WHAT IS THE SPIRITUAL WORK OF GRATITUDE?
“As long as we divide between events and people
we want to remember and those we would rather forget,
we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift …”
—Henri Nouwen
GRATITUDE FOR THE MEMORABLE
What is the spiritual work of gratitude? Henri Nouwen provides some insight on the difficult question about being grateful for painful things.
The words above, quoted from Henri Nouwen’s “Bread for the Journey – a Daybook of Wisdom and Faith” smacked me ‘right upside’ my heart, not because I don’t consider life a gift, but because everything on my gratitude list is memorable.
And the vast majority of what I list as a blessing is remarkable because it makes me smile in some way.
When I list what makes me grateful in my journal, I may write about the sunrise that emerges from the dark of night, calls from a distant friend, the abundance and privileges that keep me safe – a warm home, education, a full refrigerator.
On the list are answered prayers, people I love (who love me), and little surprises like a new snowfall or the arrival of a book I had forgotten I ordered.
I include inner changes like softening towards a challenging acquaintance, or growing in patience with little adorable, funny, annoyingly curious kittens—all memorable and joyful.
I looked back over the past year in my gratitude journal, searching for evidence that I am grateful for my failures, disappointments, grief, and suffering.
Nowhere on the list are references to deaths of friends or pains from growing old. I don’t mark down conflicts in society and how they changed me. Those things that bring tears to my eyes and raise my blood pressure are missing on my list of gratitudes.
FOR WHAT WE WOULD RATHER FORGET
To say I am grateful amid trials and hardships means going into the dark places where I can barely remember the sensation of light.
I would have to reach into shadows and poke around for what I do not see.
To have a grateful heart during events I would rather forget calls me to step into a mire of feelings I don’t want to confess – anger, jealousy, fear, and sorrow and show them hospitality.
I am grateful for Nouwen’s quote, and at the same time, I struggle with the implications.
Am I not living in the fullness of life already? Do I begin a day listing sorrows and failures under gratitude, along with events that bring me joy?
Why do I separate them?
To find ‘blessings’ in the dark requires a certain amount of digging. I cannot find clams without going out on the flats and digging in the muck. I will not harvest a potato without turning over a lot of soil and getting my hands dirty.
If a treasure is “buried” and gold is found only by mining in dark caves why do I resist going into the dark? Or sifting the gravel from stream beds for long grueling hours? Why am I not grateful for the dirt in my life?
Why do I avoid dark inner soul-mines reverberating with echoes of my sins? Am I afraid of getting lost at every bend in the dark?
A GRATITUDE PRACTICE TO TEACH CHILDREN
Our contemporary way of procuring vegetables and jewels is to go to the market where we find nourishment and fashion for body and soul stacked neatly on shelves, labeled by content, calories, or karats.
Occasionally I take a ‘gratitude walk’ through a store and ponder the labor and tears contained in every can, every piece of fruit, every slice of bacon.
To fully feel gratitude for the abundance in my refrigerator means showing hospitality to my sadness and discomfort.
I feel the farmer’s blisters, the injustice towards migrant fruit pickers, the fear of a pig headed to slaughter. My heart rides many lonely hours with delivery truck drivers and stands with cashiers feeding their families on minimum wage.
Then I recall the bookkeeper working overtime who manages every small business behind my next meal.
I read once that it takes 101 people to bring me supper every night. Using a few moments to name all the people who have brought us the food on our plates is a form of table grace I used when my children were younger.
The food gets very cold if this is practiced with six-year-olds. Not so much with teenagers. Listing every person and their sacrifice while going through your refrigerator also makes a good writing practice of gratitude, especially when the fridge is full of left-overs, which may be triggering ingratitude.
BEING FULLY HUMAN
What about being grateful for the ways we have failed, for experiences of humility and sorrow, for times in which we recognize our selfishness, greed, and jealousy.
Am I supposed to be grateful for illness and financial disaster in my own life? For all the little annoyances that make me scream inside?
Better forget these, and stick to ‘blessings.’ Yet how can I possibly be the person I want to be without going through these painful valleys?
Nouwen says to be grateful for what they work in us—that without feeling my own sorrow and pain, I fall short of being fully human.
When you are in pain and I understand that at an experience level because I know pain, then I am able to love more fully.
When I can only observe your pain, I leave you to suffer alone. I don’t want to be that kind of person.
A BOY NAMED GILBERT
I went to grade school with a boy named Gilbert, who was from a ‘disadvantaged’ home where he was neglected and abused.
When he left, he joined the army, got a college degree, and became a social worker.
There are people today who were once homeless, addicted, even suicidal who have hope and life because Gilbert suffered. Gilbert became one of the most fully human people I know.
From an ‘unforgivable’ childhood, he took what I would want to forget and allowed it to change him.
Is Gilbert grateful for his experiences – or for the alchemy that changed him from who he could have become?
I am so sorry he suffered. I am thankful he became someone who brings life and hope to others by hearing them.
How can I not express gratitude for what pain and sorrow work in my own life that grant me the privilege of hearing – of knowing – the fullness of another human being enough to give them the gift of being seen and heard?
If you would like to read something a bit lighter
about dealing with difficult issues,
read Dekker’s advice columns.
Dekker is a service dog who writes
to people who need advice.
MORE FROM “THE REFLECTIVE PEN”
Sign up to receive my weekly email delivered
to your inbox every Sunday morning
with personal reflective and motivational
messages to help you contemplate
some of the ordinary events in your life.
