So You Want To Be Happy?
Thanksgiving Reflection
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 22, 2015
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
For the last several years now I have found television in November nearly intolerable. Not because the programs suddenly change or get worse in November. No. It is because the commercials begin.
You know...the ones about black Friday and limited quantities and special hours and being open on Thanksgiving and hurrying, getting a head start and the best deals and one upping your neighbors and friends by getting the last of the latest new thing that will inevitably be obsolete and shoved into a corner of the garage waiting to be thrown out by New Years but that you will nonetheless hang onto until some church yard sale in the distance future!
But this year something’s changed. There are still advertisements, but not just for sales. Several ads have aired in which a retailer has announced they will be closed on Thanksgiving so their employees can spend the holiday with their loved ones.
Could it be that at least some of corporate America finally gets Thanksgiving? I will refrain from indulging the temptation of my cynical side to wonder, “What’s the catch?” and instead allow myself or choose to feel gratitude for this move by some retailers to help restore some of the spirit of the season back into this holiday.
Were I not able to allow or choose gratitude as my response, this would be a very different reflection and I, a pretty cranky guy.
I’ve tried cranky. People don’t like being around me when I’m cranky. I don’t like being around me when I’m cranky. The message is clear: cranky is not for me.
Which brings me to the title of this morning’s reflection, “So You Want To Be Happy?”
Throughout the service we’ve heard about a secret; a secret we discover by giving thanks. Given all the wisdom shared by my service co-leaders I suppose the secret is out...”the heart that gives thanks is a happy one.” (Douglas Wood). So you want to be happy? Then be grateful! Easy! Right?
Well, not exactly. If it were easy there’d be a lot more happy people in the world and far less suffering and strife. Gratitude does take some effort. It is something we have to allow in and choose. Yet more than a state of mind we can reason or will into being, it is a state of heart we must nurture and tend to if it is to grow. Gratitude is something we cultivate.
The word gratitude comes from the Latin “gratia” meaning grace, thankfulness, or graciousness and contains elements of all of these. Robert A. Emmons and Joanna Hill, authors of Words of Gratitude..., define gratitude as “a feeling, a moral attribute, a virtue, a mystical experience, and a conscious act, all in one.” Which is to say it is manifest and experienced in different ways.
Perhaps the most basic way we recognize and practice gratitude is by saying thank you to someone for something they’ve done for or given us. More than a polite gesture or social expectation, saying thanks communicates that we recognize and appreciate the presence of others in our life. Saying thanks connects us to others and builds community, moving us beyond stubborn self-sufficiency, and raising awareness of our interconnectedness. And it feels good all around. Giving and receiving thanks is one of the ways in which we live our principles by affirming human worth and dignity...showing the world each and every person is important.
So you want to be happy? Thank people, regularly.
Every now and then I pull out a box containing cards people have written to me thanking me for something, sometimes they are about things I didn’t know I had done or had an impact. The idea for keeping this box came from my mentor who said it would help me in my ministry when the ministry gets tough or overwhelming. He was right. Reading one or two of these cards when things are difficult not only reminds me of why I chose to pursue my call to ministry, but also fills me with gratitude for all the people, circumstances, and opportunities that made it possible for me to do so. It reminds me that I am the recipient of many blessings, including ones for which I did nothing in particular to deserve.
This awareness stirs within me the impulse to live into gratitude by sharing my blessings, be they of time and attention, knowledge or skills, material or financial support. When we, as members or friends of this church community, are aware of our blessings and respond by sharing them, we live into being part of our congregational mission and the affirmation we say together each week in worship. And we help make the world a little better for others and ourselves.
So you want to be happy? Count and share your blessings.
Recently I was in New York City and visited the new Whitney Museum. The museum features outdoor space on several levels with big sculptures and sweeping views of the city and across the river. I had arrived just around sunset so when I went out on the terraces it was not quite dark outside, but a soft grayish purple hue punctuated with the light of windows, street lights, and the sky tinted with patches of pale yellow and orange between clouds suspended over the river and city below. I paused to be still and as I stood there and just took it all in I felt the distinct experience of at-oneness for which gratitude seems the only possible response. Such moments remind me that I am part of...not separate from... something far greater than myself.
Of course you don’t have to travel to New York to have such a realization. It can happen as we gaze across the ocean or while walking in the woods. It may be experienced singing or listening to a particular song or piece of music. And sometimes it just comes unexpectedly when we are gathered with others and we feel immersed in beloved communion with others and with life itself. It is not something we seek out in a particular location, it is a possibility we surrender to wherever we are.
