1 What Are We Grateful For? Rev. Dr. Jim Culver Sermon at UUSP on Thanksgiving Sunday, November 21, 2010 To the reader: This sermon was only part of a service of worship with many components working together, all of which were designed to be experienced in a community context. In our "free pulpit" tradition, its concepts are intended not as truths to receive, but as spurs to your own thought and faith. CALL TO WORSHIP (In loving memory of my former colleague & mentor, Rev. Dr. Duncan Littlefair) This is a day for us to live. Let s celebrate it and make a difference in the world. Let s be grateful for the incredible gift of life, And let us be especially grateful for the love which brings us together Giving dignity, meaning, worth and joy to all of our days. READINGS ONE: We sing now together our song of Thanksgiving, ALL: rejoicing in all which the ages have wrought, ONE: for life that enfolds us, and helps and heals and holds us, ALL: and leads beyond the goals which our forebears once sought. ONE: We sing of community now in the making, ALL: in every far continent, region, and land, ONE: with those of all races, all times and names and places, ALL: we pledge ourselves in covenant firmly to stand. -Edwin T. Buehrer Our readings this morning speak to many aspects of gratitude. Of our six readings, the first 5 are printed in your programs so that you might have some takeaway value from these bulletins later at home.
2 As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. - John Fitzgerald Kennedy If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice. - Meister Eckhart I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks. - William Shakespeare If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul." - Rabbi Harold Kushner In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer Our final reading is actually a skit from an old 1970 s TV show where Bill Cosby and Cleavon Little poke fun at the lack of gratitude they perceive in the younger generation. While trying to teach kids about gratitude, they share their own feelings of thankfulness for growing up poor. This skit ties into our morning s theme of gratitude, marginally, so I invited Dave Spangler to take Mr. Cosby s part for this brief comic dialogue. BILL: You should be grateful for what you got. We were so poor that we used to live in this tiny old house, with great big holes in the roof. CLEAVON: You re the one who outta be grateful. House? You were lucky to have a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner. BILL: Me grateful? You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a hallway and all forty four of us slept in one bed! CLEAVON: Bed? You had a bed? You outta be grateful oooo we used to dream of sleepin in a bed. We used to sleep in the neighborhood garbage dump. We were woken up every morning by having a load of nasty old garbage dumped right on top of us. BILL: You slept above ground? We used to sleep in a hole in the ground til we got evicted.
3 CLEAVON: You should be thankful for havin a big ol roomy hole to sleep in. There were a hundred and ten of us living in that little pile of garbage. BILL: You should be thankful. We used to have to get up at six o clock in the morning and walk ten miles to go to work for fourteen hours a day making only 10 cents an hour. CLEAVON: That was luxury. We used to have to get up at three o clock in the morning, and walk 20 miles uphill both ways to go to work for twenty six hours a day and we had to pay the supervisor to let us work. BILL: But you try and tell the young people today to be thankful for what they got and they won t believe you. SERMON What are we grateful for? This morning, let s briefly explore this question together, which will require an examination of living with mindfulness, of several barriers to feeling deeply thankful, and of making choices. We ll do this work to get in touch with a deeper part of ourselves in an effort to understand that feeling which, for Unitarian Universalists, is possibly an equal to the feeling of love and that is the feeling of gratitude. For Our Guests For our guests here today, please allow me a moment to provide a framework on which to listen to this sermon on a subject that doesn t sound like the usual Pilgrim and turkey Thanksgiving sermon. For hundreds of years, Unitarian Universalists have known that gratitude for life is a core aspect of our spirituality and our daily living. Indeed it was our gratitude for the goodness and worth and beauty of life that set us so apart from the grim Puritanism that reigned in America during the early generations of our nation s founding, beginning with the landing of the Mayflower. Since 1620, as the Puritans were proclaiming that life on this earth was evil and sinful, only to be endured until a glorious afterlife, the Unitarians and the Universalists proclaimed that life and people were good
4 and worthy and beautiful. We have always been a faith tradition marked by gratitude for and faith in the spirit of life. Today, we are part of a liberal religious community on a magnificent journey of discovery and growth. The world is ours to use as a resource for our own unique life s journeys, and we have the privilege here of taking those individual journeys together. So, with that framework, let s do the work of today and ask, what are we grateful for? Pay Attention, Be Now First and foremost, gratitude is about mindfulness. The kind of gratitude that has the power to TRANSFORM WITHIN comes to us only when we are paying thankful attention to the world around us and within us. Unfortunately, we get distracted by all the demands and pressures of daily living that, without meaning to, we fall into a kind of hazy stupor that blinds us to the rich texture of our ordinary days. Most of us regularly forget that the key to a life richly and joyfully led is simply paying attention in a focused way to the moment that is now. Given the nature of the hectic lives we lead, we need to remind ourselves to slow down, pay attention and focus our full physical and emotional resources to the life that is at hand. Here s one technique that I use to simply be to be now. You can do this anywhere at anytime I do this especially when I m painting. Simply look at one object around you. You might choose to look at a highly intricate object, something with a bit of complexity to it. Just look at all of it at first. Then, go deeper. Look at a smaller, more detailed aspect within what you were looking. Then continue to go deeper, looking for ever finer detail. How long might this take? Perhaps for a minute, perhaps for a moment,
