More on Gratitude

This week, we welcomed yet another child into our family. Christopher's safe arrival was an occasion for joy, thanksgiving, and secret relief that all went well. For human beings are notoriously fragile, especially newborns, and each year they not only survive, but actually grow and flourish, is thus a kind of miracle.

Yet behind healthy, happy children stand adults who have devoted themselves to the cause. They have worked hard and unselfishly to provide the necessities of life for their children. They have set aside their own private hopes and dreams, sometimes for decades, in order to nurture the next generation. Their commitment is all-encompassing, and their courage profound.

Thank heavens, I thought, that my grandchildren have parents like these! Yet as I gazed down at beautiful little Christopher, asleep in the crook of his exhausted mother's arm, I found myself having to accept an additional truth, one that flies in the face of contemporary wisdom about what constitutes good parenting. When God tells us to honor our fathers and our mothers, he is asking us to acknowledge the monumental sacrifice that any parent--good, adequate, or barely sufficient--must make in order that a child might grow. According to his commandment, it does not matter whether we at the same time receive those blessings that psychology insists are mandatory for human flourishing: affirmation, encouragement, unconditional love. It is enough, God says in this difficult commandment, that someone takes on the burden of providing for our physical needs--that someone cares enough to get us through. Our obligation in return is gratitude in the form of everlasting respect for those who bring us into the world and who (however ineptly, and with whatever lack of skill or tact) enable us to survive and grow.

Though this insight made me uncomfortable (I was nearly forty before I could forgive my own hardworking, committed parents for all the "necessities" I was convinced they'd failed to provide), it was also a relief to have the obligation of gratitude spelled out in such simple and straightforward terms. Parents do not have to "earn" their children's gratitude; babies arrive in the world with this debt on their shoulders. And it is likewise in our relationship with God, our heavenly Father, who not only knits us together in our mother's womb, but breathes into us the very breath of life, and whose creation provides for us the means of growth and flourishing. Our thanksgiving, worship and praise are rooted in this most basic truth: without God, we would not exist. Every other good thing that comes our way is simply added blessing.

Gratitude is thus a necessary aspect of our spiritual identity. When we fail to grasp this reality, our vision becomes narrow and skewed, for all we can see is what we want and do not have. Instead of joy that God has promised us, we feel resentment and bitterness. The goal of the contemplative life, however, is true seeing, which begins with continual thanksgiving. The childlike lightheartedness and joy of holy people is a reflection of this unshakable gratitude.

Gratitude

Who is this? I have no idea. A somber-looking stranger, sitting on a bench beside some spectacular roses in Hexham, England. I didn't even take the photo--Mike did. But there's something in it that arrests me. For lately I've been thinking a lot about gratitude--actually, my lifetime habit of IN-gratitude, of taking for granted the unutterable riches that have come to me by virtue of being alive on this earth. And there's something in this stranger's face that bespeaks the opposite, despite his distant expression. For he looks to me like a man who's suffered, who knows the worst that can happen to a fragile human being. Yet he stations himself within the realm of beauty. Knowing full well how fleeting is life, he is grateful for the mutable, the brief but stunning blossoming of roses.

Today's Old Testament reading was one that has always made me shudder: the faithful Hebrew mother whose seven sons are to be slaughtered before her eyes for their refusal to engage in profane practices. If they remain steadfast, they are all doomed, these young men she once carried through pregnancy, nursed and protected and raised to healthy adolescence despite the dangers of the world. What does she tell them? "I do not know how you came into existence in my womb; it was not I who gave you the breath of life nor was it I who set in order the elements of which each of you is composed. Therefore, since it is the Creator of the universe who shapes each man's beginning, as he brings about the origin of everything, he, in his mercy, will give you back both breath and life, because you now disregard yourselves for the sake of his law" (2 Maccabees 7: 20-31).

Her grateful awe for the miracle of their existence is so profound that she does not even think of selfishly clinging to them. Instead, she urges them to be noble, to be true to their faith, to respect the God who gave them life by refusing to defile his holy name. And so they die, and she is left alone, a widow with no sons to care for her. Her gratitude is not thoughtless or cheap but comes at a terrible price: loss, grief, insecurity.

I look at the stranger in this photo, his white shirt carefully buttoned to the neck, the cane that rests beside him against the bench, and I see the marks of physical pain upon his face, pain that has perhaps kept him from a life he truly wanted: wife, children, grandchildren, a community of friends. There's loneliness in that distant gaze. Without the roses, he might well become an icon of suffering.

The roses, however, redeem the scene. Their fragile beauty speaks of grace, the limitless bounty of a generous God, his endless showering of love upon the world. And this man knows that. You can see it in his grip upon the handrail, the resting of his weary hand beside the flowers. Unlike me, who demands perfect safety for my loved ones, who whines about shaky finances and lost opportunities and political disappointments, this man is grateful for what he has been given: a warm place in the sun, a bow of exquisite blossoms.

The Supper of the Lambs

If it is possible for two-year-olds to share anything, then these young men are sharing a meal. Though they are trying their best to eat amicably, Eli is getting new molars, as evidenced by the bib of drool, and Ben is coming off a week of bronchitis. Cousins, they have only just begun to know one another and aren't yet quite sure if this is going to work. Serious impediments to the full flowering of liberty, fraternity, and equality in this new relationship exist, paramount among these being the question of who controls Thomas Train. Yet because people they love have told them they should, they are trying.

Their expressions reveal what they aren't old enough to express, however: love is hard. You can get fooled. You can get bullied. You can lose your place in the sun to someone more charming than you are. So why open your heart at all?

Many of us, ostensibly far older and wiser than these two, never do. Most of us learn to hold something back for our own protection. We hardly know what to make of Christ's seemingly impossible injunction to "love one another as I have loved you"--even when it comes to the people we most adore.

The candle on the table, now blown out, is a silent witness to the possibility of what seems ridiculously naive, however. It was lit at Ben's request, just as we sat down together to eat. He, a two-year-old, wanted to pray. Looking around at each other in proud amazement, we obediently joined hands, this multigenerational gene pool gathered in one place, and waited for the lambs to speak. Eli was both forthright and succinct: "Thank you for the food." Ben, however, had more on his mind this special evening. He closed his eyes and bowed his head and prayed his prayer of gratitude for chickens and windmills and dogs and corn on the cob and Grandpa and Grandma and Mama and Dada and--miracle of miracles--his new comrade and competitor, Cousin Eli.

Then he said amen.