Gratefulness as a Spiritual Practice

Gratefulness can be a spiritual exercise, and it can also be a way of being. Cultivating an attitude of gratitude can change your perspective and your life. It will bring you joy, and it can make you more effective in your life and witness and especially in your actions. 

So many people that I know, including myself, are often feeling a bit lost at sea. So many foundations of our society have fallen: a rules-based international politics, allies that we could count on, the concepts of truth and justice, many other things. We’ve lost our moorings, and we float upon a wide, seemingly shoreless sea with the unpredictable waves of the sensational and alarming news stories that batter against the gunwales of our little boats. All this can make us feel helpless, and that can lull us into a passivity that stops us from living out our baptismal covenant “to seek and serve Christ in all people, loving our neighbour as ourselves” and “to strive for justice and peace for all people and respecting the dignity of every human being.” 

But, there’s a powerful antidote to the barrage of negativity and moral injury to which we are all subject today: the spiritual practice called “Gratefulness.” When we are feeling lost at sea, it is because we have been distracted, usually by negativity, out of being fully present to all of reality. Often our fear response has kicked in, and we’re not seeing all there really is around us. 

It was many years ago that I came across the ideas and writings of Brother David Steindl-Rast, an Austrian/American Benedictine brother, through his website www.grateful.org, which I encourage you to check out. There are many different ways to make gratefulness a spiritual practice, such as keeping a Gratitude Journal – perhaps at the end of the day, review your day and write down three things for which you are grateful. This will start to change your attitude as you start to NOTICE all of what you are encountering during the day. Another very powerful practice Steindl Rast calls: Stop-Look-Go, which is very useful when you’re carried away by the currents of negativity. Stopping and looking at the full reality grounds you back to the present again and allows you to reset and go on into positive action. 

Thanksgiving is a time, once a year, when we can all stop, be present and give thanks for all of God’s abundance. But gratefulness can become our general attitude in all of our lives, which makes us more joyful and effective in serving and helping to usher in God’s kingdom. And there’s a lot of that which needs to happen in our world right now! 

There are so many things for which I am grateful, but one current one is my family’s trip this summer to England and then my wife, Katherine’s and my journey onward in France. We did a road trip all the way to the French Alps and back. Our last days were spent in Vernon, in Normandy, on the other side of the Seine from Giverny, which was where Claude Monet made his home for the last four decades of his life. He devoted himself to a large landscaping project which created his famous Water-lily Garden and other gardens, and he continued to paint scenes from around his home and further afield. 

This site of the Banks of the Seine at Jeufosse was very close to where we would cross the Seine to drive the fifteen minutes to Giverny. There, we visited the beautifully preserved village, the Impressionist Art Museum and the home and gardens of Monet. It will remain a lasting memory and a source of gratefulness for me forever. I love the works of many Impressionists and Monet in particular because he sees deep into the heart of reality and presents it to you in a way that a photograph simply cannot convey. Far better than a photo or even a video, the movement of water and the sway of the field grasses is known in you, the beholder. The dance of colour in a moving meadow is displayed in a kind of visual mythic power and expresses a truth which is far greater than a snapshot can show. 

Over these last few years I have been so grateful for sight, which, when I stop and really look, can lead to insight. The beauty of art transports me away from concern and distraction into a fuller reality and into presence again. And it is from the spiritual riches of presence that I can return to action. At this Thanksgiving-tide, I invite you to bring a spiritual practice of gratefulness into your day-to-day life and make Thanksgiving more than just a season. Do go to www.grateful.org and look up Brother David Steindl Rast, who this July turned 100 years old. All those decades of grateful living and transforming lives!