5 perhaps for a lifetime. You ll know. Your body will let you know when you ve turned off your mind to the regrets of the past and the anxieties of the future. This type of activity can lead to the most spiritual thing you can do to live in this moment, to pay attention. Barriers To Feeling Grateful With that said, however, there are several barriers to accessing our feelings of thankfulness and gratitude. Sometimes, no matter how many techniques or spiritual practices we employ to help us cultivate mindfulness as a path toward gratitude, these barriers deny us the ability to access our inner feelings. For most of us, the two biggest barriers that block clear and mindful presence are stress and entitlement. Stress and the resultant feelings of overwhelm are my downfall. Stress is not about the actual event or events that generate emotional baggage, stress is more about the manner in which you perceive your stress and the way in which you carry that emotional baggage. Imagine this hymnal is an event in my life that causes me stress. It s not very heavy, but the actual weight of this book isn t as impactful as is the length of time during which I carry the stress, or in this analogy, how long I try to hold up this book. If I hold it for a minute or two, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for several hours, Rebecca will have to call our chiropractor. In each of these time span scenarios, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes to me. And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the hymnal, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden. So, before you burn out and lose
6 your capacity to recognize the gratitude within you, put your burden down for awhile. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, put them down, then later, return refreshed. For me, I use humor to put my stress down on the shelf for awhile. So, when you need a rest in order to see more clearly the gratitude within, feel free to use any of these five reminders that I use for dealing with the burdens of life, if they resonate with you. 1. Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue. 2. If you lend money to someone and never see that person again, it was probably worth it. 3. Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on. 4. When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane. 5. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once. In addition to stress, another barrier to gratitude is a sense of entitlement, a sense cultivated by our television culture that has done a brilliant marketing job of convincing us that we are special, that we deserve happiness and that more is always better. The antidote to entitlement is humility and responsibility. The older I get, the more I realize how little I know, yet I do know that life is what it is. All you can do is respond to what life offers you with a sense of humility and service. Gratitude is the acceptance that life is playing out as it needs to for now, but not as it will play out for all time. The times of ease will eventually get complicated, while the times of crisis will smooth out in time. Gratitude is attached to neither feeling; it simply is. Gratitude inspires you to nurture the same world that nurtures you in return, so that if we create the kind of environment that we want to live in, then as Gandhi said, we can be the change we wish to see in the world. This can be especially difficult, because our culture teaches us that we should be entitled to more good days than bad days. Yet, gratitude is not just about giving thanks for the
7 good days. Gratitude is about putting the bad days in perspective. What are they bad compared to? Are they bad compared to other days you ve had? Or are they bad compared to other people s bad days? As the old saying goes, I once was depressed because I had no shoes, until I met a person who had no feet. Gratitude has no need to compare or compete. It celebrates what is. Life keeps evolving. No feeling lasts forever. Bad days are full of events to be thankful for if you allow yourself to see the world that way. Maybe gratitude is not about looking for good days, but rather looking for the good in each day. To live a life in gratitude, never wanting anything more than what is had is rare. It s a joyful experience to meet people in life who are genuinely happy with what they have. Most of us aspire to live with that attitude but those societal pressures usually win out and we get caught up wanting more and more. This is an issue I m working on in my life. Many years ago, I lived in a 8,000 square foot home with 6 bedrooms on 5 acres of land. I lost everything. Learning to be grateful for what you have can be difficult at times, but very rewarding. Thanksgiving is also one of those times of wanting more and more, a time when there may be more food than you know what to do with. You may move from hunger to bloated stomach within minutes. A meal that may take 10 hours to prepare will be eaten in 22 minutes, coincidentally the same time allocated for half time in the football game. And yes, I m glad to have moved out of Michigan, no longer having to endure another Thanksgiving when a visiting team feasts on the hapless Detroit Lions. Thanksgiving is also one of those holidays can be viewed as a good day or a bad day. You may spend time with family with whom you have a strained relationship. You can t wait for them to arrive, and then you can t wait for them to leave. Or you may have
