The theme of Global Citizenship is at the forefront of the CP curriculum this year and we recognize respectful, educated, active, kind, and grateful as necessary attributes in a global citizen.  We often begin our mornings by simply reflecting on things and people for which we are grateful. It sets a wonderful tone for the rest of the day. Regardless of possible anxiety for an upcoming test or an occasional disastrous morning workout, remembering to be grateful opens the heart which in turn opens the mind. This connectivity to the law of giving and receiving does not have time for anything but positive thoughts.

Please enjoy this article on Gratitude.

The Rhythm of Gratitude    ~David Orr

Happiness lies in the understanding that life without “wonder” is not worth living.  In giving thanks for the wonder that is life, we can restore harmony and balance in our own lives. 

After reflection I have come to believe that the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel had it right – that the source of dissonance is ingratitude.  “As civilization advances,” he wrote, “the sense of wonder almost necessarily declines…humankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.  The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.  What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.”

Heschel, here, connects appreciation with the sense of wonder and awe.  The problem as he defines it is simply that as a “mercenary of our will to power, the mind is trained to assail in order to plunder rather than to commune in order to love.”

But why is gratitude so hard for us?  This is not a new problem.  Luke tells us that Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one returned to say “Thank you.”  That’s about average, I suppose.  In our universities, we teach a thousand ways to criticize, analyze, dissect and deconstruct, but we offer very little guidance on the cultivation of gratitude – simply saying “Thank you.”

And perhaps there is no cause for gratitude amidst the cares and trials of life?  Shakespeare has Macbeth say that life is “but a…tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes similarly thought that life was full of peril and death: “nasty, brutish, and short.”  And many of us find our bodies, incomes, careers, and lives as less than we would like, whatever we may deserve.

But most of us would find life without appreciation rather like a meal without flavor or living in a world without color, or one without music.

Gratitude comes hard for many reasons.  For one thing, we spend nearly half a trillion dollars on advertising to cultivate ingratitude otherwise known as the seven deadly sins.  The result is a cult of entitlement to have as much as possible for doing as little as possible.  For another, the pace of modern life leaves little time to be grateful or awed by much of anything.

But there are deeper reasons for ingratitude.  Gratitude does not begin in the intellect but in the heart.  “Intellect,” in David Steindl-Rast’s words, “only gets us so far…our intellect should be alert enough to recognize a gift, but to acknowledge a gift as gift requires an act of will and heart.”  To acknowledge a gift is also “to admit dependence on the giver…but there is something within us that bristles at the idea of dependence.  We want to get along by ourselves.”

To acknowledge a gift, in other words, is to acknowledge an obligation to the giver.  And herein is the irony of gratitude.  The illusion of independence is a kind of servitude while gratitude – the acknowledgement of interdependence – sets us free.  Only “gratefulness has the power to dissolve the ties of our alienation,” as Steindl-Rast puts it.  But “the circle of gratefulness is incomplete until the giver of the gift becomes the receiver; a receiver of thanks…and the greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving.”  Saying “Thank you” is to say that we belong together:  the giver and the thanksgiver; and it is this bond that frees us from alienation.

But all of this is just so many words.  We live more fully in and through stories.  Here are two that continue to be particularly powerful in my own life.  My Aunt Emma, who died just short of her 100th birthday, was a teacher and builder of clinics, schools, and churches in rural Mexico, well into her nineties, when she was diagnosed with what was thought to be terminal cancer.  Even with that diagnosis she did not slow down, and she never complained.  Appropriately, at Thanksgiving dinner a year after the doctor told her she might have a year to live, she turned to me and asked if I could take her to the airport later that afternoon.  I thought she was kidding but finally realized that she was absolutely serious.  I said, “Aunt Emma, don’t you have cancer?”  To which she responded, “Oh yes, I do, and it’s such an inconvenience.”  She flew to Mexico that afternoon and made the long trek up the mountain where she was involved in the building of a community church and clinic.  She died five years later of old age, all signs of cancer having disappeared.  She did not have time for cancer.  She had word to do – gifts to give.  Her entire life was a gift of generosity, energy, and good heart.

Gratitude changes the rhythm.  It restores the cycle of giver and receiver, extending our awareness back in time to acknowledge ancient obligations and forward to the far horizon of the future and to lives that we are obliged to honor and protect.  Gratitude requires mindfulness, not just smartness.  It requires a perspective beyond self.  Gratitude is at once an art and a science, and both require practice.

The arts and sciences of gratitude, which is to say applied love, are flourishing in ironic and interesting ways.  Businessman Ray Anderson has set his company on a path to operate by current sunlight and return to waste product to the Earth.  Biologists are developing the science of biomimicry, which uses Nature’s operation instructions evolved over 3.8 billion years to make materials at ambient temperatures without fossil fuels or toxic chemicals; rather like spiders that make webs from strands five times stronger than steel.  The movement to power civilization from the gift of sunshine and wind is growing at 40 percent per year worldwide.  The American Institute of Architects and the U.S. Green Building Council have changed the standard for buildings to eliminate use of fossil fuels by 2030.  Could we, in time, create a civilization that in all of its ways honors the great gift and mystery of life itself?

Can true gratitude transform our prospects?  Can we harmonize the rhythms of this frail little craft of civilization with the pulse of the Great Heart of God?  I believe so, but gratitude cannot be legislated or forced.  It will remain a stranger to any mind that lacks compassion.  It must be demonstrated, but above all it must be practiced daily.