Tag: gratitude

The wealth we all have

Worried about money? Me too! So is everybody I know. Everything that was already expensive, which is everything, is getting more expensive and is poised to get even more expensive. It’s hard to find even one glimmer of hope for the financial future. Taxes? Horrendous. Retirement savings? Dust in the wind. Treats for vacation? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve already warned the kids we’re going to have an Imagination Summer, and possibly an Imagination Christmas, because I’m the one who tends the budget in our house, and the writing on the wall spells out B-R-O-K-E.

That phrase “Imagination Christmas” is from “The Simpsons,” in the episode where the eye-wateringly wholesome Flanders family is broke because they spent all their money charitably sending Bart and Homer to Hawaii to have their fake leprosy treated. The Flanders family is there as a foil to their dreadful neighbors, but they’re also undeniably happy. And they are very clear-eyed about what is important in life.

I mention this because what I am going to say next may come across as unbearably Flanders-like in its optimism. But I can’t help it. The truth is, our family, broke as it is, is doing great. We are incredibly wealthy, and the more I look for it, the more evidence I find of our wealth. It just doesn’t happen to come in the form of money.

I told the kids: “Look, everything is expensive right now, and we probably won’t get to buy a lot of cool stuff this summer. But it’s O.K., because we already know how to be poor.” And they more or less agreed. There are so many things you can enjoy when you are poor—and some, it seems, that are easier to enjoy when you’re poor because you cannot lean on the crutches and the shortcuts that litter the path of the rich.

Let’s start with that line from “The Simpsons,” which our family quotes frequently. If you have running jokes in your family or friend set, do you know what a gift that is? It sounds like a little thing, but think about how bereft and impoverished you feel when someone has an inside joke that you’re not in on. Running jokes are gold. It is evidence that you’re so wealthy you live among a group of people who reliably laugh with you and also understand you completely when you say two or three words in a certain tone of voice. What a gift! Security, community, laughter, and it’s all free.

Also “Simpsons”-related: At age 50, I have calmed down, and I no longer torment myself over how thoroughly pop culture has saturated my family’s psyche. There was a time I would have rent my garments to think of how often we communicate via lines from TV shows, but I’ve let it go. We live in the time we live in, and we’re not hermits, and my kids have screens. That has not all been good, but it certainly hasn’t all been bad, either. We talk often about when it’s important to buck the trends and be uncool, and my kids seem to be willing to do that; so I don’t need to feel like a failure just because they are not cultural aliens. So that is another sign of my wealth: I look at my life and see that I’ve gotten a little wiser, and I can see that my kids are reasonably wise, too, according to their age. That is incredibly valuable, and definitely not something you can buy.

A big one: The great outdoors. I don’t even mean white water rafting or tent camping or knowing how to thrive for six weeks in the wilderness; I just mean going outside for a bit and knowing how to enjoy it. Not everyone knows how.

Our family is extraordinarily lucky to have a huge backyard with a little pine grove, a babbling brook to wade in and rich soil where just about any seed will thrive. But even when we lived in a dense neighborhood with only a little scrap of yard, we still had the sky. We had treetops that waved in the wind. We had birdsong and tenacious weeds finding a place to root in sidewalk cracks. It is a skill, learning to seek out emissaries from the natural world wherever you are, but like any skill, it can be learned.

Here’s how to learn it, even if you’re very busy: If you’re driving, slow down to get a closer look at passing wildlife. Occasionally, take the long way home, so you can coast through a side street where the trees are especially lovely in the fall. Think about fog, and notice how the light passes through it; roll the windows down and listen for moving water. See what you can smell on the wind when you pass by a forest or field. If your neighborhood is bright at night, spend an occasional evening staying up late to drive out to a spot where it’s dark, and go see what the stars are up to.

It is all free, and once you start becoming aware of the vast riches that surround us, it is hard to stop looking for more.

This may seem like a random list, but that’s kind of the point….Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Begin with gratitude, and figure out later what it’s for

When we are young, we are taught to say “thank you” for gifts, whether or not they instantly fill us with delight.

No doubt some mom influencer on Instagram believes this is unhealthy and a betrayal of a child’s natural spirit, and little Ryleiyghye should never be compelled to express something that doesn’t well up spontaneously from her psyche. But I think it’s a good idea to teach kids to say “thank you.” I think it’s a good idea to teach it to myself.

I have started to make myself say “thank you” to Jesus for each day when I wake up in the morning. Even before I check my phone! First I thank him for the day, then I offer it up to him, and then I ask him for help making it a worthy offering.

If you had to make a diagram, it would probably look to an outsider like a lot of arrows going back and forth for no particular reason. Thanks for the day! Here’s the day! Give me things so I can do the day! Let’s not worry about that part right now. We’ll just call it the economy of grace and let the Holy Spirit work out the details. The part I’m interested in is the “thank you.”

I struggle with mornings. I don’t fall asleep or stay asleep easily, so when I first become conscious in the morning, gratitude is not the first thing that naturally wells up in my heart. So it really is an act of will, and an act of trust, to thank God for the day that is beginning whether I want it to or not. What I have found is that, like most prayers faithfully prayed, it has begun to affect me.

What began as mere spiritual good manners has become a minor revelation. I have begun to see something that perhaps you already know and feel: That whether I would have asked for it right then or not, each day is not just a thing that happens. It is something that is given to me. I didn’t make it. I didn’t cause it to be. I have no idea what it might possibly be full of.It is even pretty likely that something excellent will come to pass or will begin to take shape to come to fruition sometime in the future. It is, whether I’m happy to have it or not, a gift.