So you want to be happy? Offer yourself to opportunities for awe and wonder.
Saying thanks, counting our blessings, stopping “to smell the roses” as it were, are examples of some of the many ways we can cultivate gratitude and be happy.
But what about all the loss, suffering, and violence in the world...in our own lives, you may ask? Gratitude as the secret of happiness does not ask us to gloss over or deny the reality or pain that is also part of life. Rather it offers us a choice in how we respond to what life sends our way. The beauty of this is the choice can be made at anytime, though when faced with difficult or painful situations, it often it takes time and is a choice we make later.
Indeed, few would greet a serious illness, divorce, job or similar loss with gratitude. Still many people I have met and ministered to have spoken of such experiences in the language of gratitude, often recounting ways an unwelcome, unwanted, or unexpected event helped them reset their priorities, figure out what is truly important, healed relationships, brought people together, or impacted the way others choose to live. My own experience with depression and other hardships, loss and disappointments have all presented me with opportunities for which I am now grateful though I would never, ever would have asked for or wished upon another those painful experiences themselves. More than making difficult times less painful, gratitude ultimately helped make them more bearable by giving me a way to find or make meaning from them that was empowering and healing.
Gratitude is a powerful and empowering choice in a world where there is much despair. Which may be why the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you say your entire life is thank you, that will suffice.” Which is another way of saying, if the only practice we live by is gratitude, that will suffice.”
Eckart’s claim of the sufficiency of thanks as one’s only prayer or practice rests on another secret of saying thanks...which, in the words of author Douglas Wood is, “the more we say thanks, the more we find to be thankful for and the more we find to be thankful for, the happier we become.”
Thus our ability to choose gratitude is not dependent upon external events, but the depth of our practice of giving thanks. Gratitude has a cumulative effect on our spiritual wellbeing. For as Wood reminds us in the closing lines of The Secret of Saying Thanks, “We don’t give thanks because we’re happy. We are happy because we give thanks.”
And so, give thanks. Be Happy. And Happy Thanksgiving.
Amen and Blessed Be
Thanksgiving Reflection
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 22, 2015
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
For the last several years now I have found television in November nearly intolerable. Not because the programs suddenly change or get worse in November. No. It is because the commercials begin.
You know...the ones about black Friday and limited quantities and special hours and being open on Thanksgiving and hurrying, getting a head start and the best deals and one upping your neighbors and friends by getting the last of the latest new thing that will inevitably be obsolete and shoved into a corner of the garage waiting to be thrown out by New Years but that you will nonetheless hang onto until some church yard sale in the distance future!
But this year something’s changed. There are still advertisements, but not just for sales. Several ads have aired in which a retailer has announced they will be closed on Thanksgiving so their employees can spend the holiday with their loved ones.
Could it be that at least some of corporate America finally gets Thanksgiving? I will refrain from indulging the temptation of my cynical side to wonder, “What’s the catch?” and instead allow myself or choose to feel gratitude for this move by some retailers to help restore some of the spirit of the season back into this holiday.
Were I not able to allow or choose gratitude as my response, this would be a very different reflection and I, a pretty cranky guy.
I’ve tried cranky. People don’t like being around me when I’m cranky. I don’t like being around me when I’m cranky. The message is clear: cranky is not for me.
Which brings me to the title of this morning’s reflection, “So You Want To Be Happy?”
Throughout the service we’ve heard about a secret; a secret we discover by giving thanks. Given all the wisdom shared by my service co-leaders I suppose the secret is out...”the heart that gives thanks is a happy one.” (Douglas Wood). So you want to be happy? Then be grateful! Easy! Right?
Well, not exactly. If it were easy there’d be a lot more happy people in the world and far less suffering and strife. Gratitude does take some effort. It is something we have to allow in and choose. Yet more than a state of mind we can reason or will into being, it is a state of heart we must nurture and tend to if it is to grow. Gratitude is something we cultivate.
The word gratitude comes from the Latin “gratia” meaning grace, thankfulness, or graciousness and contains elements of all of these. Robert A. Emmons and Joanna Hill, authors of Words of Gratitude..., define gratitude as “a feeling, a moral attribute, a virtue, a mystical experience, and a conscious act, all in one.” Which is to say it is manifest and experienced in different ways.
