Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice

Good morning! My name is Janet Strickler, and I grew up in Boulder, back when it was a much smaller town, and now live in Longmont. I’m really glad to be worshiping with you this morning! I want to start by telling you a story, about my own spiritual journey, which I hope might give you some inspiration for your own. Twenty years ago, I was in my early 40’s, working two jobs, and had also gone back to college to work slowly on pursuing an art degree. One of my classes was an experimental one in Contemplative Art, and we did a variety of things, studying Tibetan Buddhist thangkas and Russian Orthodox icons, and doing a variety of practices like breathing meditations and yoga, along with some studio art assignments. One requirement was that each student meet one-on-one with the professor at some point during the semester, so on my birthday in mid-October, I made an appointment to meet with her, and took the day off from work. And what she said to me was “Janet, I am giving you the assignment to find some sort of contemplative practice that you can do every day between now and the end of the semester, and then make some sort of record of it as an artist.” Now, I don’t think she was saying this same thing to all the 19- and 20-year-olds in the class; I think this was something specifically that she sensed I needed. Well, my internal reaction was “there’s no way I can possibly do that; I’m way too busy, with a full-time job, a part-time business of my own, a household to run, and taking college classes on top of it all! There’s no way I can do yoga for 20 minutes a day, or sit down to meditate or do centering prayer.” I didn’t say that out loud, though, and I went away to think about it. Now, since I had taken the day off from work for my birthday, and it was a beautiful fall day, I decided to walk up towards the neighborhood below Chautauqua where we lived when I was little. And about the time I was walking through what used to be called the Pioneer Cemetery, I remembered an article that I had read on a retreat maybe 5 or 6 years before, talking about various cultures’ practices of gratitude. I particularly remembered it describing the Jewish practice of making blessings, or baruchot. (although I didn’t know the name at the time.) I just remembered the format; Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who creates… and then there are many variations for different situations and experiences. And it occurred to me; Hey, that is something I could actually do every day; to make up these blessings and write them down. So I started, every day as I went through my busy busy life, looking for things to fill in at the end of that prayer. I would jot them down, and when I got home at night, write each one out on its own slip of paper. I kept a pad of paper on the seat of the car, so sometimes I’d be in the middle of my commute and reach over and scribble something down without looking, which made for some puzzlement when I got home and had to decipher what it said: “Reading back bird??” Ohh! “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who creates the red-wing blackbird.” Each time, I wrote out the entire prayer, not just the end part. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who creates the cumulus cloud. After doing it for a while, I had to start looking deeper than just the obvious things. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who creates the traffic jam on the Diagonal. Really? Well, while God didn’t directly create the cars or rush hour, he did create the human ingenuity that invented them. And if I hadn’t been brought to a standstill just then, I wouldn’t have been able to watch that raptor circling over the field. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, who creates the soaring hawk! Over the course of the two months that remained in the semester, I wrote out nearly 400 of these blessings, naming everything from spiral seashells and swallow’s nests, to the funny faces a coworker made, and a hot shower. They did all eventually become part of a piece of art, which is a story for another time, but the really important thing is that the practice completely transformed me, and my outlook on the world. Up until this point, I had been grateful when something particularly nice happened to me, or when someone gave me a gift, but now gratitude became a lens through which I looked at the world, and I was much less likely to take things for granted. Suddenly, the fact that I could twist a faucet and have hot water come out was not just a given, as the expression goes, it was a GIVEN; pure gift! The taste of raspberries, and the way when a baby smiles, everyone else around them just lights up, and that one particular size and shape of barrette that holds my hair just perfectly; the world was chock full of presents to be unwrapped and savored, every single day. I started to wonder if other people had had this experience, and began studying and reading about gratitude. I read about the Jewish baruchot; of which there are many, and I can now say a few of them in Hebrew. When the Gospels say that at the last supper, Jesus “took bread, and blessed and broke it,” he was probably saying this one: Baruch atah Adonai, Elohaynu melech ha-olam ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz; Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. I discovered books by Brother David Steindl-Rast, a well-known Benedictine monk who founded the Network for Grateful Living, and the website grateful.org, and eventually got to spend time on retreat with him over several summers. And I started reading some of the psychology research about the beneficial effects of practicing gratitude. But I also realized as I talked to people about it and began to lead workshops and retreats about it, that most people don’t really know how to go about practicing gratitude. Most of us recognize some big categories that we are grateful for; our family, our friends, our health, our jobs, and at least once in a while we stop to be grateful for our food. But we might be missing a lot if we don’t go a little deeper. One of the exercises I often do with folks in workshops is to have them pick some ordinary object, something they use every day without really thinking about it, say, a ballpoint pen. And I have them write for a few minutes about it: why is it useful to them? What is it made out of? How and where was it designed and manufactured, and who did the work? How did it get from the factory all the way to their hands, and what people and infrastructure made that possible? Each time we do this, no matter how mundane the topic, we are remembering our connection to the great web of ”interbeing,” as Thich Nhat Hanh talked about in the reading we heard a few minutes ago. And underlying all of that is the Source of Everything, the Great Mystery, for whom we use the name GOD. And I can tell you from my own experience, that this practice is a great path to Joy. Which brings us right back around to St. Paul’s instructions to the church at Philippi; “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!... The Lord is near. (As near as the ink in your ball-point pen!) Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds... And finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing this, and the God of peace will be with you. I don't think he's advising his readers to hide their heads in the sand, amidst the violence and persecutions that were taking place, amidst the strain and dissension in their community. I think he is reminding them that, as he puts it, “the Lord is near,” and that rather than getting caught up in anxiety, they can go seeking signs of the Divine, the little love notes left by God that surround us at every moment.