“Grounded in Gratitude”
A Thanksgiving poem based on Matthew 6, by the Rev. Maren Tirabassi
Philippians 4:4-8
Diedra Kreiwald, one of my seminary professors, was 25 years old and newly married \when she and her husband led a church mission trip to Mexico. Their hard work \done, they were enjoying a few days’ relaxation before going home when there was an accident. Diedra’s husband and three young people were killed.
I don’t know how long Diedra’s grief lasted, how angry she got at God, how she managed to get through the lonely nights, how many twists and turns her spiritual journey took, or how often she struggled to trust anything or anyone at all.
But when she wrote a book about her experience, a book about suffering and grief, faith and life, she called it Hallelujah Anyhow.
Hallelujah anyhow.
When President Abraham Lincoln issued Proclamation 118 declaring the last Thursday of November “a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe,” the year was 1864 and the United States was, quite literally, at war with itself.
Still, Lincoln said it had “pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household.”
Considering the nation’s blood-soaked battlefields, death-ravaged families, and bitter hatreds, Lincoln declared a day of repentance, prayer, and thanksgiving. It must have seemed an odd—or desperate—prescription for a nation well on its way to self-destruction. Not to mention that the very privileges Lincoln praised were denied our indigenous and Black siblings, even as their basic humanity and human rights were denied and degraded.
And yet President Lincoln said, in essence, Do not cease to give thanks. Rejoice in the Lord always. Praise. Hallelujah anyway.
So here we are, on the brink of another Thanksgiving holiday, one that finds our government disconnected from and harming its people. This Thanksgiving finds many of our neighbors living in fear and trembling, not knowing if or when armed masked men might snatch them from their lives; not knowing if or when the government will stop the flow of food, housing, health insurance subsidies or educational aid; not knowing if or when the military troops that have been sent into cities to pursue immigrants and criminals will turn on law-abiding, native-born citizens.
And still the words of the apostle Paul, written to a church start in northeastern Greece from his prison cell in Rome, challenge us to look around at this messy, burning, corrupt world and find reasons to give thanks.
Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever makes your heart sing, whatever brings you hope, whatever and whomever evokes feelings of love, whatever makes you laugh, whatever is fun, whatever and whomever helps you feel connected to others and the Source of All Life—if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things, Paul says.
Rejoice in the Lord always. Don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Think about all the good things in your life and all the amazing things in the world, and then—then!—the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, will be yours, and it will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
And still many of us come to this Thanksgiving finding it harder than usual to summon feelings of gratitude. We wonder how we can sing a song of Thanksgiving in a world of hurt, fear, hatred, war, and division.
But, oh, beloveds. How can we not?
The words of Jesus and Paul, the proclamation of a president, the life of my seminary professor and the lives of so many of us here are not meant to tell us to buck up and give thanks as if our hearts are not broken, as if our souls aren’t anxious, as if everything’s just fine. Instead, their lives show us that even in the midst of suffering, oppression, and grief, they had found a way to live with thanksgiving and praise. Their prayer and had given them peace and hope during hard times.
Jesus didn’t tell us not to worry because there’s nothing to be anxious about, but because worrying steals our joy, ignores God’s goodness, and doesn’t change a thing.
The apostle Paul didn’t say “rejoice always” because he was promoting denial as a spiritual practice, but because he had discovered in gratitude a joyful way to resist evil and oppression.
My professor didn’t say “hallelujah anyhow” because her life hadn’t been shattered, but because God’s love was still with her, healing and comforting, guiding and renewing her.
Gratitude makes a way out of no way. Gratitude grounds us in what is good. Gratitude centers us in what is true. When everything around us is telling us to close up, hunker down, protect, defend, and resist, gratitude opens our hearts—and there can be no peace or healing without a humble, trusting openness.
So, how do we do it? How do we not worry? How do we rejoice always? How do we find a method that works for us?
Paul gives us a beautiful template: First, he says, pray about it. Take everything to God in prayer—not because God is like Santa Claus, but because turning your problems and needs and worries over to God’s love and care will give you a peace that is beyond human understanding.
Then, he says: Ground yourself in goodness.
In other words: Look for the good. Look for the good, rejoice in the good, and then, in the strength of that goodness, keep going. Look for the light, rejoice in the light, and then in the reassuring glow of that light, keep resisting the darkness.
In these days when a thousand different platforms and news sources rush to inform of every horrible thing, looking for the good takes a little work. Looking for the good requires enough discipline to turn away from catastrophic thinking and the worst, most hateful rhetoric. When times are bad, looking for the good becomes a spiritual practice.
Like many of you, I get and read the email newsletters that tell us how bad and dangerous things are. Like many of you, I get and read the newspapers that detail the brutal violence and intense suffering caused by unjust wars and unjust policies. But I also get a newsletter that tells me some of what the news doesn’t, that details “wins” both big and small, and reassures me that people are waking up and coming together and rising up for good. I also go to other sources to look for the good.
Did you know, for example, that in Charlotte, North Carolina, last Monday some 30,000 public school students skipped school and marched and rallied peacefully to protest the actions of ICE against their neighbors? Did you read about the statement of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops calling for respect and justice for immigrants? Do you know that Pope Leo speaks regularly about the rights and humanity of immigrants?
I could go on with accounts of numerous hopeful things happening, but I also want to touch on how to understand the good that we see.
When we see human beings from different economic backgrounds and religions and races coming together peacefully to demand that federal forces leave their towns, when we see people who’ve never attended a political event in their lives coming together by the millions to resist policies that threaten democracy, when we neighbors giving up weeknights at home and Saturday chores to learn how to stand by their immigrant neighbors, when we see people collecting boatloads of food for their neighbors, when we see people coming together to learn freedom songs, when we see people continuing to make phone calls and write letters and pray together, we can—and should—praise community organizers, faithful churches, and longstanding grassroots groups.
But let us also marvel at the strength and resilience of the human spirit. Let us also remember that all people are made in the image of the God who is love, and that when people live into the best of who they are and were made to be, wonderful, life-giving, community-building things happen.
We can give thanks and praise that through this goodness, through this persistent resistance, through this solidarity and stubborn hope, the God who is love is still alive and well and working in the world.
The world needs people who are grounded in goodness and at peace even in the middle of a dangerous and discouraging storm. The world needs people who can find their way to the light from the deepest darkness. The world needs people who will call us to our best, most loving selves.
Which is to say: The world needs people who are thankful. This world, the world God so loves, the world made of gifts, this beautiful and broken world, needs people who rejoice in the goodness of God always. People who are willing to do the inner and outer work to prepare the way for a better world. People who know what keeps them going and hang on to it and one another.
So in this world of worries, let us think about what is good and true and life-giving. Let us praise the ones who give us hope. Let us celebrate the Love that keeps us going. With thanksgiving, let us turn to God for all we need. And the peace of God will guard us and ground us. It will transform us and heal us and deliver us and this precious world God so loves.
