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For me, Thanksgiving is about paradox, about the challenge to do or think, be and hold opposing thoughts or circumstances at once. It is gratitude for the human impulse toward gratitude, even in the face of adversity.
Thanksgiving is a formal holiday for giving thanks, for sharing community with family and friends, but it’s also the holiday that represents most vividly the paradox of feeling gratitude even as we suffer or cause the suffering of others.
Some of us live close enough to our immediate families that sitting down with them and sharing a meal on this one day is less about family and more about gratitude. Others who live far from family, who for one reason or another can’t celebrate with family, make one with friends and neighbors. We all joke about the inevitable conflicts that arise when family is together, even as we hug and kiss and exclaim how children have grown, how wonderful it is to be all together.
For me, Thanksgiving is about paradox, about the challenge to do or think, be and hold opposing thoughts or circumstances at once. It is gratitude for the human impulse toward gratitude, even in the face of adversity.
A young girl from my son’s school died this week suddenly and dramatically. She collapsed on the basketball court and could not be revived. I think of her parents especially this week as we move towards our national Thanksgiving. I see this girl’s sweet face in my mind, and I struggle to conjure her mother’s as she might have looked before this happened. Before. What did she look like before her daughter died? Should we know these things? Should we sense these things? That our children and loved ones can disappear so suddenly? Shouldn’t we have the chance to fortify ourselves? Shouldn’t we connect to them more, hold their gaze longer, smile more gently, hug them each day?
But we ARE given the chance. We are given the chance every single day that we are alive.
We say thank you, even as we mourn and starve and even hurt. Thank you.
Can we be grateful enough to say: Thank you for all the sick children, their faces lifted to us for relief. We can show compassion. Thank you for the refugees, the displaced people in war-torn countries who stand at our borders asking for relief. We can crack our heart and the doors to our homes open. Thank you for the felled trees in our backyards, their absence a reminder of our past. We can plant two for every one. Thank you for the dying species of animals, the mutated frogs, the salmon who forget to swim against the tide. We can do better for them by every choice we make. Thank you for the politicians bought off by money, for the religious who exclude in fear, for the sun rising implacably over drought-deadened fields and for its setting, the dark. We can practice seeing with clear eyes. We say thank you, even as we mourn and starve and hurt. Thank you.
I do not believe in a god with specific plans or mysterious ways. I am not sure, even, of a place beyond this one, the one of fire and earth and water and air. I have no idea whether it’d be easier to be so, to have faith in that god, that other place, or more terrible because of that certainty. I know how to breathe the air, how to breathe, how to breathe, how to breathe. I know how to give thanks, give thanks, give thanks. These are the elements of Love, I think, chanced upon us by grace.
Blog: www.elizabethaquino.blogspot.com
Ebook: Hope for a Sea Change
What an interesting article! And, even more interesting dialogue. I am new to this whole gratefulness website, and am grateful for the opportunity to get a sense of what others are cultivating/exploring/sharing. Honestly, ALL of it. Thank you all.
Elizabeth, thank-you for this essay. I have a 10 year old great-niece who has Downs Syndrome and was diagnosed with leukemia at age 4 and underwent 2 1/2 years of chemo. She has been cancer-free since finishing her chemo and is thriving and enjoying life. Our family is not grateful she has Downs Syndrome or had cancer, but we have SO very much we are grateful for: the wonderful medical care and the medicines so readily available, special-ed teachers, all the opportunities available for people with disabilities to be the best they can be, the overwhelming support and kindness of so many people. The list could go on and on of all we are grateful for. Everyday feels like Thanksgiving day!?
Blessings to you, Elizabeth??
hi Elizabeth,
In your last paragraph you speak of breathing and giving thanks. That I can relate to, simplemind that I am. Even something that simple can be questioned I am sure.
But I know the feeling of being grateful is a fine and desirable feeling. If I can find an acceptable way to get into contact with it, I go for it ? and breathing certainly is that for me.
I’m sorry, but this is a complete misunderstanding of gratitude, opportunity and paradox, an “ultra-spiritual” misinterpretation of reality that I do not think much of at all.
Gratitude is anchored in something very Real, in the Ground of Being Itself/Herself/Himself, not in non-being. It is utter Mystery, something that is infinitely knowable, with the plan of love at the core. We’re not expected to be grateful for the rape of children because somehow this creates an opportunity… Good grief. This is way, way off.
