A Bigger Picture

Gratitude This Thanksgiving

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

On this Thanksgiving Day are you feeling less thankful than usual because there is so much happening in the news and in your life for which you are decidedly NOT thankful? Could you use a different take on the meaning of gratitude? We’ve found a fresh perspective in this 2024 interview of Diana Butler Bass by Paul Rauschenbusch. Paul is the president of Interfaith Alliance, continuing the tradition of his great grandfather theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, a central leader of the Social Gospel movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Diana is a historian, theologian, writer of The Cottage on Substack, and one of the most trusted public commentators on faith and politics in the U.S. today. This provocative interview centers on her 2018 book Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks.

When Paul asks Diana to explain the subtitle, she replies that gratitude is a spiritual practice that “rearranges how we understand our own lives, and, even further, our place in the world.” She explains that gratitude is more than reciting a list of things that make us happy. Rather, it is “a disposition whereby we understand that all of life is a gift; and that every moment, the good ones and the bad ones, actually hold something for us that can be perceived differently.”

Instead of saying more, we invite you to listen to that conversation on the website of the Interfaith Alliance. In case you’re not one who listens to podcasts as you prepare Thanksgiving dinner, the episode also offers a transcription.

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Connections:

This interview between Walter and Diana refers to three prayers / poems of thanksgiving to enrich your day. The first was written by Paul’s great-grandfather, Walter Rauschenbusch. Here it is in updated language.

O God, we thank you for this earth, our home;
For the wide sky and the blessed sun,
For the salt sea and the running water,
For the everlasting hills,
And the never-resting winds,
For trees and the common grass underfoot.
We thank you for our senses
By which we hear the songs of birds
And see the splendor of the summer fields,
And taste of the autumn fruits,
And rejoice in the feel of the snow,
And smell the breath of the spring.
Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty;
And save our souls from being so blind
That we pass unseeing
When even the common thornbush
Is aflame with your glory,
O God our creator,
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

By Walter Rauschenbusch, 19th-20th century theologian

The second is recited by Benedictine brother and interfaith scholar David Steindl-Rast within his Ted Talk on gratitude—Want To Be Happy? Be Grateful.

A third is a thanksgiving prayer by Diana Butler Bass on The Cottage.

Vibrations:

“The Big Picture”

“Every Flower”

Resonance:

Choose one of our offerings—the prayers, the interview, the TED talk, and Noel’s songs—and tell what it means to you on this Thanksgiving Day.

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Happy Thanksgiving from Noel and Jeanne