Perhaps the most basic way we recognize and practice gratitude is by saying thank you to someone for something they’ve done for or given us. More than a polite gesture or social expectation, saying thanks communicates that we recognize and appreciate the presence of others in our life. Saying thanks connects us to others and builds community, moving us beyond stubborn self-sufficiency, and raising awareness of our interconnectedness. And it feels good all around. Giving and receiving thanks is one of the ways in which we live our principles by affirming human worth and dignity...showing the world each and every person is important.
So you want to be happy? Thank people, regularly.
Every now and then I pull out a box containing cards people have written to me thanking me for something, sometimes they are about things I didn’t know I had done or had an impact. The idea for keeping this box came from my mentor who said it would help me in my ministry when the ministry gets tough or overwhelming. He was right. Reading one or two of these cards when things are difficult not only reminds me of why I chose to pursue my call to ministry, but also fills me with gratitude for all the people, circumstances, and opportunities that made it possible for me to do so. It reminds me that I am the recipient of many blessings, including ones for which I did nothing in particular to deserve.
This awareness stirs within me the impulse to live into gratitude by sharing my blessings, be they of time and attention, knowledge or skills, material or financial support. When we, as members or friends of this church community, are aware of our blessings and respond by sharing them, we live into being part of our congregational mission and the affirmation we say together each week in worship. And we help make the world a little better for others and ourselves.
So you want to be happy? Count and share your blessings.
Recently I was in New York City and visited the new Whitney Museum. The museum features outdoor space on several levels with big sculptures and sweeping views of the city and across the river. I had arrived just around sunset so when I went out on the terraces it was not quite dark outside, but a soft grayish purple hue punctuated with the light of windows, street lights, and the sky tinted with patches of pale yellow and orange between clouds suspended over the river and city below. I paused to be still and as I stood there and just took it all in I felt the distinct experience of at-oneness for which gratitude seems the only possible response. Such moments remind me that I am part of...not separate from... something far greater than myself.
Of course you don’t have to travel to New York to have such a realization. It can happen as we gaze across the ocean or while walking in the woods. It may be experienced singing or listening to a particular song or piece of music. And sometimes it just comes unexpectedly when we are gathered with others and we feel immersed in beloved communion with others and with life itself. It is not something we seek out in a particular location, it is a possibility we surrender to wherever we are.
So you want to be happy? Offer yourself to opportunities for awe and wonder.
Saying thanks, counting our blessings, stopping “to smell the roses” as it were, are examples of some of the many ways we can cultivate gratitude and be happy.
But what about all the loss, suffering, and violence in the world...in our own lives, you may ask? Gratitude as the secret of happiness does not ask us to gloss over or deny the reality or pain that is also part of life. Rather it offers us a choice in how we respond to what life sends our way. The beauty of this is the choice can be made at anytime, though when faced with difficult or painful situations, it often it takes time and is a choice we make later.
Indeed, few would greet a serious illness, divorce, job or similar loss with gratitude. Still many people I have met and ministered to have spoken of such experiences in the language of gratitude, often recounting ways an unwelcome, unwanted, or unexpected event helped them reset their priorities, figure out what is truly important, healed relationships, brought people together, or impacted the way others choose to live. My own experience with depression and other hardships, loss and disappointments have all presented me with opportunities for which I am now grateful though I would never, ever would have asked for or wished upon another those painful experiences themselves. More than making difficult times less painful, gratitude ultimately helped make them more bearable by giving me a way to find or make meaning from them that was empowering and healing.
Gratitude is a powerful and empowering choice in a world where there is much despair. Which may be why the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you say your entire life is thank you, that will suffice.” Which is another way of saying, if the only practice we live by is gratitude, that will suffice.”
Eckart’s claim of the sufficiency of thanks as one’s only prayer or practice rests on another secret of saying thanks...which, in the words of author Douglas Wood is, “the more we say thanks, the more we find to be thankful for and the more we find to be thankful for, the happier we become.”
Thus our ability to choose gratitude is not dependent upon external events, but the depth of our practice of giving thanks. Gratitude has a cumulative effect on our spiritual wellbeing. For as Wood reminds us in the closing lines of The Secret of Saying Thanks, “We don’t give thanks because we’re happy. We are happy because we give thanks.”
And so, give thanks. Be Happy. And Happy Thanksgiving.
Amen and Blessed Be
