Perspectives: Happy Thanksgiving

 

Perspectives: Gratitude Door

Happy Thanksgiving!

(And why, may I ask, is that picture not black and white? Although I'm thankful for the color)

Give Thanks

I mentioned last week that I spent some time in prayer after communion just thanking God for all of the wonderfulness in my life. It's am amazing practice, because thanksgiving builds a way of looking at the world.

Kalas, in the book I am reading, asks, "Why express your gratitude to other people?"  He answers the questions, and here are my answers (some of which are the same as his):

• We are called to spread light.  Remember yesterday when I quoted the idea that gratitude is love with a memory?  Sharing gratitude for a service given is sharing love, and that is light.  We do it because we are called to do it.
• What if the other person doesn't seem to care about our words of thanks?  First of all, you don't really know what effect your words and actions will have on another person.  Secondly....
• Being grateful transforms who you are.  When we are grateful, we see more for which to be grateful.  
• And to put it bluntly, life needs more grace from you and me that it needs silence, or even grumbling.  

So give thanks.  Kalas, in the first half hour of each day, lists those things from the previous day, for which he is thankful.  I've done that for periods of time.  It's helpful to me to have a "rule" to list at least three. Specifically.  I can look at the blank sheet of paper, and think, "Yesterday was terrible; there is nothing to be grateful for."  But if I must list three, I can find them.

Gratitude

I really do have some new pictures to show you; I just need to spend some quality time with my laptop computer first.  Anyway...

I just started a book I've had on my shelf for a while called I bought a House on Gratitude Street by J. Ellsworth Kalas.  I think I'll write today's posts with just a few one liners from what I've read so far (Introduction and half of Chapter 1).  Maybe some of these will be future posts; maybe they will only serve as springboards for your own thoughts:

• Gratitude is love applied...gratitude is love with a memory.
• If you insist on holding on to the conviction that you're a self-made person, you'll never buy property of Gratitude Street.
• When we rise above deprivation, it can easily make us small and mean inside...
• Gratitude that is not expressed is meaningless.  Gratitude is not complete if it is simply a feeling within one's bosom.  Unfortunately, however, we often leave gratitude in that unfinished state.  That is because gratitude is such a warm and fuzzy feeling that we think the feeling is the essence of gratitude when in truth the feeling is just the beginning.

Communion Thanksgiving

We shared communion in worship yesterday.  Part of our routine is that we are given the opportunity to spend time in prayer at the altar rail.  While I like this, I find it difficult to pray during this time because the congregation is signing. Cross signals in my brain:  I listen to the music instead of being able to pray.

During this prayer time yesterday, I decided to only pray thanksgiving. I think having that focus enabled me to pray, and the purpose of praying thanksgiving loosed gratitude from my heart into my prayer.  It was uplifting and joyous to remember all the ways my life is full of God's blessings.  

I recommend it to you, for any moment, not just communion.

Failure to Offer Gratitude

This was in my email yesterday, from a ministry called SoundBytes:

Several years ago I offered the invocation for commencement exercises at a large state university.  I remember one unprogrammed event above everything else.  At a strategic point, the president of the university invited the graduating students to applaud their parents and spouses, in appreciation for helping them reach this wonderful day.  It was a moving moment.

The president might also have invited the students to applaud their professors and librarians, the authors of their textbooks and of journal articles, the people who preceded them in research, and the citizens whose taxes had paid most of the cost of their education.  It would be a long list -- and a gloomy one for any egotist who might have thought he or she was self-made.  Above all, the president could have invited the students to bow in gratitude to God, the Source of life, breath, health, and talent -- including the vast mines of talent that most of us never begin adequately to explore.

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas in If Experience Is Such a Good Teacher Why Do I Keep Repeating the Course?  