8 no one with which to spend the holiday, or at least not the same special someone you ve been accustomed to. At these moments, remember the words of the poet Rilke, Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, no feeling is final. This is a great Thanksgiving reminder. The holidays are akin to Dicken s opening of A Tale Of Two Cities, holidays can be the best and worst of times. Just let it all happen. No feeling is final. Life constantly changes. Gratitude is not about judging a day as good or bad depending on external experiences, but rather it is looking for the good in each day. Victor Frankl wrote We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one s attitude in any given set of circumstances... This looking for the good in any situation, this viewing of gratitude as a choice, is beautifully highlighted in a story I heard from the Rev. Dr. David Rankin at my former church in Michigan. Two men shared a hospital room, both very sick. One man was near the window and the other man had to stay flat on his back in his bed away from the window. They struck up a friendship and talked for hours on end. The man near the window would describe the scene out of the window in great detail, the colors, the children playing, the couples walking by, the city skyline. One day he even described a passing parade. The man away from the window loved the descriptions, and grew stronger with every word he heard from his friend. After several days of this conversation the man by the window died peacefully in his sleep. The other man asked to be moved to the window bed, excited to see all the amazing sights that he had heard described. He slowly propped himself up on his elbow to look out the window. He was surprised to see
9 that he faced a blank wall. He called the nurse in and told her what had happened. She said, Well you should know that the man who was by the window was blind. He couldn t even see the wall. Perhaps he was just trying to lift your spirits. The man by the window had an incredible perspective, a vision well beyond eye sight. His window on the world was optimism and gratitude, for in his mind he saw only beauty and he shared it with his friend. Gratitude is the gift of a perspective that doesn t depend on external circumstances. It is the gift of being able to choose what you focus on. So what s your window onto the world? If you view your world through the window of gratitude and fill your heart and mind with thanksgiving, you will dwell in a world of appreciation and joy. If you fill your mind with problems and negativity, you shouldn t be surprised to live in a problematic and negative world, for the world is as you see it you can choose to be the change. Yet it s the nature of our human condition to look for problems. Sometimes the miracles are staring us in the face and we still find a negative angle. The Rabbi Sherwin Wine often told the following story as an illustration of looking for the negative in a positive situation. A Jewish grandmother is walking with her 5-year-old grandson on the beach, when suddenly a wave comes and washes the boy out to sea. The grandmother looks up to the sky and says, God, this is unacceptable, unbearable. You cannot take my innocent grandchild. And just as those words come out of her mouth, another wave comes and brings the child safely back to her. She picks up the child in her arms, looks up to the sky and says, So, my grandson, he had a hat! Where s his hat?
10 Catch yourself next time when you look for a negative in what you re experiencing. Look for something to be grateful for in every moment you experience in life, and when that feels like an impossibility, look for the humor in that situation. Watch your whole outlook on life change, and your whole experience of life improve. Gratitude improves your life because it leads to other healthy emotions such as optimism, generosity, kindness, and joy. Gratitude is always within you, just waiting for you to pay attention, to live in the now. Being grateful is not about denying reality. Gratitude doesn t measure blessings or compare fortunes with others, as we heard in the skit that Dave and I read earlier. Gratitude takes a broader perspective. Gratitude is larger than external circumstances which are always changing anyway. Gratitude is your response to life itself. Things don t happen because you deserve them nor because you are entitled to them. Gratitude is about your chosen relationship with life. So what do you do with your struggles and challenges? You learn from your own deepest personal experiences. You remember that you ve proven that external circumstances can shake you but not alter your ability to believe in yourself and to remain open. Gratitude is not about saying that tragedy is good, nor is it about finding some supposed hidden meaning in suffering. Gratitude is the ability to simply acknowledge the way you really feel, to name it for what it is and to grasp that broader perspective that allows you to understand that whatever event you re dealing with will soon change. You accept that life is more miraculous than your current understanding, and with this acceptance comes peace, a peace that flows through your barriers to feeling deeply grateful for being alive.
11 One More Time So, what are we grateful for? Let s use that question that both newcomers and long time members can equally chat about as an ice breaker in Gilmour Hall to your right at the end of the service. Let s ask each other that question, what are you grateful for? Then, beyond this morning, ask that question of yourself every moment of every day. This Thursday on Thanksgiving day, I will offer a grace of gratitude that comes from the Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: My plate, now empty, will soon be filled with precious food. In this food, I see the presence of the entire universe supporting my existence. Many beings are struggling for food today. I pray that they all may have enough to eat. Now that s a grace, full of gratitude for life and the interconnected web of all existence. Let s be grateful, for everything, and let s do this in the same spirit and for the same reasons we do all that we do in life to bring Dignity, Meaning, Worth and Joy to all our days. Waves of love.