Rev. Melinda Giese, Minister of Discipleship & Pastoral Care
Several years ago, I co-led a small group on gratitude. In addition to our weekly discussions, we asked the participants to keep a daily gratitude journal for six weeks and write down five things they felt grateful for each day. One of the participants made it his personal goal to never repeat his gratitude list. Each day, he would think of five unique things for which he felt grateful, unlike the rest of us who found patterns and repetitions in our gratitude lists. But across the entire group, we noticed that we found our blessings primarily in the fabric of our daily, ordinary lives and not in special circumstances.
I have kept gratitude journals for about ten years now, and I can tell you that extraordinary things rarely make it onto my lists. I’ve never been thankful for winning the lottery or writing a best-selling novel or climbing Mount Everest. The daily blessings I most often give thanks for are family, good meals, coffee, and good weather. I have occasionally thought I should make more of an effort to be creative with my lists, like the class participant who thought of five unique things each day. But the gratitude lists have helped me realize why these very ordinary things stubbornly find their way onto my list day after day; those are the places in my very ordinary life where I find joy.
Too often, our culture looks down on what we perceive as ordinary. Somehow, we absorb the idea that our lives need to be exceptional to be worthwhile. As Brené Brown writes, “In many instances, we equate ordinary with boring or, even more dangerous, ordinary has become synonymous with meaningless.” Gratitude helps us reclaim the ordinary parts of our lives as not only meaningful but also as sources of joy.
In interviews Brené Brown conducted with men and women who had experienced painful losses such as the loss of a child, violence, genocide, and trauma, she also learned the value of ordinary life. “The memories that they held most sacred were the ordinary, everyday moments. It was clear that their most precious memories were forged from a collection of ordinary moments, and their hope for others is that they would stop long enough to be grateful for those moments and the joy they bring.”
According to the German theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, “If the only prayer you ever say in your life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” As we cultivate gratitude, may we improve at seeing the ordinary gifts God has given us in the midst of the extraordinary gift of life itself.