Gratitude for Being
Given by James Covington on November 11th, 2007
A few months ago, I read an interesting article in the UU World by Galen Guengerich, senior minister at All Souls Church in Manhattan. The article was entitled: The Heart of Our Faith: A Theology of Gratitude. I liked the article. It was an evocative, meaningful piece. It spoke to my own heart and resonated with my own thinking. I want to share the essence of it with you this morning. I will be extracting directly from the article and add a few thoughts of my own.
A couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon titled: Many Beliefs, One Faith. Remember? Of course you do! Well, in case you don’t, I tried to define our liberal faith as a free faith not bound by tradition or creeds, but by the ongoing awareness of how to live justly and compassionately. It is not a faith in which we can believe anything we want, but a faith that embraces the moral values that best sustain our lives in community. In the many beliefs portion of the sermon, I addressed how each of us might derive direction and meaning from many different sources. As a result, Unitarian Universalists cover a lot of ground theologically. Commenting on this, Galen confesses that his own tendency when describing our faith is to stay close to our theological roots. It goes like this: As Unitarians, we believe all names for God point toward the same mystery. As Universalists, we believe all creation shares the same destiny. One divine spirit within and around us, and one destiny before us.
From this faith position, it can be said that we are free to believe anything we want. But freedom can be misleading and in some respects shallow. Freedom alone, has no depth. People may be attracted to Unitarian Universalism because we don’t believe in a doctrine they find abhorrent. But unless we fill the consequent void they won’t stay. According to Guengerich, the missing part is a theological one.
He goes on to say that our usual way of describing ourselves doesn’t even begin to suggest that we are a religion and then asserts that in his view religion is constituted by two distinct but related impulses: a sense of awe and a sense of obligation. The feeling of awe emerges from our experience of the grandeur of life and the mystery of the divine. This feeling becomes religious when a sense of obligation lays claim to us, and we feel a duty to the larger life that we share. In theological terms, religion begins as transcendence, which is the part about God, and then leads to obligation, which is the part about the discipline of faith.
I realize the idea of faith as a discipline may also sound like heresy to many Unitarian Universalists. Unless our faith is mere intellectual affectation, however, the defining element of our faith must be a daily practice of some kind. What kind of practice? For Jews, the defining discipline is obedience: To be a faithful Jew is to obey the commands of God. For Christians, the defining discipline is love: To be a faithful Christian is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. For Muslims, the defining discipline is submission: To be a faithful Muslim is to submit to the will of Allah.
And what of us? What should be our defining religious discipline? While obedience, love, and even submission each play a vital role in the life of faith, my current conviction is that our defining discipline should be gratitude. In the same way that Judaism is defined by obedience, Christianity by love, and Islam by submission, I believe that Unitarian Universalism should be defined by gratitude. However, having said that, I have found that gratitude is also central to all the major religions and also especailly in Buddhism. The Psalmist of the Hebrew scriptures is frequently expressing thanks to God–”I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.” Gratitude has always been cental among Christian virtues. Thankfulness and gratitutde are also asserted in the Islamic Koran. In Buddhism, meditation is often used as a way to cultivate gratitude.
But why should UU be defined by gratitude? Two dimensions of gratitude make it fitting as our defining religious practice. One has to do with a discipline of gratitude, and the other has to do with an ethic of gratitude. The discipline of gratitude reminds us how utterly dependent we are on the people and world around us for everything that matters. From this flows an ethic of gratitude that obligates us to create a future that justifies an increasing sense of gratitude from the human family as a whole. The ethic of gratitude demands that we nurture the world that nurtures us in return.
The two forms gratitude takes in our lives (a discipline and an ethic) are natural outcomes of the two elements of religious experience (awe and obligation). The experience of awe leads to the discipline of gratitude, and the experience of obligation leads to an ethic of gratitude.
There are many potential defining virtues from which to choose. Why gratitude? It has to do with the role of religion and the nature of the universe. The role of religion, in my view, is to help us find our place as human beings within this universe we call home. You may recall that the word religion does not mean to liberate or set free, but rather to bind together. Religion unites the purpose of our lives as human beings with the purpose that animates the universe. Religion unites the meaning of our lives as human beings with the meaning that pervades the universe. Religion unites the spirit of humanity with the spirit that keeps the stars shining, the planets spinning, and the flowers blooming in springtime. I believe that gratitude is the appropriate religious response to the nature of the universe.
And what is the nature of the universe? In his book A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson notes that the great physicist Richard Feynman once said that if you had to reduce scientific history to one important statement it would be this: “All things are made of atoms.” Bryson explains that a billion of the atoms in your body probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from the Buddha and Joan of Arc and Genghis Khan. Nevertheless, for now, trillions of these atoms have somehow assembled themselves into you.
“Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle,” Bryson says. “Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms do not actually care about you–indeed, they do not even know that you are there. They don’t even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single overarching impulse: to keep you you.”
What does this mean? The mound of atomic dust is not you. Rather, you are the relationships among the various protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up the dust. The renowned twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead believed this principle applied to everything in the universe. Everything is constituted by its relationships to other things.
