Gratitude

A path near the author’s home. Photo by Elizabeth Records.

I have always loved Thanksgiving.

In our capitalist world we have a holiday that celebrates shopping for stuff we don’t need and cutting down millions of small trees. We have another that seems to center around stuffed rabbits and plastic eggs. The anniversary of our nation’s founding is mainly an occasion for blowing up lots of imported gunpowder. A celebration of the mystery of death is an occasion for handing out lots of candy and wasting lots of pumpkins. Thanksgiving, though, has not been so corrupted. It is still an occasion for gathering with friends and family for a harvest meal, an occasion for the giving of thanks.

When I was young my family had a tradition where we would each write things we were thankful for on slips of paper and pull them out of a jar like raffle tickets throughout the day.

It is true that the “Thanksgiving story” that supposedly gave rise to our holiday (notwithstanding that pretty much every agrarian culture has some equivalent gratitude-for-the-harvest festival at this time of year) is indeed a story of sharing repaid with genocide, sanitized for the history books. But that need not poison the occasion, which has only the shallowest of links to that story. If we acknowledge Indigenous Americans at this time, we should note that they are among the most devoted givers of thanks in their lives and cultures. The great six-nation confederacy of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) opened all major gatherings and political meetings with their Thanksgiving Address.

“Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.”

The address then gives thanks to the Earth Mother, the waters, the plants, the animals, the sun, the moon, and many others before closing:

“We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way. Now our minds are one.”

Imagine how much more harmonious our own politics might be if we were to incorporate a similar opening to our legislative sessions, if we truly felt deeply grateful for all of life and acknowledged this before beginning deliberations…

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Gratitude makes the mundane magical, and a lack of gratitude makes the magical mundane. Gratitude is the natural response to awareness, to a conscious reckoning with the complexity and mystery of all that surrounds us.

Too often we mistake knowledge for awareness. Knowledge assigns things to categories, and greater knowledge simply refines the categories.

Something moves outside our window. Most of us don’t notice. Many who notice recognize it as a bird. The more adept recognize it as a warbler. An ornithologist recognizes it as a juvenile female Magnolia Warbler sallying for insects. Categorization complete and data logged, their attention moves on.

A truly aware observer may well lack the ornithologist’s chops but will follow branching fractal paths of understanding that all end in mystery. This creature evolved from dinosaurs which evolved from amphibians, as did ourselves, and all of us started as bacteria, and why did it turn out that way, and how did it get started? This creature hatched from an egg and is about to fly 3,000 miles to a forest she has never seen where she will know which bugs are tasty and which are deadly, and following subtle cues she will fly north again and find the same spot where she was born, where she will know how and where to build a nest and how to keep the young ones safe from the creatures that would eat them. How does that work exactly? This creature is aware of me watching her. What do I appear to be? Who am I from her perspective? This creature can transform insects into beak, bones, feathers, fat, muscles and can fly nonstop for hundreds of miles overnight, sitting comfortably on branches in freezing rain or in sweltering heat while we peer out from our climate-controlled spaces. How is that possible?

If we are truly aware of what surrounds us, we cannot help but be grateful. In this time of Thanksgiving, may we seek to truly see and acknowledge that which we take for granted.

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I am grateful to be alive, for my experience of life on this planet.

I am grateful for my body, this incomprehensibly complex, creatively evolved self-assembling miracle of matter and energy, composed of trillions of differentiated cells, thousands of proteins, over 20,000 genes, and trillions of collaborative microbes.

I am grateful for my family: for Elizabeth who knows and nurtures my heart, for my father who taught me the ways of nature, for my mother who taught me the ways of spirit, for Jean who taught me the value of unconditional love.

I am grateful for plants, for the wondrous chemistry of photosynthesis that converts sunlight to sugar and ultimately to all of the molecules of life. I am grateful for the mosses and lichens that cover tree trunks and trap rainfall. I am grateful for fragrant blossoms, for sweet berries, for trees that give shade and that warm our home in winter.

I am grateful for the hundreds of generations of humans who have worked with plants to create the foods we know: corn from teosinte, wheat and barley from wild grasses, apples and peaches and tomatoes and beans and lettuce and radicchio.

I am grateful for animals, for Dendroica warblers and hawks and herons, for our cat Pangur Ban and lions and leopards, for ants and bees and spiders, for squirrels and possums and foxes, for crabs and salmon and whales, for our chickens that provide us with eggs, for our friends’ cows and pigs and lambs and turkeys that will nourish us through the winter: all miraculous and intricately complex bodies just like our own, all conscious and aware in their own ways.

I am grateful for soils: for the billions of bacteria and fungi that transform rocks and minerals into nutrients, plant matter into humus, that nourish our farms and gardens.

I am grateful for cleansing winds, for life-giving rains, for beautiful and endlessly variable clouds, for rainbows, for the chaotic and creative circulations of the atmosphere that support the biosphere.

I am grateful for rivers and lakes and oceans, for waterfalls and hydropower and rapids and estuaries and tidal pools.

I am grateful for the living, moving depths of our planet: for mountains and volcanoes and hot springs, for basalt and granite and schist and gneiss and limestone and slate, for fossil fuels and aquifers, for iron and copper and carbon and sulfur.

I am grateful for artists and musicians, composers and instrument-makers, authors and playwrights: bringing idea into form and creating shared meaning and story.

I am grateful for engineers and bridge builders, carpenters and plumbers and electricians, truck drivers and train engineers: building and maintaining and supplying our homes and the environments we inhabit.

I am grateful for farmers and chefs, butchers and bakers: working with plants and animals to nourish our bodies.

As with the ending of the Haudenosaunee address, there is much that I have missed, and for all of that I am grateful as well.

Have a joyful and grateful Thanksgiving everyone!