Expressing Gratitude:  A Double-Edged Flower

According to the website, OpenBible.info,  (www.openbible.info/topics/gratitude) there are 72 Bible verses that address the topic of gratitude (thankfulness).  (There are only 57 on the topic of Grace and 60 on Prayer.)

But identifying importance based on counting something is a flimsy way of ranking anything that is truly meaningful to us as individuals.   For instance, the most meaningful things for me are my wife, my children and my friends.   And those are identified as having a Bible verse about them 25 times, 23 times and 31 times respectively. 

Yet, since this is a blog on the Church and Aging, it is comforting to know that issues of gratitude and thankfulness are well represented in the Bible -- and in my experience in Sunday School and listening to Sunday sermons. 

Ordinary surveys of what is important generally identify that gratitude is seen as an important virtue by most people.

Online (www.ask-oracle.com/personal-development/gratitude/) I ran across this quote that is more or less a reasonable summary of gratitude:  

     “Marcus Cicero, a Roman Philosopher, considered gratitude as the mother of all virtues – and wasn’t he absolutely right when such warm feeling is a beautifully authentic driving force for connecting people among themselves, and also the individual to the divine?  Gratitude brings to our hearts and souls a feeling of true appreciation, kindness and thankfulness, enlightening us with a blissful and friendly feeling towards the person [and our God] who deserves and awakened our gratitude.”

The world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude, Dr. Robert Emmons, says, “My research, and research by my colleagues, has linked gratitude to a host of psychological, physical, and social benefits: stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, more feelings of joy, and a greater sense of social connection, among many others. … people are actually more successful at reaching their goals when they consciously practice gratitude.”

Why then, with such strong Biblical, scientific and personal support for understanding its powerful importance, does the conscious practice of gratitude seem so difficult? 

I recently discovered a clue during my work on a course for next fall in the Cannon Valley Elder Collegium (http://cvec.org/) with my colleague, Dr. Howard Thorshem.  Our tentative title is “Gratitude and Belief:  Noticing the Whole Picture.”  As part of our study and preparation for that course, we have been contemplating ways for asking our students to do something or other that will bring them closer to understanding the importance of gratitude. 

But as I started to think about what I was thankful for over the course of a day, I realized that I first had to go back and consciously notice what happened to me during a day that gave me some sort of positive emotions, say of joy, contentment, serenity, competence, satisfaction or hope.  Since I don’t do that on any sort of regular basis, I found it difficult to keep asking myself how I was feeling (emotionally) as the day went on.  But, when I finally settled into some sort of irregular but satisfactory routine, I was amazed at the variety of events that gave me positive emotions. 

It was only as I started gathering this list of meaningful and emotionally positive “events” that I was able to think about expressing gratitude.  But then I discovered that the diversity and the sometimes “non-human” source of my feelings of joy, love or delight caused me to ask, “To whom do I give thanks?”  

For instance, what do I do or to what person do I express my gratitude when a beautiful house finch alights on our patio railing for the first time this spring, or one of our two cats lovingly nestles into my lap and loudly purrs?   Who do I call when I feel so very content as I sit down in my chair in the morning with my coffee and newspaper?  The power of gratitude expressed is more clear when a wonderful smile from my wife makes me feel a sense of love, joy, delight, and awe all at once, or when I receive a much appreciated email from my daughter thanking me for accompanying my 17 year-old grandson on a five-hour tour of the Minneapolis Car Show last night. 

Yes, for the emotionally positive moments that come along without a direct human hand, I should probably stop right then and thank God.  Yet I rarely do that.  But on the other hand, I rarely stop my activities, turn and personally thank a person who has just done or said something to me at the grocery store that gave me a jolt of confidence, amusement or satisfaction.  

Yet, I know that in all cases such expressed gratitude would make a positive difference to me as well as to the person I thank (or to God as I thank him).  Sure, I do all of that at church, but it isn’t the same.  I can’t say that I feel that reciprocal sense of positive emotions as I push through the liturgy of thanksgiving while standing in the pews.  It’s not like the good feelings I felt a while ago after I wrote a letter of thanks to an older friend who had been in the lead of two Marine landings in the Pacific during WWII.

The other day, Howard and I had a wonderful conversation with an amazing colleague from the St. Olaf art department, Mac Gimse.  We were explaining to him that the power of “expressing gratitude” lies in its ability to make the person who you are thanking feel good – more appreciative about what she has done, perhaps – and it also ignites positive feelings in you for having said something meaningful to the person who had just done something worthy of your thanks.  Our friend Mac then said, “Wow, a double-edged flower!”

This “double-edged flower” of expressing gratitude is such an available skill for all of us.  And every time we use it well we start a ripple of good will in two directions.  So how do we get it started in church?

Bruce