I was born in West Tennessee, an only child. My parents grew up on the farm. I was raised in a small rural town. I was the first in my family to attend college. I was the first and last in my extended family to attend seminary. Then I left the ministry. I studied psychology and became a psychotherapist. During this time, I married when I was 22 and had two children, April and Eric, and then divorced. I moved to New York. I attained custody of my children. I was what they called “a single father.” I remarried years later to Suzanne Hall and have a step-daughter, Alexandra. I have two almost grown grandchildren, which means I could be a great grandfather any year now. Over the years several close friends of mine have died. I have belonged to a men’s group for 28 years. I have been a psychotherpist for 30 years. I returned to the ministry and I have been your minister at this Fellowship for 17 years. These experiences, and countless others besides, make me who I am–not in the way a potter shapes a bowl, but in the way flour, butter, and sugar go together to make a cake. If you take away the ingredients that make up my life, what remains has little meaning. I am made up of, or constituted by, those relationships. As Whitehead put it, “we are dependent on the universe for every detail of our experience.”
This principle applies to everything. The first principle of the universe is not independence, but its opposite: utter dependence. Everything that exists is made up of constituent parts that are borrowed from, shared with, and related to others outside it. As humans, we are dependent upon the parents who conceived us, the plants and animals who daily give their lives for our nourishment, the trees that reverse our cycle of taking in oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide, and the sun that warms the atmosphere and lights our path. In every respect, we are utterly dependent.
The human tendency, however, is to assume the opposite. We pride ourselves on being self-reliant and self-sufficient. This is especially true today. Our nation was founded on a deep-seated belief in the freedom of the individual. This freedom extends to every aspect of our lives, including the political realm (as democracy), the economic realm (as free-market capitalism), and the religious realm (as the motive force behind the Protestant movement). This multifaceted emphasis on the autonomy of the individual is known as liberalism, and its practice accounts for many of our greatest accomplishments: political freedom, human rights, economic opportunity, and religious liberty.
But this liberating emphasis on the individual also represents our gravest danger. Lord Acton once waqrned that every institution ultimately fails by an excess of its own first principle. The greatest temptation we face, I believe, is the temptation to disregard our utter dependence on the people and world around us. I sometimes think we have indeed succumbed to this temptation. In the 1970s, Christopher Lasch described us as a culture of narcissism.
The Narcissus-like self-obsession that dominates our culture has led others in more recent years to describe ours as a culture of resentment that leads to polarizing and demonizing or a culture of entitlement. We think our purpose and destiny are independent of others. We compare our possessions and accomplishments with others. We make ourselves look indespensible or objects of desire. In short, we disregard our dependence.
If the first principle of all existence is utter dependence, then the deadliest of all sins is the effort to negate or disregard that principle through the myth of self-sufficiency. In this state of sin, salvation comes through gratitude. It is the means by which we remember both our identity and our duty.
Unlike freedom, gratitude is a uniquely religious virtue. Why is this so? A sense of awe and a sense of obligation, religion’s basic impulses, are both experiences of transcendence, of being part of something much larger than ourselves.
The feeling of awe emerges from experiences of the grandeur of life and the mystery of the divine. Gratitude for being was one of the first religious responses to human existence. Our ancestors lived close to the earth; their existence was marginal, and they were glad just to be alive. Primitive peoples propitiated the gods - flattered them, cajoled them, humored and bribed them to provide another fruitful harvest. Only gradually did our forebears learn to simply express thanks for the gift of life, a vital step in humanity’s spiritual evolution.
This sense of awe and dependence should engender in us a discipline of gratitude. What does this mean? It means that we remain focused on how people are treated, how we treat people, how we treat the animals and plants who give their lives for our sustenance, and how we treat the environoment. An ethic of gratitude demands that we treat our physical enviornoment as the incubus of a fragile and precisou gift: life itself. At its heart, the ethic of gratitude seeks to build a world constituted by relationship that are strong and constructive.
Put another way, a discipline of gratitude connects the present with the past, while the ethic of gratitude connects the present with the future.
Disciplines teach us who we are. They remind us of commitments we have made and show us the path to walk. When Muslims pray five times each day facing Mecca, they remember who they are as people of faith. When I say “I love you” to my wife as she departs for work in the morning and to my children and grandchildren after we talk on the phone, I remind myself that I am, first and foremost, a husband and father and grandfather, that I am connected to these individuals, they are life’s gift to me. I often speak to couples I counsel in my office about how they can create a culture of appreciation in their marriage. I have in the past also encouraged that we do the same with one another here in this Fellowhsip.
The discipline of gratitude is about knowing how much we have been given and acknowledging the scope of our dependence. It’s about saying “thank you” to the people we love, to the world we enjoy, to the universe we inhabit, and to the God who holds us all in a divine embrace.
How do we practice gratitude? Well, to start with, with mindfulness. If you keep a journal, write about those things imporant to you that you are utterly dependent upon. Write about what you have been given. Write about those events, people, natural occurrences about which you feel grateful and thankful. Or take five minutes of your day and look out upon the sky, behold the tree in the backyard, the beauty of the countryside, even the bustling of the city streets, or cherish your life while sitting quietly in your comfortable chair at home, or with your family at the dinner table and utter silently to yourself or maybe even out loud: This is the day we are given. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
So as we approach this Thanksgiving season, let us take pause
To give gratitude for that which is beyond our deserving -
In this time of gratitude let us remember
All those things we have not earned,
All that blesses us beyond any merit of our own,
All the pleasures that come without effort,
All the joys that come to us when we are unaware,
All the beauty that greets us that we have not fashioned
But are privileged to enjoy.
Life is a mystery deeper than all our attempts to understand.
It is a miracle we are privileged to share with one another.
Let us be grateful for that which is beyond our deserving.
Let us be grateful for being itself.