Gratitude as Practice and Resistance

Look deep into this photograph.  To where are you drawn?

A bit about the photo…This was from Sunday morning before worship.  I had taken Scout to Winton Woods and was driving home to get ready to head to Ft Thomas.  I turned onto the road to our house as I came down the hill and I saw this scene at the top of the hill.  I just had to stop.  I pulled over, turned on my hazard lights, told Scout I’d be right back, and I bounded over to a better vantage point than the side of the road.  I took a few deep breaths and honored this moment of beauty before pulling out my camera for a few photographs.

There was a lot to which I was drawn in this moment - the hazy horizon lit golden by the rising sun, the patterns of light and shadow on the grass formed by the interplay between the sunlight and the trees, and the silhouetted trees on the left side.  But there was one thing in particular…that one red tree illuminated by the sun in the midst of the silhouettes.  Here are a few photos that show that tree a bit more.

To me, that tree is a visual of the practice of gratitude in our lives.  There was so much happening in that moment at the top of the hill at 7:30am on Sunday.  There was the pull going on within me about how I needed to get home so I could get dressed to be on time for our Sunday morning Bible study and I was not thrilled about where I had to stop the car and so I knew I didn’t have a lot of time there.  So I had those things going on within me alongside the pull of the beauty of that moment.  And, like I shared above, there’s so much just in this scene to take in.

That’s like our lives isn’t it?  So much so much so much happening around us. 

Carrie Newcomer

wrote this in her weekly subscriber email (on Sunday as well interestingly enough)

I don’t believe our hearts and souls were actually designed to take in this much suffering at such a bewildering speed. We are not fully equipped to accept daily violence as run of the mill, same old same old, with a resigned and deadened casualness…I must choose to guard my tender heart, to keep it safe in a way that makes sure that cruelty is never normalized, in a manner that allows me keep an open heart and continue to live with real compassion.  Part of that care and protective nurture of the heart is to lean into what is still beautiful as I find it each day.  Living well with gratitude and joy is an act of resistance, a claiming and affirmation of all that is still good and still true.

I love that last line…living well with gratitude and joy as a deliberate practice is truly an act of resistance against fear, anger, hatred, and division.  So just as there is so much happening in this photo, I am still drawn to that single tree off to the side.  Working on our gratitude muscles allows us to live day by day seeing gratitude and sharing gratitude and holding it alongside everything else.  It isn’t seeing it to the exclusion of everything else but holding it alongside. As is read in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

So, as this Thanksgiving week is in progress, what can you do towards living with gratitude in a new way?  Can you start a gratitude journal that you keep each day to “work out” those gratitude muscles?  Can you find someone with whom you will share a gratitude each day?  Can you offer each gratitude as a prayer giving thanks to God, the divine, who is still at work, still speaking, still moving?

To where are you drawn in the image?