I always think of the lepers that Jesus healed, and only one came back to thank him.

Understandable, maybe, because they were so excited and incredulous at getting their lives back so suddenly and unexpectedly. They had never met Jesus before and maybe they got caught up in the amazement of this brand new thing.

But I can’t say the same. Jesus has healed me many times, in tiny ways and in major ways, and I expect this will continue for as long as I have breath in my body. Sometimes I asked for it, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I realized right away that he was the one doing it; sometimes it took me years to catch on. But that’s what he does. He’s the healer. That’s why he came. I know this about him. 

Am I grateful for this in general, even if not at this exact second? Yes, I am! So I start the day by thanking him.

Sometimes, as the day progresses, it quickly becomes obvious what I have to be grateful for. Sometimes thanking God is, as I said, purely an act of trust, because the day does not shape up like anything anyone in their right mind would receive as a gift.

But then I remember the lepers. I remember that I do know this Jesus, and I do know what kind of things he is likely to do for me. I know him, and what he is like, and I know that he is not going to stop being that way. I can trust him. So far, I have never regretted starting the day with an act of gratitude. It is changing my life. 

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Image: Niels Larsen Stevns: Helbredelsen af den spedalske, Healing of the Leper, 1913. Public domain
A version of this essay was originally published at The Catholic Weekly in March of 2023.

Don’t be shy about saying grace in public

My kids once asked me if I knew what my own first word was, when I was a baby. And I had to tell them that it was “Amen.”

They were a little abashed. What a holy, prayerful child I must have been! But it wasn’t like that. My family always prayed before we ate, and since “amen” came right before the food, I thought it meant “Let’s eat.”

“AMEN! AMEN!” I would apparently holler like a pudgy little zealot, banging my spoon on the high chair tray like one hungering for the word of God, but actually just hungry.

The prayer we said before we got to “Amen” was a sort of all-purpose Hebrew prayer of blessing before a meal: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha’olam, shehakol nih’ye bidvaro. “Blessed art thou, o Lord our God, king of the universe, by whose word all things exist.”

I have taught this prayer to my children, and this is the one we usually say before we eat at our house. It is very likely that, according to Jewish tradition, this is the wrong prayer to pray for most meals we eat (there are various prayers for different kinds of food), but as my kids tell their friends, we are only Jew-ish anyway, so we’re doing the best we can. I like it because it covers the bases: It acknowledges the majesty of God over everything that exists, including myself, and my family, and this plate of rigatoni or whatever. Amen, let’s eat.

And yes, we pray this prayer even when there are guests over. We give them a little warning that we’re going to pray in Hebrew, and they’re welcome to bow their heads if they’d like. Occasionally it has led to some interesting conversations about our heritage or about our faith.

And yes, we pray this prayer even when we’re eating out in public. I have always encouraged my kids to pray before they eat no matter where they are. I think it’s important.

They don’t have to make a big show of it. There is a fine line between being a witness and being a weirdo. To illustrate… Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Image: Saying Grace, a 1951 painting by Norman Rockwell. Painted for the cover of the November 24, 1951 (Thanksgiving) issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Wikipedia

 

To Mrs. Rich, wherever she may be

Thanks for taking us out past the playground into the warm, dim, shadowy woods so we could drink our cartons of milk on a carpet of pine needles while you read to us about The Little Red Hen. I really liked it.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Photo by Yogurt yeah [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Gratitude is vital, but can’t be imposed from the outside

By the end of the day, I was almost singing. It was one of the happiest days of my life. It was so good that I return to the memory of it from time to time, and come away refreshed, because I saw so clearly the truth of how much goodness and mercy surrounded me on that day and every day. Maybe I’ll even try it again someday!

But I guarantee you that it would not have worked if it had been foisted upon me by someone who thought I was defective because I thought my hard life was hard. The holiest people I know are strict with themselves, but merciful and sympathetic to others.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Giving thanks sets our hearts straight

He delights and is glad to hear us thank Him, but it doesn’t encourage Him to give us good things, any more a stream is encouraged to keep on flowing when a deer stops to drink in it. Flowing is what the stream is for, and it’s not going to pack itself up and leave in a huff if the deer isn’t properly grateful.

The deer, however, may suffer if it can’t linger long enough to enjoy having its thirst quenched.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Turkey photo by Alison Marras on Unsplash

A day without that one woman

would have looked like this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

 

and this:

and this:

And so on.

Because without her, we wouldn’t have Him.

No jokes, no anti-feminist message here. Just gratitude that that one particular women showed up on that one particular day. Mary, give me the strength to show up today. Jesus, do with my presence what you will.

Thanks, Mom.

twopenny starvers

Does she cook and clean for us and do our laundry? Oh, yes, she does. She feeds us with grace, with the Word of God, and with Eucharist, and she invites us to throw our smelly old sins down the chute and — okay, here the analogy breaks down. I guess she washes, dries, and folds our consciences for us, and leaves them in a tidy stack on our bed? She bustles around, caring for our needs, even anticipating our needs, telling us what we need and making sure we have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of what she has to offer us, from birth to maturity to death.

She knows us intimately, cares for us personally, never stops thinking about us, never stops loving us, never stops desiring everything good for us. But the Church is about more than us — and she’s about more than giving us stuff, too. Mother Church isn’t just a sacrament dispenser, who fades into existence for an hour here and there, whenever we need something; and we should be careful not to treat her that way.

Read the rest at the Register.

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image by Paul Townsend

(And I realize it’s some obscure Anglican tradition in the photo, but I found this image so charming, I couldn’t bring myself to find something else.)