Reluctant to Practice Gratitude?

Reluctant to practice gratitude? You just might be the best practitioner of them all…

It’s been a while since I wrote in my blog. Everything I have hoped to write recently has been ruminating in my pandemic-enduring brain, with a few jotted down notes, paragraphs, and thoughts to come back to. As a hospital chaplain, a thinker, a parent, a passionate responder to all that’s going on in the world, a human…Eventually these experiences and ideas will probably show up here. But what sort of got me to begin again now was something akin to what usually sparks me to write: a realization that I need to get out of my cave. It’s been really nice in there. (Or has it…) Can I go back now?

Every November on social media, several people participate in the trendy “Thankful posts” sharing something they are thankful for each day until Thanksgiving Day, or throughout the entire month. I’ve done this a few times in my social media life. I do enjoy (for the most part), reading my friends’ gratitudes, and seeing something positive on social media. (But I’m okay with the negative stuff, too- when it’s real, necessary, challenging, connecting, or growth inducing). And I enjoy sharing my own gratitudes when I can and do. But this year, I’ve been wondering, how many of those posts are something the writer can’t wait to share, and do they get all excited in anticipation of what they’ll share the next day? Or, are any of them participating because they know they really need to? I mean, really need to. Not just because this is the time to be the positively-perfect-practitioner of November…

Ugh.

Is it hard for you to be grateful? You’re not alone. There are multiple factors that might be part of this ability to be grateful, or not. Genetics, personality, nature, nurture, circumstances, etc. Maybe it’s not really hard-wired for most. Some studies have shown that practicing gratitude can change your brain. If that’s the case, maybe we need not worry if at first when we engage in this practice, we don’t feel anything right away. It takes time to build habits and break habits. Maybe you just don’t feel the need or desire to share gratitudes, but that doesn’t mean you’re stuck in the muck, or feeling forlorn. Maybe like most things in life it’s a both/and. We can hold both gratitude and grief; we can have little to no desire to share gratitude, and we can trust in something more. (Ps. 13) Mindfulness and cultivation are what digs up meaningful gratitude attempts, telling us we have and are enough, even when we don’t and aren’t feeling as such. It’s all valid.

We have a tradition in our house during November where family, and friends who come by, can write something they are grateful for and hang it in on our little two foot, Charlie-Brown-esque bare wire Thanksgiving Tree. This year, after I pulled it out of the “fall decor” box, and set in on our countertop, shuffled the different color leaf cut outs and placed them in a pile near its trunk, laid the black, fine point sharpie by the pile, and set the placard in front of the tree which reads, “What are you thankful for? Write it on a leaf and hang it on the Thanksgiving Tree!” I stopped and stared. The idea felt a bit dreadful. I do know, at least somewhere in a deep place, that I have much to be thankful for. But this year, and especially this time of year, for circumstances which have recently occurred in my personal life, and in the over all everyone-is-struggling reality of these times, I just didn’t have the same reception to the idea that I might normally have. And then I wondered if the reception to the idea we might “normally” have is a norm we need to rethink. Subsequently, I began to wonder if it is within this arduous space, where practicing gratitude can be its most genuine.

After all, it’s called a practice, right? If we need to “practice gratitude” perhaps those of us who are reluctant to participate are the best practitioners of all…

The first leaf on the tree written by me simply said, “I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving Tree, which reminds me to be grateful, even when it’s hard to.” I’m not sure I really meant it, but there it is. But maybe I need that reminder right now. And even though I didn’t name anything specific, that’s okay. Maybe this time, this year, the reminder is enough, whether I believe it or not. Someone else can post their rosy gratitudes every day. Someone else can fill the tree. And if I muster the dedication, energy, thought, and heart to write something else, then I am the practitioner of gratitude from the depths of an authentic, sacred space. It’s not that easy-to-summon thankfulness isn’t good. I’ve had some of those days, since optimism is part of my both/and realist, neutral, and calm-in-chaos mixed nature. But when life is difficult, when our usual natures are off kilter, understanding this sacred practice takes on such a deeper meaning of grace, vulnerability, spiritual exercise, and hope. 

I wrote a prose to release the brick that weighs me down these days. After I wrote it, I re-read it a few times, and as I did, I began to picture myself at one of those spoken word, poetry slam, open mic nights, at a little city corner, worn, uneven floored, poster-plastered, draping with mini ceiling lights, yesteryears buildings, with collected mis-matched, too small tables topped with flickering candles in the dark, and more-than-the-tables-can handle poets and wanna be poets like me, huddled around them in beanies and piercings, or in fedoras and bowties, or just whatever-I’m-wearing wears, adjusting their bodies in creaky, wobbly chairs. I read this cathartic prose in my mind, imagining it aloud, with an underlying rhythm, with no concern over who was listening, releasing the angst, sadness, disappointment, and the hope of where the “pen” led me, catching my swallows of saliva a little later than normal talk would, just in time as it gathered in the corners of my brave lips, in-between uneven stanzas and phrases alternating attempted subtleties, blatant grief, and fractured clue images of the truth I am trying to express. Wow, did that feel good in such a horrible way… This must be why I wouldn’t do it very often.

I don’t know if I’ll ever share it publicly, or with anybody, and it certainly won’t fit on a leaf, but I’m counting it as something I’m thankful for. Not for the content perhaps, but maybe for how it was written, arranged, imagined in its presentation, for its healing nature, and its lament. For its ability to draw me to a place of imagining something new from something broken, torn, and released, even if for just a redemption-teasing-second. Or maybe just for what it is, and nothing more.

If you’re struggling with something in life, which of course you are, right? It’s 2021, which is just the extended 2020, and really the extension of history and humanity…

Maybe try the grace of allowing your lament to actually be something you are grateful for. For the things that would make you not quite fit in to the smiley, daily thankful posts, but perhaps an acceptance that you can join that next year (or a “Thank God” that you aren’t). And by the way, if you’re in that space of easy-to-summon-can’t-wait-to-share daily gratitudes life, that’s awesome. I am reading them with a warm heart. No really, I am. And I know that you, too- just might be having to summon them with dedicated practice in the hopes of dealing with whatever is heavy in your life. But if that’s not you, maybe try the vulnerability to let yourself be okay in this space of molasses-I-can’t-move, it’s hard to breathe, I can’t process this, hardening-ground-for-winter-on-the-horizon moment, accepting your blank stares at the invitation to be grateful, as no problem, as real, and as a genuine connection to suffering. The balance of humanity needs all of these phases and connections among each other. Maybe let these tough days remind you of why we need each other, in whatever form of community or relationship that might be for you. (Talks to self, “Yes, you!” while reminder-pointing at the cave…) If you are invited to share or write a gratitude on a leaf, and you want to write, “Gratitude shmatitude” on it, hope can be there, too- just as it is if you don’t write anything at all. Rest in knowing others are hanging the leaves this year, but that your potential leaves, or crumpled up leaves, or working-on-them leaves, or imagined leaves, are swirling in the autumn winds, eventually to be nurturing the shitty, stinky compost in the best way possible.

(P.S. A few more leaves in my pen-person-ship, since the first one I wrote, have made it to the Tree…)

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.” – Maya Angelou, Poet and Civil Rights Activist

“It is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” -David Steindl Rast

“When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.” -Brene Brown

“How Long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death…But I trust in your unfailing love…” -Excerpts from Psalm 13