Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Through Stained Glass: Gratitude Examen


“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything [God] has given us - and [God] has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of [God's] love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from [God].
Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.”
― Thomas Merton


Grateful.
Thankful.
            Synonyms.
                        But with an exception.
The dictionary says this about the subtle difference between the two:
Thankful is defined as “conscious of benefits received.”
while
defining grateful as “appreciative of benefits received.”

Notice the difference? It is in the way we experience being thankful and being grateful.

To put it in an even more straightforward way: being “thankful” is being aware of benefits received;
                                                       being “grateful” is appreciative of benefits received.

Make sense?

Let me try one more time.

Being grateful is different than being thankful in that gratitude necessitates that we are first affected by one another. Gratitude is the complete package. It not only says, “Thank you,” from your mouths but also from your heart. This is why gratitude is an essential spiritual discipline. It is a practice that not only changes the human body physiologically but can alter a community’s spirituality as well.

Gratitude can be compared to what happens in the story of Jesus healing the Ten Lepers in Luke 17. All ten were cleaned, but one was healed. The healing came when the one foreigner, the Samaritan, came back to Jesus and prostrated himself at Christ’s feet—a sign of deep gratitude. In that moment of contemplation, the leper was restored not only to the community but to himself as well. Gratitude is about naming the presence of God in our lives and the ways we have encountered Her graces.

The photo above is something for which I am grateful. Three Sundays ago, we invited you to write down your joys, concerns, confessions, and celebrations on four different pieces of colored tissue paper. They were then transformed into a variety of flowers—a simple grade school art project. The reasons why I am grateful for these flowers are many. First, most of you gave yourself over to the invitation, which meant you believed the process that was unfolding before you. Another reason I am grateful is that the prayers written on those sheets of paper were honest, real, and beautiful. You gave me the gift of getting a peek into your hearts, which are creative and compassionate. Finally, the project made me appreciate your participation because you helped me feel and become more aware of God’s presence in our community. And over an hour or so of folding, cutting, and bending pipe cleaners, I encountered the Triune God in the voices, pictures, and words of this church.

As we enter deeper into this stewardship season, I invite you to practice gratitude. I believe that if we all take a few minutes a day to pause and name the things for which we are grateful, not only will our hearts soften, but the heart of our community will as well. If we do, I think we will discover precisely what that tenth leper did: we will find out what happens when gratitude spills over into love. When we are stewards of our gratitude, we will move from being made clean to be being healed.

Need help incorporating the practice of gratitude in your life? Here is an easy way to do it using an ancient prayer. This is a version of the five-step Daily Examen that St. Ignatius practiced.

1. Become aware of God’s presence.
2. Review the day with gratitude.
3. Pay attention to your emotions.
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.
5. Look toward tomorrow.

 If you would like more information about each step, follow this link to learn more about the Ignatius Examen. 

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