with them, we do our best to cope. We try to get some perspective on it. Maybe we laugh. Maybe we have a good cry. Sometimes that may be all we feel we can do.

Sometimes it is only when we have found ourselves in despair, when we have not known what we’ll do, it is then that we find ourselves in that place where gratitude and the kindness of others rears its head. It is only then, when it seems like we have lost so much, that we are able to see all it is that we really have.

Elie Wiesel, survivor of the holocaust wrote: “gratitude emerges from the kingdom of night.”

It is here where we come to know that love is what connects us and holds us—to one another, to that which is larger than us, what some call god—it is then that we are able to be aware of what the world has to offer us.

Saying thank you is a recognition that we are in relationship with everything and everyone else in the world. It is a recognition that starts with the fact that we are utterly dependent for everything that allows us to live—the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. And it is a recognition of the relationships that we have in our lives. It is a recognition that we are all part of a larger whole.

That interdependence is beautifully articulated in a facebook post one of you shared with me this week in response to the devastating fires in California over the past several days. They are from a person named Susie Veon:

“These are not my original words, but they deserve our attention and pondering as we experience the tragedies of our communities and in reality – of the world we are a part of.

In the Valley and Bay (area), where we’ve been breathing in the ashes of the Camp Fire since last Thursday, sending our babies outside with masks on, teachers keeping the kids inside during recess or cancelling school altogether.

Please think about how the challenge of real empathy is that it requires our insistence that the ashes we’re breathing are not just a frustrating inconvenience. They are the remnants of someone’s lifelong home, floating through the air, going into our lungs, miles from the fire.

Or even harder to let ourselves imagine, the ashes of another human lost to this fire: ashes gathered on kids’ trampoline, coating the leaves of my lime tree, dusting the car in the driveway. We are all connected. That’s the spiritual lesson of ashes.

We can’t ignore the burn in our chests while we breathe today. But it’s easy to ignore the reality of the ashes we inhale. They are remnants of a community that has been consumed. Compassion means we force ourselves to reckon with that.”

There were times this week when I was aware of the smoke from California and how it impacted my own lungs. And I found myself thinking about just how far that smoke had come to make it all the way here. It made me think of times this past summer when the air here was some of the worst in the world because of the smoke we were inhaling.

We are asked over and over again, moment by moment by moment, to take the stuff of life and to make meaning from it. That can take time and perspective. It can involve pain and hardship and despair. And perhaps there is a deeper sense of meaning and perhaps it is in the recognition of that meaning that brings the recognition that we are connected with all of life, in all of its pain and also in all of its beauty.

The universe is vast and mysterious and we can’t know why any given event happens. Sometimes it means having a place to bring our grief, our sense of loss, our sense of helplessness. Sometimes it means recognizing our own sense of brokenness and fear and despair. Sometimes all we can do is recognize our interdependence and to move out of that place.

This is how the writer Anne Lamott talks about it:

“Sometimes we are hurt beyond any reasonable chance of healing. We are haunted by our failures and mortality. And yet the world keeps on spinning, and in our grief, rage, and fear a few people keep on loving us and showing up. It’s all motion and stasis, change and stagnation. Awful stuff happens and it’s all part of the big picture.

“In the face of everything, we slowly come through. We manage to make new constructs and baskets to hold what remains, and what has newly appeared. We come to know—or reconnect with—something rich and okay about ourselves. And at some point, we cast our eyes to the beautiful skies, above all the crap we’re wallowing in, and we whisper, “thank you.”

“Saying and meaning “thanks” leads to a crazy thought: What more can I give? We take the action first, by giving—then take the insight that follows, that this fills us. Sin is not the adult bookstore around the corner. It is the hard heart, the lack of generosity, all the isms, racism, and sexism and so forth. But is there a crack where a ribbon of light might get in, might sneak past all the roadblocks and piles of stones, mental and emotional and cultural?

The movement from grace towards gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a (kind of) spiritual awakening. (where) Gratitude is peace. Maybe you won’t get from being a brat to noticing that it is an e.e. cummings morning out the window. But some day you will.” As a minister I’m constantly struck by how we seem to reach out for meaning in times of despair. There some life force that seems to emerge from someplace within.

Even in the midst of pain, we look toward the path that will bring us where we need to go. We don’t know exactly where that will be, but at least have a sense of the direction where we will start. Healing means finding a new sense of wholeness—and we look to how it is we can get there. If we can make a space to pay attention to that still small voice, if you can make a space to see our lives in perspective, so often it seems we can find a way forward.

It is perhaps human to take for granted what we have in our lives. I expect nobody here has what they call a perfect life. In fact in knowing our stories it is anything but easy for many of us. And yet we carry on. Finding our way to thank you may take a long time—perhaps even a lifetime.

Our task over and over again is to recognize our interdependence, to recognize how we are connected. To see our own brokenness in the brokenness of the world, to see our own healing in the possibility of healing in the world.

And as we are able to recognize our interdependence we also come to recognize a responsibility that comes as well. That’s where the accountability comes in. Just as all that we have has come to us, we have a responsibility to make a place for all the children of the world, to make life abundant an every widening circle.

Words of William Stafford:

It was all the clods at once become
precious; it was the barn, and the shed,
and the windmill, my hands, the crack
Arlie made in the axe handle: oh, let me stay
here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;
let the sun casually rise and set.
If I have not found the right place,
teach me, for, somewhere inside, the clods are
vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing
for the saints forever, the shed and windmill
rear so glorious for sun shudders like a gong.

Now I know why people worship, carry around
magic emblems, wake up talking dreams
they teach to their children: the world speaks.
The world speaks everything to us.
It is our only friend.

Friends, in this good, gathered, company we know joy and sorrow, fear and longing, hope and despair. Every day is different, but every day is what we have—in each of our lives, in the life of this body we call the church.

Moment by moment, day by day, our job is to show up, to pay attention, and in paying attention give thanks for the whole of our lives, through it all cultivating that awareness of gratitude. And as we do that—as we become more and more mindful of our lives—hopefully we see life in its fullness. And hopefully we find ourselves part of a great circle. What we put out to the world starts to come back to us. As we cultivate gratitude, more comes back our way. It is a world where possibility lives, where hope and forgiveness live, where justice can be made manifest. It is in times like these, when hope can seem far away, that we particularly need this mindfulness.

May all of us, in this season of thanksgiving, recognize our interdependence and know that our lives are precious beyond measure. May all of us, in all of our days, live filled with gratitude and be glad. Amen.

May this be so. Amen.

Let us pray: God who moves in us, among us, through us, we give thanks for this day. We give thanks for the voices of children, for brilliant autumn days, for the things we can understand, and for all those things we cannot. May we open ourselves to see all that life offers us. May we live in hope. May we live in joy. May we live with a deepening sense of gratitude. Amen.

Benediction: I give thanks this day for each of you, for your voices, for your presence in the world. Use your gifts to bless the world. Amen.

Topics: Accountability