A Muscular Gratitude.

This article was first published a year ago at this time.  I like the accessibility of this practical form of mysticism.  I’m finding that its message resonates even more this year than last year.  Have a blessed Thanksgiving.  Thanks for reading. 

This Thursday, Lisa and I will round the corner of our thirty-first Thanksgiving together.  With its focus on cozy gatherings, a shared table…and space for gratitude…Thanksgiving is about as close as our country gets to a shared sense of the sacred…a kind of national liturgy.  

Gratitude Research

My decades-long interest in resilience research brings me back again and again to appreciate the central role of gratitude in weathering the inevitable storms that blow through a life.  Gratitude…like resilience…like love…is a muscle that grows with exercise.  Marty Seligman’s investigations on gratitude-practice demonstrate its power to improve mood and well-being in a stable, long-lasting way.  That research has been replicated in the laboratory of my clients’ and family’s lives many times over.  

Doctor Lucy Hone’s first person resilience research transforms gratitude practice into something of a personal floatation device for when grief is oceanic.  Like a somber ship’s captain, she instructs her readers and listeners, “if the ship goes down, don’t let go of [gratitude]!”  In his immensely popular Ted Talk, as well as his books, Brother David Steindl-Rast asserts that “at every moment,” you can find something for which you can experience and express gratitude.  He’s quick to point out that this is not the same thing as saying that you can feel gratitude for every experience.  For example, you cannot feel or express gratitude for evil.  In other words, some things have no silver lining.  However, as Lucy Hone discovered in the aftermath of losing her twelve year old daughter, immersed in horrible pain, you can still intentionally “hunt the good stuff.”  Even in the midst of pain, with gratitude, comes a medicinal dose of grace to make it through another moment.  On Thanksgiving in 2015, I accidentally found myself testing all of this research.

Norman Rockwell’s Yearly Trip to Saint Louis

For many years Lisa and I hosted her family for Thanksgiving.  My mother and father-in-law would take the nine-hour trip south from Medford, Wisconsin.  Planes, trains and automobiles would pull in from the four winds to unload a chaotic mix of adult children, in-laws, and grandchildren.  My kids enthusiastically vacated their bedrooms to share basement floor space with their beloved cousins.  Our yearly Thanksgiving traditions included, a multi-generational soccer game, a family kickball tournament, and a, “kids-only,” all-nighter.  During these four day parties, Lisa and I would periodically stop one-another, and whisper a question,  “Are you taking this in?”  It was a reminder for us to STOP…DROP, and…SAVOR the fleeting grace of these passing moments.  Thanksgiving Eve of 2015, we were to learn the prescience of this whispered wisdom.    

The Year Edvard Munch Came to Thanksgiving

My mother-in-law always thought of herself as a clandestine smoker.  She apparently believed that her breath mints were made at Hogwarts, providing her a certain kind of invisibility that removed all traces of second and thirdhand smoke from garages and clothing!  The actual power source of her smoking-invisibility flowed from her family’s unspoken agreement to turn a blind eye (or blind nose).  Suffice to say, that on Thanksgiving Eve, 2015, it wasn’t a surprise to see grandma exit out the garage door for ten-or-so minutes.  The reverie of adult beverages, food prep, and 100 kinetic child activities covered over the fact that she had been gone a full four cigarettes worth of time.  It was right about then, when I looked up from my pie-making.  Out the kitchen window, I could see an ambulance pulling into my driveway.      

Flashing red and blue lights outlined the form of my unconscious mother-in-law, and reflected off of a pool of liquid that that had formed under and around her, who knows how long ago?  What little hope I attempted to kindle was quickly extinguished in the Emergency Room.  Brain imaging revealed neurologic devastation.  Machines could keep her heart and breath pulsing long enough to gather the rest of the family to say goodbye.  Just to be clear, there was nothing in me that was savoring any part of that event.  Some experiences just plain suck!   

Gratitude as a Personal Flotation Device

Just after Last Rites were administered, I sought out my kids in the ER waiting room.  On a normal day, my six-foot three, skinny, teen-aged boy resembled one of those roadside inflatable tube men.  On that night, when I laid eyes on him, folded into an ER waiting room chair, he reminded me more of a pressure cooker that had lost its valve.  I took him out front of that huge urban hospital to let some of his hurricane out.  It roared!  He punched every street sign within reach.  He kicked garbage cans.  He painted every surface with a firehose of profanity!  As the storm dissipated, he allowed me to draw him in.  By-and-by, he folded his six-foot-three man-frame over the top of me.  It had been many years since I held my toddler-boy.  He sobbed himself to sleep in my arms.  There it was.   Brother Steindl-Rast, and Lucy Hone called it.  I’m not saying that there was any kind of a conscious thought of it at the moment, but looking back, right in the middle of devastation, here was something to savor…something neither John Harry nor I planned for…nor will ever forget.  Out of nowhere came a graced experience that turned the scalding heat of grief down a few degrees.

A night later, it was time to say good bye to Grandma.  The plan was that each sibling’s family would have their group moment with her—alone.  As we awaited our turn, Dr. Lisa, my wife, pulled a few strings.  Our little family of five was able to take a private moment on the rooftop garden at Saint Louis Children’s Hospital.   Suddenly, Lisa became the child, and her children became the parents as they held her while she sobbed…all of us looking out over the lights of Saint Louis’ night-time skyline.  In the blink of an eye, my young adults were escorted into a peer relationship with their mother.  Even in the moment, we knew enough to savor.  None of us will ever forget the power of that grace-filled moment.  From our seat in Hell, we could see Heaven.  

Something similar happened on Thanksgiving evening 2022.  While voicing gratitude, my nephew, who works 100 hour work-weeks wept as he shared, “It’s so good to be here.  I have no way to access these parts of myself in my life.”  As he sat on my couch, he was savoring the life-long sources of love, humor, and community that were seated all around him.  Taking the time to savor gave him enough space to acknowledge the all-work-all-of-the-time, inhumane daily desert he inhabits.  I was interested to see how this seed of insight, planted in gratitude, would change things for him as he stepped back into his work-a-day life.  During the following year, with a smile, I viewed pictures of him mugging for a camera with his new girlfriend.  With some frequency, social media photos appeared of him taking the time to connect with my daughter and her husband who lived a Texas three-hour drive away from him.  There is power in gratitude.    

Dialogue:

·      When was the last time that you consciously took time to Stop…Drop…and Savor?

·      In retrospect, can you look back on a difficult time and pull up experiences of grace that you can return to, step back into, and savor?

·      Perhaps at your Thanksgiving table, or during a walk, could you and your dialogue partner take turns sharing your respective stories of a powerful moment of goodness, joy, warmth, or accomplishment, and savor those moments together?

·      Do you have a regular practice of gratitude?