The Spiritual Practice of Giving Thanks

When you think about it, saying "Thank you," is one of the first manners we encourage small children to adopt. This simple practice of remembering to thank the people around us is so basic to positive human interactions that, when absent, it is a glaring rudeness that paints the withholding party as arrogant.

Somewhere along the line, then, we've learned that gratitude for services rendered or a job well done is an appropriate and meaningful human to human response in life.

But what about thankfulness as a spiritual practice and a way of life?

In Psalm 50, the poet is speaking for God when he says--

"I don't need bulls from your farms or goats from your herds.
All the animals in the forest are mine and the cattle on thousands of hills. All the wild birds are mine and all living things
in the land... Let the GIVING OF THANKS be your sacrifice to God..."

Thanksgiving as a sacrifice... What a thought.

But actually, as I pondered it, I realized there have been plenty of times in my life when the spiritual practice of giving thanks functioned as a sacrifice. Let's consider being evacuated from home when bandits were too close, too bold and too many. Then there were days of trauma when a teammate was sexually assaulted and our team gathered in guest houses in the capital to work through how to deal with the issue over the vast cultural divides between U.S. nationals, Kenyan officials and Maasai elders. Those were crummy times and I won't bore any of us with a litany of more of the same.

On those nights, as we huddled in safe places away from home, I found that I could only muster wee prayers that said things like, "Thank you for this pillow tonight."

And feeble as it was, my thanksgiving was a sacrifice and, as such, it pleased the heart of God.

Some days, thanks is a discipline that doesn't feel like one. It's an overflow of gratitude that wells up naturally. Other days it's a rendering, a beating down of the grief or struggle to bring out what is good. And there's something about the costliness of the practice on those days that makes it, for lack of a better word, sweet.

But, whether it be an overflow of easy thanks, or a wrestling to not go under, giving thanks is always a blessing.

I'm pretty certain every country should set aside a day to practice it :-)

Internal Processing

It's feels like a quiet season in my heart these days.

I've had a couple of bookends on the calendar that seem to have set themselves around a reflective time. I didn't set out to have "a reflective time." It just kind of happened.

Over the years I've grown more aware of the goodness of ebb and flow, waxing and waning, seasons and rhythms, so the contemplative mood of this last month has felt like a gift to be savored.

By the way, the occasions that presented themselves as brackets around my ponderings include last month's 25th anniversary of Byron and I setting out from the States together and his 50th birthday coming up next Sunday.

I have no great conclusions to draw or revelations to declare. It would be nice if the ruminations manifested themselves in a volume of poetry. Alas, there is no such fruit at this time.

But there is a beauty in that as well. The pausing of my spirit to ponder does not have to "produce" in measurable material. The pause is good for the sake of the pause, whether the outcome is seen and recognized or not.

How sweet, these days, of spiritual rest.

Of Home and How We Find It

When Tiny Tim (as played by Kermit the Frog) begins to sing at the end of the Muppets' version of A Christmas Carol, I have to be honest and just admit that I cry.

"God bless us all," he sings, "... who gather here, the loving family we hold dear. No place on earth compares with home and every path will lead us back from where we roam."

That Kermit. He wrecks me!

Having moved multiple times in and between six countries and three continents, I am an accidental expert in the emotional travails of separation and loss, boxes and crates, dismantling home and recreating it once again. The drama of moving has it's own set of pains and joys, my considerable experience of which are a byproduct of the adventures I've found.

Now, there is a certain range of hills that run along the southern border of Kenya named, quite simply, Loita. (That's "loi" as in loiter, not lo-ee-tah.) Byron and I lived there for 10 years and, given that I've never remained in any other spot for that long, I often wonder if anywhere will ever feel like home the way Loita did... and does.

When our first home in Loita burned down, we carved a new home out of the hills. One by one, the soil blocks were formed from the rich earth of the range that rose around us. The sand, carried downstream seasonally to pile up on river bends along the way, was hauled up to our clearing and sifted and mixed to become the strong cement of our foundations and the bed to hold the wide, flat stones of our verandah. We walked the hills and chose those stones. We puzzled them together to make a simple and lovely floor.

When Byron realized there was a slight surplus of ceiling joists to hold the upstairs in place, he set to work drawing a dining room table. Thus, our table, made from the strength at the center of the home, was, quite wonderfully, made from the heart of that house.

We shipped that table to Europe when we left Loita. That table, where our babies had sat in their little seats that hung from the chunky edge. That table, made from a house that we designed together to shelter our lives within.

Eventually, we shipped that table back to Africa. Scarred and plain, yet still glowing in warm wood colors, our table stands in all her unpretentious loveliness here in this home in Arusha.

And it's the table that's got me thinking.

Closing my eyes, I see the faces of friends who have gathered round her. Pausing as I write to let their faces come into focus, my throat immediately tightens in that warm way that it does before I cry. My goodness! In these last 17 years since she was made, there have been some pretty precious times centered round that piece of furniture. Precious times because the people who sat with us there were precious.

The table is just a device that draws us close. And yet it's this coming together that makes home. And in this communion, this connection that Sue Monk Kidds calls "a merciful coming together of human hearts", I find that I have home.

Sometimes, when Byron and I are tired, one of us will say that we want to go home. Then we shrug and say, "Of course, we would kind of need to know where home is to do that."

Today, I am reminded that we have home every time we make the choice to open our hearts.

(PS For more thoughts on home by fellow bloggers, click HERE )