Thanksgiving Thoughts on Gratitude: Where Do You Stand?

“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” – Henri Matisse

Where are you standing today, in this week of thanksgiving? Are you in a place of gratitude for what you have in your life or are you in a place of grasping for more, of unfulfilled desire?

It’s all about perspective.

His name was Manley and for ten years he was one of my best friends, an important spiritual teacher. Almost every week for a decade we would meet over coffee, sometimes sitting in Adirondack chairs at the top of my long driveway or in the front yard of the comfortable house I call home, in a suburb of Boston.  Inevitably, every few weeks, this is how our conversation about God and life would go.

I’d complain about some thing going on in my life. A particularly difficult person or situation to deal with at work.  A family member I was having trouble forgiving. A bill out of the blue I hadn’t expected and now needed to pay. A new ache or a pain I’d discovered that week.

Manley would patiently listen, and then look around at the setting we were meeting within.  A big house with a nice car in the driveway, surrounded by the green grass and the soaring trees and the sun beaming down upon us, each of us healthy and well fed and overall, doing ok. Then Manley would say to me, half seriously, half mockingly.

“Yup…you got a hard life, John. Just look at this house and this yard. You have a safe place to call home and a job that takes good care of you and stuff like health insurance and enough food and lots of family and friends who love you.”

He’d wait a beat or two and then declare….

“Yes, you sure have it hard!”

And then he’d smile, and I’d grin too, maybe even chuckle and realize how right he was about my one life.  How by focusing on the few things in life that were a challenge, rather than the many things in life that were a blessing, I’d forgotten how to be grateful. Grateful to God for all the good gifts of life. Grateful for a job in which I got to make a difference for the good every single day. Grateful for his friendship and how much we each loved one another and taught each other. Grateful for sunlight and hot coffee and one more day as a gift from God.

Manley did not ignore the hard stuff of life, mine or his.  We both had lots of life baggage. We came from families that had gone through hard emotional times. We both faced into addictions and recovery, both had the ups and downs you expect from any human life. Gratitude doesn’t deny human suffering. Instead, gratitude acknowledges that all of us walk down into deep valleys, all of us hurt, and all of us lose people we love and yet, we can still make the courageous choice to look for the good. To see the good. To thank God or the universe for that good.

Manley’s wisdom about gratitude was always clear and simple.

Gratitude is often about the perspective, the attitude we adopt each day, each moment. Where are we standing, in a way, and what are we choosing to see in this life?  Do we see and give thanks for all that we have, all those precious things and beloved people? Or do we see and worry about what we do not have. What we lack. What is hard. What we have yet to realize or achieve.  

Gratitude intentionally chooses to focus upon the gracious. The beautiful. The kind. The hopeful. Places where our hearts are full and our lives are abundant and rich in the deepest way, beyond mere money or material goods. Gratitude revels in the simplest of gifts.  A beautiful sunrise or sunset. A big bear hug from a friend.  A thank you card from a grateful grandchild. A full plate on Thanksgiving. A slew of football games to watch from the couch. The yearly game of Thanksgiving Scrabble where everyone laughs so hard and plays, plays a game. For fun.

This is the second Thanksgiving I haven’t had my friend Manley around and that is sad, and I still miss him so. I could focus on that grief and would be excused for this but instead, today, I remember him with deep and profound gratitude.  I remember all the time we sat and talked about life and God.

And then I thank God in gratitude for Manley. For everything. From where I stand today, it is a very good life. I pray you might know this gratitude too.

Happy Thanksgiving Day. Every day.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.