Thanksgiving and Giving

Living with gratitude.  Being thankful.  Is it more than just being polite and saying, “Thank you!” for the kindness shown to you?  Perhaps we can understand thanksgiving by focusing on the giving.  In this video, I share thoughts based on the work of Spanish mystic Francisco de Osuna.

The following is a text version of this blog.

What does it mean to give thanks?  A good start is to say “thank you” to a person who has been kind or considerate.  Thank you cards are probably viewed as “old school,” but they make the expression of gratitude more tangible. But does thanking someone boil down to a sentiment, a few words, or maybe a gesture like a hug?

Over the last decade or so, there have been various kinds of “gratitude challenges” on social media, like posting thoughts about gratitude for forty days to expressing thanks every day for a week.  These kinds of things may help some people to be more aware of gratitude and perhaps make it a habit.  But I’m not sure that social media challenges lead us to deepen our lives.  I think they are mostly fads that come and go.

I understand thanksgiving and gratitude from a different perspective, based on my study of spiritual literature.  An influential spiritual writer born in 15^th Century Spain wrote a bit about gratitude.  His name was Francisco de Osuna.  His writing greatly influenced 16^th-century mystics like Teresa of Avila. 

One of the things he observed was that thanksgiving wasn’t a set of words, but a way of living, a state of being.  In other words, gratitude is a way of life.

De Osuna understood thanksgiving as a natural response to life itself.  He used the image of a fruit tree.  How does the fruit tree show thanks for the warm sun, the rain that waters its roots, and the nutrients that make it grow?  The fruit tree’s gratitude is producing succulent fruit.  It demonstrates thanks, it embodies gratitude, by responding with something tasty and nourishing. For de Osuna, the fruit is an expression of gratitude for all that the tree has received.

What Francisco de Osuna was trying to convey is that thanksgiving should change us.  It should cause us not just to live our best selves but should lead us to be generous.  Because we have received kindness from another, true thanksgiving is to show kindness to another. 

This isn’t about quid pro quo, you were kind to me so I’ll be kind to you.  Think about that image of the fruit tree.  It’s nourished by the sun, water, and the richness of the earth.  It produces fruit.  The sun doesn’t benefit from the fruit.  Neither does the water. The fruit is appreciated by the person or animal that eats it.  The tree produces something that is a kindness to someone other than the one who nurtured it.

Perhaps the Jewish concept of random acts of kindness gets at this a bit better.  Gratitude changes us and empowers us to be kind and generous with people we don’t know or who don’t expect it. 

When I moved to Atlanta more than ten years ago, I was startled when people would randomly say to me, “I appreciate you.”  The first time the person bagging my groceries paused and looked me in the eye and said, “I appreciate you,” I wasn’t sure how to respond.  I’ve grown used to hearing this expression and realize that it’s kind of a spiritual practice.  It causes someone to be mindful of the gift that other people are, to even for a moment, appreciate them.  It conveys to the hearer that they are a person of value, that they are appreciated.  Such expressions help us change our outlook and behavior, and enable us to be people of thanksgiving who live with gratitude.

Thanksgiving and gratitude:  it’s not about a day or a turkey dinner.  It’s not about being polite and saying thank you or even sending a note.  Real gratitude leads us to be changed more deeply, allowing us to respond with kindness toward others, demonstrating our appreciation that they have entered our lives even for a moment.

Be sure that I appreciate you and your time listening today.  I hope you’ll subscribe to this channel, like this video, share it with others, and leave some comments about thanksgiving and gratitude in your life.