As you may have realized, I only update this blog once every few months or so because it usually takes that long for me to be taught something new about my relationship with God. Typically, I learn something, and (I'll blame it on my temperament) the revelation demands to be put down on paper-- er-- virtual paper. I'm an external processor by nature and a teacher by trade. I have to talk or write things out to fully understand them, and teaching helps that process. If I
really understand something, then I can teach it. If I can't teach it... well, it's time to keep studying.
A few months ago, I was learning my next very important life lesson, and I was naturally all excited about it and wanting to share it. But for some reason, the words weren't coming out right. Maybe I hadn't really understood it yet. Anyway, I've been attempting to write this blog post off and on for about three months since then. This "thing" that I was learning could be got at from so many different angles, and I couldn't figure out which one was most effective-- most important. Today, I woke up and it was Thanksgiving Day. Eureka! Or rather, Eucharistia! All of the sudden, I had it.
This is a blog about gratitude.
That is the most practical and important lesson I was (and am) being taught the latter half of this year.
That is the angle with which I needed to express all these prayers and thoughts and experiences and emotions I've been chasing 'round and 'round in my head and heart for the past six months or so.
Outside, winter has nearly arrived. In my spiritual life, however, spring has just mustered the strength to poke its sleepy head up through the heavy snow which has lain across my soul like a blanket for the past two or so years.
Before, I talked of the seasons.
That was the lesson I was being taught at the beginning half of this year-- the natural cycle of life, the ups lead to downs and the downs back to ups again. In prayer, the steady rhythm of consolation and desolation-- never solidly one or the other, never one or the other lasting forever, always one and the other pregnant with lessons to be learned and a love to be fostered and grown.
There is so much movement in this life-- so much change. Nothing in the world ever stays entirely the same. This is natural, but this is quite possibly the hardest thing in life for me to accept. We are a people who crave stability, whether we want to admit it or not. In some circumstances, I love change-- changes in scenery (eg. my love for road trips), changes in direction (dreams and new possibilities for careers or enterprises), changes in every-day activities ("let's try a new restaurant!"), etc. However, no matter how much I want to travel or to experience new things, I am always craving some sort of stability-- typically in the form of the people who surround me as family and friends.
When family changes, when friends change, when all of my surroundings change permanently,
that is difficult for me to handle. It always takes me a long while to settle back in.
Since I graduated from high school, I've moved to a new state about every two years. There have been so many blessings that have come from this movement but so many difficulties as well. I think this is something that many people in my current state in life are experiencing-- young twenty- and thirty-somethings still trying to figure out their careers, their vocations, etc. Where will I settle? Will I ever settle? Where will I call home? Will I ever have a family of my own? Can I ever get comfortable in a house or apartment, or will I just have to move again next year? Is this job the one I'm supposed to stay in, or do I need to be looking for something else? These are the questions that race through my head at high speeds every time something less than comfortable happens to shake up my daily routine.
Because I so crave stability, I tend to grasp at things and people who I love. But the problem with grasping, though, I've learned so many times the hard way, is that you can't truly enjoy whatever blessing it is you're grasping at. If I grasp and hold tight to a flower, I can't properly enjoy the flower. In my fist, I speed up the aging process, I rob it of sun and nutrients, I obstruct my view of its beauty, I try to control it and then I lose it before I've ever really appreciated it. The idea of possessing the flower becomes more important to me than the flower itself. And this is true of any gift in my life. If I grasp so tightly to it, always fearful of losing it, I never truly enjoy it like it was meant to be enjoyed.
Late this summer, I made a discovery about my favorite band, Switchfoot. I found a common thread in the majority of their songs. It's a theme on every album, it's a theme in their autobiographical documentary, it's the underlying theme of their lives. The message is this:
This life and everything in it is passing; only God is stable.
I enjoy Switchfoot's songs because they walk the precarious middle line so well-- a perfect balance between reality and hope. Many artists focus so much on the reality of sin, death, change, and insecurity in this life that they end up despairing. Other artists focus so much on the good in this life that it becomes an idol. The members of Switchfoot fully and completely acknowledge the brokenness of this world while all the time keeping their bearings because they are solidly rooted in a deeper hope that this world is passing-- that this world is not the one we were made for and not the one that we are stuck in forever. In doing so, they are able to enjoy the things of this world immensely by staying prudent and somewhat unattached to them.