Honestly, the past year of researching sites on spirituality has been a massive eye-opener. There was a very good reason the Apostle Paul was a tentmaker and that we’re warned against there being too many spiritual teachers (they’re a dime a dozen these days). I’m just about done with these kinds of Internet communities. This article may be the last straw. There’s plenty of hands on concrete work to be done in the small pond I’m in. I think I’ll just stick to the reliable teaching I’ve found, contemplative practice and that from here on out…
If you want a trustworthy spiritual teacher, look for a depth of humility that reflects a strong anticipation (anchored not in sentimentality but concrete fact) of embarrassment for ever being called a “spiritual teacher”… and run from anyone living for some kind of “legacy” or “recognition”. Anyone who knows the gravity and burden of being a spiritual teacher knows it’s never, ever something anyone chooses to be.
Dear Craig – I have been glad to feel you back here and to have your voice once again in our midst. I appreciate that you are such a thoughtful, seasoned seeker, and your praise for our efforts has been meaningful to me.
I find myself sorry for your upset and while I am aware that I may not speak to your concerns in a way that will change your mind I will at least try to speak into the heart of the matter as I can. We intentionally feature a variety of voices in the chorus of perspectives on grateful living. A diversity of interpretations is meant to enrich consideration and compassion. This author is wrestling with how to hold awareness of separation and suffering with gratitude and celebration simultaneously – something many in our world are struggling with right now. She is seasoned in this struggle and has written about it more personally before: https://gratefulness.org/blog/the-yellow-tree/
The lines drawn in this consideration are very fine – filaments that speak to both small and large distinctions. How the struggles in our lives and world can wake us up to act, and then we hold gratitude for the awakening – this is everywhere in our lives. To seek to find opportunities in the midst of difficulty is not opportunistic. To appreciate and accept that something is true does not mean it is acceptable. To be grateful for having a heart that can crack open in the face of suffering does not condone the suffering itself.
Our intention is to surface the depths and complexities of contemplation that allows for gratitude to attend to the “great fullness” of life as it is. This is not always easy but it is our offering. In this we are ever-humbled. In our shared belonging, Kristi
G’day,
Firstly, thanks for the opportunity for responses to articles that allow us to wrestle with the wrestling of others. Secondly, I would be showing very little respect and dignity towards Elizabeth (or her daughter) if I were to retreat from my wrestling with this particular article simply because she has a daughter with severe disability. There are literally billions seasoned in our wrestle with suffering. But this does not automatically mean that our views are accurate.
A man I am currently working with who also has a severe physical disability (very painful for decades) and is literally months from finishing his PhD, looking forward to the opportunities it was going to afford him, was only yesterday diagnosed with bowel cancer. Another young lady my wife works with, also with severe disability, is struggling with a bacterial infection that may very well take her life. We are daily immersed in suffering. So I am not blithely dismissing Elizabeth’s view.
I am not about to be grateful for my friend’s bowel cancer nor am I about to say nothing to others who suggest I should because I’m somehow failing to “appreciate and accept something as true” by not being grateful for it. Let’s be clear. There’s all the difference in the world between being grateful for sick children and being grateful for having a heart that can crack open in the face of suffering. It seems as if words are being mixed… In fact, what you’re saying and what was said in the article are not the same thing at all.
I wonder sometimes if sites like this are only pretending to invite discussion. There’s nothing compassionate nor considerate about nodding our heads in obedient agreement with everything you place up here when, in fact, we’re not in agreement. It’s fine though, honestly. I’m happy to just leave all of this. I’m over all the sentiment, disconnect and pageantry of Internet movements. I’m finding them increasingly exhausting.
I’m happy to just keep to myself. In fact, reading the other article by Elizabeth cemented that for me. The way she talked about her daughter epitomized for me the powerful action of inaction that contemplation is all about. It’s enough for me to stick to my little pond and just be, surrendered to the present moment and allow God to act in the midst of storms.
Hello again Craig – We are sorry you feel the way you do and respect whatever path forward feels right for you. We’re curious why you think there isn’t space for discussion here? We see our commitment to feature different voices on the site as the first layer of discussion. Community member’s responses to articles and resources and to other comments are added layers of that discussion. We’re open to the differing ideas that people may have about gratitude and gratefulness and grateful living, and we firmly believe that no one person has all the answers. We can only offer the perspective we have based on our own experiences in and of the world. We feel we can all be teachers for each other in a way in that we can always learn from each other, even if it is by crystallizing our own ideas in comparison to another’s. We thank you for your own ideas, Craig. We appreciate that you are wrestling with Elizabeth’s take on gratitude and hope it informs and clarifies your own thinking on the subject; we thank you for sharing those thoughts here as perhaps it will inform others as well. Each of our perspectives have value in the domain of shared learning. With grateful care – K