Sermons

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
– Maya Angelou

 

READING from “Gratitude” by David Whyte in Consolations, The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Many Rivers Press, 2018.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are

miraculously part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

…

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not

paying attention.

 

READING ". . . that passeth all understanding”   by Denise Levertov

An awe so quiet
I don’t know when it began.

A gratitude
had begun
to sing in me.

Was there
some moment
dividing
song from no song?

When does dewfall begin?

When does night
fold its arms over our hearts
to cherish them?

When is daybreak?

–Denise Levertov, Oblique Prayers   New Directions, New York, 1984, p. 85

 

SERMON

We’re coming into the annual “Holiday Season” beginning with American Thanksgiving and running through Chanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa into January. It’s the season of gratitude. Daily, we are reminded to “Be Grateful.”

What does that even mean?
Be Grateful.
Give Thanks in All Things – says the Apostle Paul in the New Testament.
Who does that?

Diana Butler Bass in her book, Grateful, The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks, admits that since childhood she has been lousy at gratitude.

She confesses that she hated writing “thank you” notes.

When a bit older, she thought she OUGHT to be more grateful. She needed a practice of gratitude that would bring her in touch with the blessings of a gratitude-filled life. She was seeking what poet Denise Levertov describes as a gratitude that sings within me. She made several attempts to find that gratitude.
She Failed.

What a relief.

Me Too.
Here’s my Gratitude Jar of 2015. Seemed like a really good idea at the time. And I did really well – at first. Then, I realized that I was writing the same things day after day - - struggling to come up with some great insight of gratitude in my life.   Sigh…………..

Then, a couple years ago, a friend of ours gave each of us a little book called “favorite moment a day” where we could record for a year the best moment of our day and thus demonstrate gratitude for that moment.

I didn’t even make it through January!

Do any of you resonate with what I’m saying, or am I alone?
Oh my.   I have flunked, miserably flunked, Gratitude.
Or, have I?

After making her confession of inadequacy and disappointment – Diana Butler Bass goes on to write two hundred pages about gratitude.

From her writing, I gained a very different understanding of gratitude and a bit of insight into why I am frustrated with my self-imposed duty to fill my gratitude jar with little examples of wisdom and wonder.

I resent the obligation to be grateful, or to be grateful on command.

I can’t define gratitude, and I can’t conjure it up on command, even when I think it’s the right thing to do, BUT, I know it when it washes over me, when it begins to sing in me.

Diana Butler Bass makes some very helpful distinctions about the forms of gratitude.

Fascinating.
Really, I could preach four sermons on what she finally says about gratitude, but I only have a few minutes now. Maybe more another Sunday morning.

Let me make one point – the most helpful point for me.
She says gratitude is about gifts and responses. There is a gift, and there is a response to that gift – sometimes in a long repeating cycle.

She makes a sharp distinction between transactional gratitude and free gratitude.

Transactional gratitude is common. In fact, our whole western culture, economy and much of religion seem to be based on transactional gratitude.

Is there anyone here who is not familiar with the notion of a Quid Pro Quo? Right.

It means something for something. It is an exchange. Often an unequal exchange.

A benefactor (typically one who holds power or authority or both) provides a gift – a something – to someone who is a beneficiary of the benefactor’s generosity. Now, having received the gift, the beneficiary is in the benefactor’s debt and must demonstrate gratitude – often in a specific way determined by the benefactor. The beneficiary has no realistic choice by to comply – with demonstrations of gratitude that leave them empty and resentful. Not to comply is to be ungrateful, as in “The Ungrateful Negro” who fails to sufficiently respond to the white world’s gift of being permitted to participate in life at all. “He ought to be grateful that we didn’t arrest him and throw him in jail.” . . . You get it.

Let’s go back to an earlier time.

The feudal lord gave the peasant limited use of a small plot of land where he could live and plant a few crops.

In exchange, the peasant must express gratitude for the lord’s gift by giving back. Giving back the larger portion of his harvest and his loyalty.

The debt owed to the benefactor cannot ever be fully satisfied but the beneficiary must try – forever.

Quid pro quo – something for something.
Obligated gratitude.

Closer to home perhaps is this example.

A rich person or a group of people makes a gift of gobs of money to a candidate running for election or re-election. Officially, the contribution is a gift. Not a bribe. Not a purchase.

Yet, the candidate cannot avoid expressing gratitude to the benefactor.

The candidate, the beneficiary, is in the benefactor’s debt.

The debt must be repaid – often in ways determined by the benefactor.

This is the type of gratitude exchange that we may come to resent. I must thank you for giving me something that really benefits you and keeps me in your debt even after my expression of gratitude. Yuck.

The goal is to be the at the very top of the benefactor pyramid so everyone below is indebted to you.

I won’t name names but you can come up with a few.

We see this kind of transactional gratitude all around us – it isn’t very life affirming.

 

What is a gratitude that is not transactional, not a quid pro quo?
It is free; it is pro bono – which means for good.

Pro bono gratitude is when a gift is given without any expectation of an exchange or payment of any kind.

The gift is offered as a contribution of the good, period.

Any gratitude that is expressed is deep thanks, free and untethered.

The beneficiary chooses when and how to be grateful.

 

A quick example.

Here in this congregation, we have created the Opportunity Fund as a separate means of funding things we care about.

One of the primary stipulations of the Opportunity Fund is that the money is freely given. There is no quid pro quo. No one is indebted to anyone.

It is freely given with no strings attached.

Now, the recipient may, and often does, feel gratitude for the gift and may choose to express their gratitude by giving something back to the congregation – a description of how the money was used to forward the organization’s mission for example. But the gift is in no way contingent on the recipient’s response.

Pro bono giving allows for pro bono gratitude. All for the Good.

 

There is so much more I could say about this difference between transactional gratitude and pro bono gratitude. It strikes me as very important in our efforts to live a life of thankfulness. We can only be truly and deeply grateful when we are not obligated, not indebted, but can freely choose our response to any gift we receive.

 

Gratitude is about a Gift and a Response.
Real gratitude begins with a gift freely given.
What is the first gift any of us receives?
Life.

Whether we believe that gift comes from the divine or our parents or the cycles of nature – life is a gift which we did nothing to get.

Grace. The unexpected and unearned generosity and love of the giver.

Grace and gratitude are related concepts and we can see why.

 

Diana Butler Bass concludes . . .

To know the mystery of life is to be grateful in all things. In all things, with all things, through all things. I have discovered that I am no longer an ingrate, but I am living in gratitude. Sometimes the world turns on a preposition. To be grateful in these days is an act of resistance, of resilience, of renewal. My journey started because I did not know how to write thank-you notes. And it led me to understand that a politics of gratitude is a way of healing and compassion—perhaps even salvation. I invite you to the journey from ingratitude to gratefulness and to find yourself part of a like-spirited community. You are not alone. There are many on the road.   (Bass, Diana Butler. Grateful (p. 194). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.)

Even when surrounded by things for which we are and cannot be grateful – you can make your own list here –there remains the first and greatest gift of all – Life. We choose our response – gratitude. We choose to build the common good individually and together, and in so doing, we make our own days glad.

May it be so each of us during this season of gratitude and always.

Blessed Be.   I Love You.   Amen.