Thanksgiving Sunday

There’s been a recent push back against gratitude and giving, even love as “not enough”.  That there is “real work to be done”.  Gratitude and Giving and Love are just “fluff” and avoiding the “real work”.  So keep pushing forward and do “the real work” and stop wasting time on these “fluff” words and things!

First, just imagine a world without gratitude and giving and love.  It would be a sad world.  A world without life. 

When we practice gratitude, we take time out of that “busy” and that “real work” to notice.  We take a moment to Be Still and see what’s all around us.  We notice the daily gifts of life, the abundant blessings, even in the messiness, the cares, the worries, even the griefs.  Gratitude helps us to hone in on what is most precious.  What makes life worth living.  What matters most.  

And…we want to protect it.  Whatever “it” is.  And what’s even more wonderful…we each see the world a little differently and as we each protect what is precious to each of us, collectively, we save a world.  

When we are Still enough to be grateful, we want to give in return.  We are called to practice reciprocity.  We might be gifted by another human and pass it on.  We might be gifted the blessings of Grace and wish to pass it on.  Gratitude makes us want to give back.  

Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book The Serviceberry, shares the possibility for healing through gratitude far better than I: 

If our first response to the receipt of gift is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return.  What could I give [the serviceberry] for their generosity?  I could return the gift with a direct response, like weeding or bringing water.  I could make habitat for the solitary bees that fertilized those fruits.  Or maybe I could take indirect action, like donation to my local land trust so that more habitat for the gift givers will be saved, speaking at a public hearing on land use, or making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity.  I could reduce my carbon footprint, vote on the side of healthy land, advocate for farmland preservation, change my diet, hang my laundry in the sunshine.  We live in a time when every choice matters.  

That’s just one example of the movement of gratitude.  

And the Source of all these gifts?  Of abundance?  Of blessings?  

The energy of connection and reciprocity?  

Call it whatever you choose, God, the Universe, the Divine, the Son/Sun, it is simply and magnificently … the great Love itself.