GRATITUDE ADJUSTMENT
by Alison Miller
November 28, 2004
Do you ever have those moments where you open the refrigerator door and exclaim, "I have nothing to eat!" There might be plenty of food in the refrigerator, but nothing that seems like it would taste good. Or, do you ever open a closet filled with clothes and say, "I have nothing to wear." I certainly do have moments like these, where everything I want I don't have, and everything I do have seems worthless. The craziest part is at these times I become completely disconnected to the fact that I am the very person who chose these items of food and selected these articles of clothing that I am now snubbing.
When this happens there are a couple of ways that I can react. First, I can order food from a restaurant or run out and buy a new article of clothing (probably a fourth pair of black pants). Second, I can make due, be grumpy about it, and think about other people who have more choices than I do. Third, I can open my eyes and see what is truly in front of me. When I do this I usually find food that I enjoy and clothes that work well for wherever I am going.
I am guessing that this whole scenario does sound familiar to at least some of you, and that the options are obvious to us all. However, what I have found subtler is that in spite of figuring out the healthy reaction, this dilemma still haunts me from time to time. The answer I have found works best is to cultivate gratitude. According to Cicero, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." Gratitude defends against isolation, pride and greed, and opens us to interconnectedness, humility and fulfillment.
There is a distinction between a religious virtue like gratitude and the oft-touted moral values we heard about during the recent elections. Humans seem to be rather fickle and inconsistent when it comes to the values talked about in the polls. The very same man who claims to value life and, therefore, oppose abortion will then vote pro-death penalty. The very same woman you meet fishing on a lake, who tells you she loves nature, may divulge later on in your conversation that she voted for the candidate who aims to repeal environmental protection laws. Not just individuals, but groups and corporations can also display a shifting focus with their values. A particular group may admire individualism and display diversity as one of their mottos, followed by another statement upholding one way of being a true American. Fox TV provides us with another classic example. The Fox network encourages conservative family values in its news programs, and pushes the limits of decency in its entertainment programming. John Buchanan writes, "The problem with values in the modern world is not that people don't have them or talk about them, but that they are fragmentary and incoherent." The real question is how much is a particular value worth to you, and does that value impact both your stated beliefs and your actions.
Buchanan distinguishes between values and virtues. The latter he asserts are "displayed through lives of conviction sustained over time." You can claim to have many values, but virtues are not so easily possessed. They are cultivated over a lifetime. I may value gratitude, but the point of the attitude of gratitude is to live it. Author Johannes Gaetner puts it succinctly, "To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven." Valuing gratitude may or may not affect your life in large ways. Living in such a way that you cultivate the virtue of gratitude will lead to enormous transformation in the way you see and do everything.
The late James Luther Adams, a well known Unitarian and Harvard Divinity School professor, wrote about what he called the five smooth stones of liberalism. In his fourth smooth stone, he reflected skeptically on the existence of pure virtues and had a realist's view on the ability of individuals to display virtues consistently. In his words,
"The fourth element of liberalism [is that] we deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnationÉ No one can properly put faith in merely individual virtue, even though that is a prerequisite for societal virtues. The faith of the liberal must express itself in societal forms, in the forms of education in economic and social organization, in political organization. Without these, freedom and justice in community are impossible."
He was wary of individuals perfecting any virtue like gratitude or goodness. However, on the whole Adams was rather optimistic about the possibility of organizations, including political systems and churches like ours, to act on behalf of virtues and to implement them in society. This is the prophetic role of these organizations to ensure that freedom and justice prevail in spite of human failings.
For now, I want to remember his advice that individual virtues are a prerequisite for the existence of societal virtues. If, as Cicero contends, gratitude is the root from which all other virtues spring forth in our lives, then giving thanks once a year on the fourth Thursday in November has the potential to trivialize the very heart of becoming a spiritually mature individual. In order to develop such a powerful virtue, it must become our daily practice. Things are compounded by the fact that the Thanksgiving Holiday in our country is followed by the number one weekend of mass consumption in the year. After one day of acknowledging the abundance that exists in our lives, we move on to the season of giving, which too often feels more like a season of lack.
One of the early steps in cultivating gratitude is to learn the difference between our needs and our wants. Unfortunately, every commercial on television aims to blur this important distinction. It appears as if a good husband has enough money to buy a diamond every Christmas and a good parent will outbid all the other adults in the toy store to buy the latest version of ElmoÉ this year I think it's the Hokey Pokey Elmo. It is difficult not to get caught up in some form of this behavior. I remember as a child after my father passed away, my brother and I came to the conclusion that we needed to spend more money on Christmas presents for our mother since her husband was no longer around to buy her beautiful things. We saw her grief and sought to do our part and fix a piece of what she was missing over the holiday, a bracelet or maybe a pair of earrings might help.
I look back and think this was sweet, even though misguided. Now, I hate to divulge what women really want in a mixed gender crowd, but the reality is a gift of jewelry only makes you feel temporarily happy. It is the intention of love and the desire to let someone know that she is special behind the gift that lasts. The diamond commercials make us feel that it is the jewelry doing this, but it does not substitute for the real, everyday enactment of these sentiments in both mundane and extraordinary ways. Those first holidays without my father felt empty not because we received a few less presents, but because we had not healed enough to be thankful for the Christmases we did share with him.
The true sources of gratitude and abundance in our lives are usually independent of material wealth. They are the gifts we receive that cannot be bought and have no market value. Buddhist Teacher Kyabje Kalu shares the following illustrative story in his book, Luminous Mind: The Way of the Buddha.
