Today’s author is Prince of Peace member Carol Swanson.
“I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share my distress.” Paul’s Letter to the Philippians 4:11b-14
In 1983, I went to Hong Kong through the Lutheran Church to teach in a Vietnamese refugee camp for three years. The first few months were rough—getting used to the heat and the humidity, trying to learn enough Cantonese to get by and adapt to a new culture, and then to teach 9- to 14-year-olds English through pictures and TPR (Total Physical Response), children who had never been in a school before and only knew the word “Hello.” What got me through those first months was developing a sense of gratitude as I adjusted to my work and new community. They soon became very dear to me, and those three years and relationships have remained special to me. So, I share a few excerpts from the chapter “Gratitude: I Am Fortunate to Be Alive” in The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams.
“Gratitude is the recognition of all that holds us in the web of life and all that has made it possible to have the life that we have and the moment that we are experiencing. Thanksgiving is a natural response to life and may be the only way to savor it. Both Christian and Buddhist traditions, perhaps all spiritual traditions, recognize the importance of gratefulness. It allows us to shift our perspective, as the Dalai Lama and Archbishop counseled, toward all we have been given and all that we have. It moves us away from the narrow-minded focus on fault and lack and to the wider perspective of benefit and abundance.” (p 242)
“Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk and scholar who spent a great deal of time in Christian-Buddhist interfaith dialogue, has explained, ‘It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment, with all the opportunity that it contains. The gift within every gift is the opportunity it offers us. Most often it is the opportunity to enjoy it, but sometimes a difficult gift is given to us and that can be an opportunity to rise to the challenge.’ ” (pp 242-243)
‘“When you are grateful,’ Brother Steindl-Rast explained, ‘you are not fearful, and when you are not fearful, you are not violent. When you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people and respectful to all people. A grateful world is a world of joyful people.’” (p 246)
[Ubuntu is an ancient African philosophy that translates roughly to “humanity toward others” or “I am because we are.”]
“Gratitude connects us all. When we are grateful for a meal, we can be grateful for the food that we are eating and for all of those who have made the meal possible—the farmers, the grocers, and the cooks. When the Archbishop gives thanks, we are often taken on a journey of Ubuntu, acknowledging all of the connections that bind us together and on which we are all dependent. The Eucharist that the Archbishop gave to the Dalai Lama literally comes from the Greek word thanksgiving, and saying grace or giving thanks for what we have been given is an important practice in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” (p 246)
“Impermanence, the Dalai Lama reminds us, is the nature of life. All things are slipping away, and there is a real danger of wasting our precious human life. Gratitude helps us catalog, celebrate and rejoice in each day and each moment before they slip through the vanishing hourglass of experience.” (p 249)
Gracious Giver of all Life and Goodness,
We come before you in gratitude for all you do for us. May we appreciate your blessings in our lives, and how we may share them with others in kindness and generosity. May gratitude become our daily practice as it did for Paul the Apostle who reminds us of your empowering love and how we support one another. Amen.