Yesterday my post was about celebrating joy.  Thanksgiving is one of the ways that we can celebrate the joy in our lives.  Can our failure to do that sometimes be related to what Kalas says in this quote?  Could it be that we are egoists who think we are self-made?  Are we afraid to offer thanksgiving because it is an admission of our dependence on other people?  Our dependence on God?

What in your life do you fail to offer gratitude for because you think it is your own accomplishment?

Living into our gratitude

Rejoice always, ¹⁷pray without ceasing, ¹⁸give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

How do I give thanks?

It is a trend right now to list an item for which one is thankful on Facebook -- one item each day.  There is nothing wrong with that, and listing our blessings can serve to create in us a thankful heart.

How is it, though, that we can live into our gratitude?

If we are grateful for the job we have, can doing it well be a form of gratitude?  If we are grateful for our church family, can serving God through opportunities at the church be a form of gratitude?  If we are grateful for our family, can spending time with them on Thanksgiving be a form of gratitude?

Steve was telling me about someone he knows who was fussing about calling the holiday "turkey day." This person said he was grateful to God for his blessings, and he wasn't going to take the Thanks out of Thanksgiving.  Is there a better way to show our gratitude than to fuss about small matters such as that?

How can we live into our gratitude?

Alphabetical Thanksgiving

On Friday Five at RevGalBlogPals, there was a suggestion to use the first letters of your name to list what you are thankful for.  Surely, I can think of more than three things, and it kind of seems like a harder challenge to use the entire alphabet:

A -- air conditioning
B -- beagle (our dog)
C -- chocolate
D -- dishwasher
E -- electricity
F -- friends
G -- Grant
H -- home
I -- iProducts (yes, I am thankful for them)
J -- Josh
K -- knitting
L -- love
M -- Mom
N -- non-smoking restaurants
O -- office (my office in particular)
P -- paper, printers, pens
Q -- Quick Oats for breakfast
R -- reading material (books, electronic books, blogs)
S -- Steve
T -- Trinity -- God, Jesus, Spirit
U -- United Methodist Church
V -- Victory in Christ
W -- work
X -- XOXOXOXO
Y -- yarn
Z -- zippers

Fall Back and Be Thankful

I just finished reading this post on the United Methodist Reporter Blog -- Fall Back and Be Thankful. The writer of this post has a habit in the month of November of listing five things each day to be thankful for.

When I was reading for my Disciple class, I made that part of my ritual. Each time I read (being me), I took notes about what I read. Before I started reading, I would list what was going on that day, and what I was thankful for that day.

It's a good habit. It does turn your mind to the blessings in your life.

What are you thankful for today? Other than getting an extra hour of sleep tonight.....

Beginning with Thanksgiving

We were talking at work today about how quickly we seemed to have landed in the "Christmas season." We all wondered if it was because Thanksgiving was so late.

I shared that because we were out of town for Thanksgiving, and hadn't shared the "normal" or routine holiday, I was feeling a little bit like I had skipped Thanksgiving, and moved right into Christmas.

As I was thinking about advent this evening, I wondered, as we prepare for Christ, as we listen for his incarnation into our lives, if we shouldn't begin with thanksgiving.

• In this busy shopping season, what if we were to begin with a realization of our many blessings, and with thanksgiving to God for them?
• In this season of making lists of family and friends for gift giving, what if we were to begin by thanking God for the presence of our family and friends in our lives?
• In this time of cleaning house, what if we were to thank God for the messes in our lives, and for the activity of loved ones (and ourselves) who create the activity that leaves the mess?
• As we wrap and beribbon packages, what if we were to remember our gratitude for the joy of surprises and making people happy?
• As we decorate our trees and hang our lights, what if we started with thanksgiving for the beauty of that which is around us?
• As we send our greeting cards, what if we did it in the joy of being a witness to Christ?
• As we set up our nativity scenes, what if we remembered the gratitude in our hearts for the gift of Jesus in our lives.

Perhaps it's not coincidental that Thanksgiving precedes Advent.

Image: Flower at Disney World