"At the time of Buddha Sakyamuni, a monk found himself in possession of a marvelous jewel that granted any wish Ñ all the gold, silver, and precious stones you could ask for. The lucky owner thought: 'I am a monk and have no need of all these riches. Better to give this jewel to a poor person. But there are so many of them, why favor one over another? Buddha is omniscient. He will tell me whom to give it to.' So, going to Buddha, he explained his difficulty and asked him to designate a fitting recipient. Buddha Sakyamuni recommended that he give it to the king of that area, a very wealthy and powerful monarch. The monk made the offering, and the king accepted it, inquiring about the reason for the gift. The monk explained, 'I thought I should give this gem to a poor person, but not knowing whom to choose, I asked Buddha Sakyamuni. He advised me to bring it to you.' "
"The king thought that was quite strange, since there probably was no one on earth richer than he. So he went to Buddha Sakyamuni for an explanation. The king asked why Buddha had chosen him when the monk had asked which poor person would best be provided for with the gem.
" 'It's true,' Buddha said. 'Without a doubt, there is no one wealthier than you in the world; but there is also no doubt that there is no need as great as yours. That is why I told the monk to give you the gem.' "
No jewel could plug the hole in the king's life; he operated from a place of fearing he did not have enough. Just like that country music song says he was "standing knee deep in the river dying of thirst." Excessive material wealth gave the king the illusion of complete independence, freedom and control. How much is enough to buy this prideful illusion? We are interdependent creatures who have a limited amount of control over what happens, so the answer is that this kind of perspective leads to a profound sense of what we still lack.
There is nothing wrong with wanting more than just shelter, food and some warm clothes. I am not advising all of us to take vows of poverty to perfect our abilities to live virtuous lives as the philosopher Socrates did. However, I am advocating that we adjust our view enough to take notice of what is going well in our lives and what we do have. When people ask us what we want this season of giving, may we answer the question: what makes us truly happy? Part of our problem with cultivating gratitude is that we often don't take notice of the things that make us feel filled and content. We don't take the time to get to know our deepest yearnings and to give thanks for our most fulfilling moments. There are many who don't know what makes them happy until some crisis arises.
Our most profound feelings of gratefulness usually arise when we are given something freely, gratuitously, something, again, which cannot be bought. I can think of two clear examples in my life when I felt pure gratitude and a deep awareness that I was blessed. The first is recent, I stepped out one day on the plains of Oklahoma and saw the most incredible rainbow I had ever seen. I parked my car and ran outside to get closer; that rainbow was so vivid, I had this sense that I could just climb over it like a jungle gym. I felt deeply connected to the earth's wonder in that moment and was briefly aware of one of the things had been missing growing up in New York. A second example is from years ago, it was the day I was given a reprieve from a surgery that would result in the amputation of my arm. I literally skipped down the streets of Manhattan singing all the way. It reminds me of our reading, Walt Whitman's poem, Miracles. I would keep my precious arm, the one that to this day has a disability. How could it be that I had taken my limbs for granted all this time. A wave of deep thankfulness to my body, to healing powers in the universe, to my mother and to my doctors washed over me.
Gratitude is deeply relational, which is why developing this virtue protects us from a sense of creeping isolation. What is the worth of receiving life, love, insight and feeling deep connectedness? In fact, we do all have something to be grateful for. Life is the precious gift we receive from the moment of our birth. Whether or not you believe in God, we are not the source of our lives. We are all here at the invitation of some cosmic force after the Big Bang that enabled life to exist in the first place, and as individuals we are here because two peoples' DNA strands unwound and rewound together whether it was planned or unplanned.
There may very well be a lot going wrong in our lives. However, given that all assembled here have the means to make it to church this Sunday, all we need to create a more fulfilling life is what we already have. When we look carefully and acknowledge what we do have, we may surprise ourselves and find more than we expected. Often, it's just a matter of noticing what is there in the first place.
As the Hausa of Nigeria put it, "Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot." This reminds me of Mark's telling of the story of the Loaves and Fishes. This story happens at a time and in a place where food was scarce, and undoubtedly people were reluctant to share any crumb or morsel of food. Somehow Jesus manages to feed a crowd of four thousand people with just seven loaves of bread and a few fish. First of all, as a Unitarian I rarely interpret bible passages literally and numbers in the bible are often metaphorical. Also, we frequently come across seven, a number to be especially skeptical about. What I do notice that is particular to this passage is that Jesus takes the seven loaves and gives thanks before feeding the multitude. By giving thanks and expressing gratitude for the everyday miracle of food, my guess is Jesus was blessed with the clarity to see that there was more than enough food. Much like in the children's fable, Stone Soup, or an old fashioned church potluck, when the disciples and the others put their reserves of food together, they had more food than any of them had as individuals. In fact, seemingly out of nowhere in the middle of sharing bread, they find out that they have fish to distribute as well. The awareness of the blessing of food ignites such a spirit of generosity and unity wherein I imagine the multitudes begin to empty their pockets of any crumb they were initially hiding. Much like when I first opened my refrigerator, a more grateful second look enabled all to see the abundance. When we operate from this place of grateful abundance, we surprise ourselves by having more to give and receiving more than we ever imagined could exist.
Let us look toward spiritual teachers like Jesus, the Dalai Lama, and James Luther Adams who advise us that the change we want to see in the world begins with us. A practice of inner gratitude will result in outward action towards peace, love and justice in the world. May we also be inspired by examples of philosophical thinkers like Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, but apparently loved to go to the market. Author Jack Kornfield writes, "When his students asked about this, he replied, 'I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.'"
So here are my challenges to you this morning. Find the truest answer to that question, what makes you happy? Begin a daily practice of gratitude adjustment. Finally, know that this will transform not only your lives, but also the hearts of everyone you touch. May it be so. Amen.
Back To Alison Miller Sermons