The True Altar

November 18, 2001

"The grateful soul of the wise person is the true altar of God." -- Philo Judaeus (c.20 BC - AD 50)

I don't have a clue who Philo Judaeus was, but like many of the ancients he was no fool. "The grateful soul of the wise person is the true altar of God," he wrote, and after all these years, who's to argue with him? Trouble is, it ain't easy. Gratitude doesn't necessarily come naturally; some of us actually have to work at it.

While gratitude is a worthy end in itself, it can actually prepare us for still greater gifts. As Sarah Ban Breathnach writes, "Whatever we are waiting for--peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simply abundance--it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open mind and grateful heart." Without the attitude of gratitude, we may never achieve the desires of our heart. We need to be grateful in advance.

It has been both a difficult and an easy autumn in which to feel gratitude. After the earth-shattering events of September 11 and subsequently, we should all have had ample cause to be thankful for what we are and have. Indeed, we should be grateful for life, itself, seeing how quickly it can be snatched away from us. We should be grateful for our families and friends, for our loved ones and acquaintances, for our children and parents, for the new day with its sunrise and sunset, for work to do, for our homes and communities, for whatever treasure we own, for all that brightens our lives and for anything which gets us out of bed in the morning.

Not that we will all feel grateful twenty-four hours of the day. That may be possible for the saints, but for us mere mortals it is more hope than reality. But it must be the goal of all our striving. "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life," writes Melody Beattie. "It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

It's not about happiness at all. If we wait until we are happy to cultivate a grateful soul, we will have a long and lonely wait. Rather, I think it is that happiness follows gratitude. This must be what the wise person knows. If the grateful soul is truly God's altar, then it is upon that sacred stone that we should expect to find laid the offerings of life's giftedness.

When I take the attitude of gratitude, I begin to feel my burdens lift. I begin to see more clearly where my treasure lies. In Henry David Thoreau's words, "I am grateful for what I am and have." Gratitude precedes a sense of well being. Too many of us withhold our gratitude, waiting for something good to happen, when the reality is the exact reverse: nothing good will happen until we are able to express our gratitude.

It's really a kind of delayed gratification. In the mathematics of thankfulness, gratitude is needed to balance the equation of all our fondest hopes and dreams. The opposite of gratitude, of course, is despair.

So much for the theoretical side of gratitude. What of the practical side? Consider life itself. It beats the alternative. Consider the health that you enjoy today. It may be worse than yesterday, but it could certainly be worse tomorrow. It's all relative.

Yes, the spirit flags and the flesh is weak. I tend to be a pessimist by nature, and an optimist by religion. Probably the true optimists are all Calvinists. But what difference does it make? I'm thankful for a faith which challenges and encourages me to be better than I think I can be. I have a tendency toward cynicism and despondency. Thank goodness for a faith which proclaims the goodness of my fellow human beings and the love of God, even if I sometimes have trouble believing it.

Thank God for a faith which encourages me to cultivate an attitude of gratitude! This week in preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday I have given some thought to what I should be grateful for. I'm still working out my salvation with fear and trembling, and my gratefulness often flags. But in my better moments I am grateful for my life. Yes, it's too bad fifty years of it have already gone by, and so much of it misspent, but that's a lot more than a lot of people get.

I'm thankful for my grandmother Gertrude, for her simplicity and poverty. I'm thankful to my grandfather Harold, for his name, for his off-color sense of humor, and for his example as a caring physician. I'm thankful to my father for his charm, even though it concealed a flaw or two. I'm thankful to my mother for being my teacher during 5th and 6th grade, even though I wasn't at the time. And for her constant love and support. I'm grateful to my wife Sabrina for putting up with me for twenty-three years. Did I mention she's a saint? I'm grateful for my children, for their gifts and their differences.

I'm especially thankful to the members and friends of the seven Unitarian Universalist congregations I have served in Maine, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, for teaching me what is really important in life and in death.

I'm thankful for my new friends in Romania, for their faith and friendship. I'm thankful that I have been able to travel as much as I have and to experience different parts of our country and our world. I wish I could do more, but given where I started out, it's been quite an amazing journey.

I'm thankful for the standard of living I enjoy, and try not to take it for granted. Truly, I have all I need, and more.

I'm thankful for the education I have been privileged to receive, and for my love/hate relationship with Harvard University, my Divinity School alma mater. I'm thankful for my college English professor, Tony Herbold, for never giving me an A but for teaching me how to write. His tragic death at age 41 was a catalyst for my life.

I'm thankful to be here in Newburyport--who wouldn't be? I'm glad the search committee chose me to be your candidate six years ago. I'm still not sure why. I'm thankful for this building, which is a visual prayer, and for all of you--yes, all of you. I'm thankful for the struggle to build community, and, believe me, some days it is a struggle.

I'm thankful for the ability to read and to create an interior world which sometimes helps me to survive the exterior one. For books and music, which feed my soul, I am truly grateful.

I'm really glad I'm from Maine. It's a Maine thing.

Listen, I could go on and on, and so could all of you. This is no caravan of despair! We come here in spite of the despair we may feel, searching for hope along the way, trusting in a better day to come, loving what we still do not know, even though it is sometimes right there in front of us. We come here bringing our memories both good and bad. We come here in search of beauty, or in affirmation of it. It is a beautiful world, in spite of all its tragedy and loss, in spite of all its problems and setbacks, its cruelty and hate and inequality.

I trust that we do not come here blind to difficulties of others. There are, after all, many causes of despair in this world which need alleviation. But let us have faith that we can make a difference, no matter how small and insignificant our actions may seem at the time. If you spare one person's feelings, if you perform a small kindness on this journey through life, it is probably enough, though you sometimes compromise your ideals and fail, in the end, to save the world. You, we, are not God. At least, I'm not.

Gratitude is enough; it is more than enough. Dag Hammarskjold's little prayer of affirmation strikes the proper tone:

To Everything that has been--thanks
For Everything that will be--yes.

Truly, it is a gift to be able to worship here together, and to give thanks for life. Our gratitude is God's altar in this world. Upon it rests all that makes life worth living, not just for ourselves but for others. Let us make of our lives a worthy sacrifice.

I've probably mentioned before the hundreds of funerals and memorial services I have conducted in almost twenty years of ministry. Did I mention that I never leave the cemetery without offering a prayer of thanks for being alive? I am thankful for that experience,--though you'd think once would have been enough--for reminding me how fortunate I am to still be among the living. I'm not sure that I would get it otherwise. It shouldn't take a great tragedy to teach us this lesson, when every single life is precious. Even our own.

So, try to be grateful. Some days it may be difficult. Some days we will fail. But it is worth the effort. I offer you a little prayer to say as you leave the church today, one even I can remember:

May you be blessed in all your comings and goings, on this day, and in all the days to come. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock