Thanks-living

"Were thanks with every gift expressed,
          Each day would be Thanksgiving;
Were gratitude its very best,
          Each life would be thanksliving."

--Chauncey R. Piety

I bring this up because it is so easy to forget about it, it is so easy to become inured to such news and to go about living our comfortable, unthreatened lives, it is so easy to take it all for granted and leave it unspoken, and I bring it up because we don’t really want to think about it, because I don’t really want to think about it, but because I have to, because it’s my job to think about it. It’s so easy to blame that young marine, it’s so easy to excuse that young marine, it’s so easy to dehumanize the enemy in war, its so easy to justify our actions, because this is a war against "terror," after all, and these are "terrorists," and not human beings. They hide out in Mosques, after all (as if it’s the first time sacred places have ever been desecrated in war). They "aren’t playing by the rules," after all, and we play by the rules, so if they don’t play fair, neither can we. It’s a mess, and only time will tell if it is one completely of our own making.

I don’t like thinking about all this, as I said, because it keeps me awake at night wondering what I should say about it. What can I say? Is this a "teaching moment," and if so, what is the lesson? I don’t know if I want to find out the answer. I don’t think I do.

But to be even vaguely realistic about gratitude, we must think about these things. This world is not a perfect place, after all, and obviously, we are not perfect people. There is cruelty and hatred, there is poverty and illness and epidemic, there is inequality, there is murder and mayhem, there is stupidity, there is war, there is death. How, if we stop to think about it, can we possibly be grateful in such a world?

We are not, of course, the first to recognize this difficulty. The author of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, written about 2400 years ago, recognized it, too:

           Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed--with no one to comfort them! On the side of the oppressors there was power--with no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. . . . [Eccles. 4: 1-3]
          In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in evil-doing. . . . [Eccles. 7: 15]
          Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like a fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them. [Eccles. 9: 11-12]

I mention Koheleth, the anonymous author of Ecclesiastes, because he strikes me as one of the most honest observers of life of all time. He tells it like it is. Life is unfair. Life is cruel. Life, in the philosopher Hobbes’s words, is "short, nasty, and brutish." So why go on? What’s the point? And why on earth be grateful?

The answer, simply enough, is that we know better. We know that, though Koheleth speaks the truth, though Hobbes had it just about right, there is more to life than that. Even Koheleth knew it.

There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. [Eccles. 2: 24]

Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments be always white, do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under that sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge in Sheol, to which you are going. [Eccles. 9: 7-10]

And it is precisely at times like these, when good and evil, right and wrong, seem so mixed up, when war rages, when terror threatens, when the good perish along with the bad, when our lives are filled with uncertainty, when easy answers won’t come,--that we should be more grateful than ever for what we have and what we are, because there are absolutely no guarantees. There have never been any guarantees. "Eat, drink, and be merry," said the ancients, "for tomorrow you may die." Tomorrow, some inevitable tomorrow, you most certainly shall die!

And how, then, can you not be grateful for this once-only day of your lives?

You know that the world is a world of paradox, or you certainly would not be attending a Unitarian Universalist church! You know that you are not a perfect being, so why would you expect anyone else to be? Why are we not more forgiving of one another? Or is that a topic for another sermon?

Because right now we are thinking about gratitude. We know that we are not grateful enough. We know, or ought to, that "there but for the grace of God" go we. Life does not provide easy answers: it never has. But life provides plenty of questions, and it is our job to live in those questions, as the poet Rilke once suggested.

We should be grateful for the questions! We should be grateful for the opportunity to ask the questions, because many people in our world do not have that luxury. Soldiers in extreme situations do not always have the luxury of asking questions. And if we still have the questions, that means that someone has not already foreclosed on the answers. They will try: they will try to tell us that they have the answers, but let us be grateful when we do not fall into that trap. Only the answers that you give out of your own experience will be of any use to you. God help us when we stop asking the questions and start taking the answers for granted.

This week we celebrate Thanksgiving. It is one of my favorite holidays, that is, "holy-days"--perhaps the most religious holiday of all. It asks us to take time to be consciously grateful for all the gifts we have received, of love, of courage, of faith, of life itself.

The little piece of doggerel which I have included on the order of service, by the aptly named "Chauncey R. Piety," suggests, and rightfully so, that we should be grateful every single day of our lives, and not just once a year. It suggests that if our gratitude were honestly expressed, our lives would become the embodiment of gratitude: "thanksliving."

Perhaps that is trivial, but I really don’t think so. Because people who have "the attitude of gratitude" seem to me to be happier than the rest of us. They seem happier, they seem better adjusted, somehow, they seem better able to cope with life’s vicissitudes, with its questions and with its ambiguities. I say this as one for whom gratitude sometimes comes with difficulty. I say this as one who tends to see the dark side, but who sometimes doubts that the force is with me. I think I am not alone in feeling this way. But I envy those whose lives are become the embodiment of gratitude, and I want to live that way, too.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving later this week, we ought to count our blessings. We ought to give thanks that we are not called to make life and death decisions in morally equivocal circumstances. We ought to give thanks for all that we have and are. We ought to give thanks for our safety. We ought to give thanks for our families and friends and for all that sustains our lives. We ought to be grateful for the freedom we still possess. We ought to say thanks for whatever comforts we enjoy. We ought to be grateful knowing that life makes no promises for the morrow, and that today is the day, the only day of which we can be certain, a day of our all too brief lives.

I don’t know about you, but I intend to treat this Thanksgiving as if it were my last. None of us knows what the future may bring. I can think of all sorts of horrible scenarios. But on Thanksgiving I am going to try to live in the moment. I am going to try to be mindful of all the gifts I have received in my life. I am going to try to be grateful for all the love that I have known. I am not going to take it for granted that it will always be this way. This Thanksgiving Day I am going to take Koheleth’s advice:

Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, "I have no pleasure in them"; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; in the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. [Eccles. 12: 1-7]

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock