A Celebration of Thanksgiving

En Español

Thursday November 22, 2012

Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice

"There is a calmness to a life lived in Gratitude, a quiet joy." -- Ralph H. Blum

Welcoming:

This is a day which was created for us; Let us be thankful for it.

Let us be thankful for the capacity to hear, to see. To think;

It is a time to celebrate the gifts of life, to share religious community,

To affirm our moral values, to gain strength, courage and comfort,

And to be challenged to create a better world.

Let us be especially grateful for the ties of love that give meaning,

Dignity, and worth to the life we live each day.

Prelude: Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.

It turns what we have into enough, and more.

It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to 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.

Opening Responsive Reading

The gifts of sadness, like the gifts of happiness, come to all conditions and types of people.

They provide moments of self-clarification that keep our lives on course...

Our going safely through the world is based upon a true regard of both conditions

When we value the gifts both of joy and of sorrow, our taste for life increases.

When we accept both happiness and sadness as our mortal bequest,

We grow as human beings

Lighting the Chalice:
Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being

To receive,

To carry,

and to give back

We light this as a symbol to be ever mindful of those three tasks.

* Hymn: # 349 (STLT) We Gather Together

We gather together in joyful thanksgiving,

Acclaiming creation, whose bounty we share;

Both sorrow and gladness we find now in our living,

We sing a hymn of praise to the life that we bear.

We gather together to join in the journey,

confirming, committing our passage to be

a true affirmation, In joy and tribulation,

when bound to human care and hope. Then we are free.

Joys and Concerns: (We throw a small stone into this bowl filled with water, to symbolize our thoughts, which move in circular rings eternally, like concentric waves.)
We invite you to share your joys and concerns since our last meeting

Prayer: (This morning we will have a responsive prayer followed by a moment of silent meditation)

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you,' it will be enough."--Meister Eckhart

For the blessings of the earth that gladden our lives,

We Give Thanks

Blessings are not shared equally, Create within us hearts of generosity and sharing.

For works of our hands and hearts and minds that give us places in this universe,

We Give Thanks

Work is not distributed fairly;

Create within us hearts of fairness and solidarity.

For incomes that sustain us in our wourldly needs,

We Give Thanks

Incomes are not awarded equitably:

Create within us hearts of justice and public interest.

For health of mind and body which allows us to celebrate life

We Give Thanks

Health is not enjoyed universally;

Create within us hearts of compassion and healing.

For freedom of heart and mind which makes it possible to worship freely,

We Give Thanks

Freedom is not everywhere honored:

Create within us hearts of truth and courage.

Make us stewards of the gifts of life,

That we may create beloved community and may not be divided by greed, envy and anger. Amen

Hymn: # 32 (SLT) Now Thank We All Our God
1.Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices;
Who from our parents' arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

2. O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us
, With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
The one eternal God,whom earth and heaven adore
For thus it was, is now and shall be ever more.

First Reading

Listen,with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over the telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

-- W. S. Merwin

Discussion: (copyright: First Unitarian Church San José)

In today's Thanksgiving Service we will explore various aspects of gratitude. Think about gratitude as a spiritual practice. Gratitude is a way of being in the world that goes beyond thank-you notes, and lists of things to be thankful for. "Gratitude is when we become aware of the beauty of and in our lives, and our hearts say 'thank you' in response to that awareness." (From Rev. Suzelle Lynch's sermon "Grateful Even for the Hard Stuff.") .

Today we think about "Home". More than any other holiday, this is the holiday that people try to be home, where ever that may be. I first left Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city I had been born in more than 40 years ago. In the beginning I felt NOT to live in Cambridge was to live in exile. I traveled the world, lived in Europe, Japan and Puerto Rico. As I continued my travels, I found many places had that special "something" to recommend them. Recently I was ready to retire and had selected Asheville, NC as my preferred location. It shocked me when one of my brothers said to me, "I thought you might come home, now". So where is "home"? I offer you this link and reality check of autumn poetry, snow falling and a song. I remember too many Thanksgiving snowstorms.
Donner Lohnes, Lay Minister
A wise person once said, "Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out into your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can see what's there. It was always there, but you couldn't see it in the dark." (From Dawna Markova, Attitudes of Gratitude.)
As you go about a day with a grateful attitude, what small things do you notice that you might have missed?

A woman tells this story about a visit to Hawaii . Her husband, an organized and frugal man, had reserved compact rental cars on each of the four islands months in advance. On arriving on the Big Island and presenting their reservation to the car rental desk, they were told that the economy car they had reserved was not available. Alarmed, she watched her husband's face redden as he prepared to do battle. The clerk did not seem to notice. "I am so sorry, sir," he said. "Will you accept a substitute for the same price? We have a Mustang convertible." Barely mollified, her husband put their bags in this beautiful white sports car and they drove off. The same thing happened throughout their holiday. … After the Mustang, they had been given a Mazda MR-10, a Lincoln Town Car, and finally, a Mercedes, all with the most sincere apologies. The vacation was absolutely wonderful and on the plane back, she turned to her husband, thanking him for all he had done to arrange such a memorable time. "Yes," he said, pleased, "it was really nice. Too bad they never had the right car for us." He was absolutely serious. (From Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen)

Gratitude is about keeping an open mind. It is about not having your mind so set on an apple, that you can't be grateful when given a luscious pear. How have you found ways to be grateful for the ways that life turned out, rather than the ways you expected it to be?

"It is during our deepest pain that the seeds of our most powerful gratitude are planted…Gratitude does not come when we are hurting, nor should we task ourselves to 'find the lesson' in something when we are hurting. But later, when the shock has passed, when the pain has lessened and the tears are gone, when acceptance and healing have begun, gratitude may creep in. We begin to see the gift the experience has brought us. And the gift is rarely that we can see the 'reason why' something awful happened, because most often there is no reason why. But we can eventually come to an understanding of how the bad things that have happened to us help shape who we are today, and what we are becoming. We can look back in gratitude and see how our pain has schooled us in resilience and refined our character. And perhaps, even further down life's road, we can come to accept even the pain itself as one of life's gifts. But that is a very spiritually advanced place to be. The process of becoming grateful for the hard stuff takes a long time." (From Rev. Suzelle Lynch's sermon "Grateful Even for the Hard Stuff.")

Have you found ways to be grateful for difficult people or circumstances?

How might an "attitude of gratitude" change your everyday life?
Think about what it takes to get to gratitude?

Share your thoughts on gratitude as a spiritual practice. How does gratitude relate to our UU Purposes and Principles?
* Hymn: A Hymn of Thanks (SLT) #128
For all that is our life
we sing our thanks and praise;
for all life is a gift
which we are called to use
to build the common good
and make our own days glad.

For needs which others serve,
for services we give,
for work and its rewards,
for hours of rest and love,
we come with praise and thanks
for all that is our life.

For sorrow we must bear,
for failures pain and loss,
for each new thing we learn,
for fearful hours that pass:
we come with praise and thanks
for all that is our life.

Final Words:

Gratitude is also about thanking those around us. During this week, thank someone who deserves but rarely gets your thanks.

* Closing circle of hands: (Holding hands or link arms as you read the closing words together)

We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth,
the warmth of community,
the fire of commitment,
or the spirit of gratitude.
These we carry in hearts until we are together again.

* Hymn: Go Now in Peace
Go now in Peace, Go now in Peace,
May the Love of God surround you ,
everywhere, everywhere,
You may go.

*Stand as you are willing or able

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