My favorite saint, John Bosco, once remarked, "Walk with your feet on the Earth, but in your heart, be in Heaven." I also read something once that G.K. Chesterton said, although I can't find the quote now. He said something about how, before he believed, he grasped at the good things of the world as his greatest happiness-- held them tightly for fear of losing them, but when he became a believer and realized that this world was passing and that nothing in it could bring him the
ultimate happiness he sought, he was able to enjoy those same things that he had formerly grasped at so much more, precisely because he wasn't afraid of losing them.
How did his mindset change? How does our mindset need to change?
The answer is gratitude. We become depressed and despair when change comes only when we feel ourselves entitled to the things that we have lost. The reality is that everything we have-- even our very
selves-- is gift.
Nothing good we experience comes from ourselves.
Everything comes from God and
nothing is necessary to be given us. We don't
deserve life. We don't
deserve existence. Not because we are bad or evil by nature and somehow deserve bad things, but because nothing at all-- good or bad-- was ever owed to us. We were thought into existence because of another.
Everything he gives us is free and undeserved gift.
If we see the world like that, we can't help but cry tears of joy at every good thing we experience.
Everything is the icing on the cake.
Everything is the cherry on top.
Everything is lagniappe.
As the saints have said, "everything is grace."
If I have a friend, he is gift. If he is taken away from me, my heart should still rejoice for the time we were given together, for even that time was more than was deserved.
If I have an experience and it ends, I should rejoice at the opportunity to have experienced it at all.
I can only do this, though, if I am firmly rooted in the idea that God is my security and nothing else. I need nothing else forever because only God, "the giver of every good and perfect gift," can satisfy me forever. I should not love any gift more than its giver. That is the most common of sense that we so often forget.
Job, the man who literally lost it all, declared, "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
blessed be the name of the LORD!” (Job 1:21). Only a man who loves and trusts the giver, can rejoice even when the gift is taken away.
Jesus made an important distinction between blessedness and our popular understanding of "happiness," when he delivered the first few lines of his Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.
Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you..."
(Matthew 5:3-12)
Blessedness-- true happiness, true fulfillment-- comes not from the material things, the good experiences of this world, but from knowing Christ, from being in intimate communion with the maker of all things. As Switchfoot cries out (I believe they are echoing Dylan), "
'Happy' is a yuppie word!" and when I realize that
true happiness (blessedness) has nothing to do with the things of this world, "nothing in the world can fail me now."
When our comfort is taken away, we should actually be rejoicing, because it will teach us not to grasp at the comforts of the world in lieu of reaching out to our creator, the true source of comfort, in love. St. Paul says, "in
all circumstances, give thanks" (1 Thess. 5:8, emphasis added). That means even in the terrible circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in, we should be rejoicing and giving thanks.
I started thinking about this strange and counter-intuitive call to rejoicing when I first heard a particular Switchfoot song about six years ago. The song is called "
The Beautiful Letdown," and it's all about how the things of this world are passing and only God is stable. When we first realize this, it can be a huge letdown, because more often than not, we have been counting on some things in this world as our safety, or meaning, our security. But the letdown is
beautiful because we are letdown only to be
raised up to meet the truth-- the truth that God, our creator,
is what and who
will satisfy us-- and not just for this lifetime but for eternity.
At the end of the song, Jon Foreman, the front man, prays a peculiar prayer:
"Easy living, you're not much like the name.
Easy dying, hey, you look just about the same.
Won't you please take me off your list.
Easy living, please, come on and let me down."
Why would anyone in his right mind pray that the comforts of this world would keep letting him down? Precisely because he recognizes that to trust in them is folly. Just like the cycle of seasons, nothing is stable in this life. We experience life and death, gain and loss, over and over and over again. It matters not who you are or what you've done, whether you're a great saint or the most vile of sinners, every person will experience sadness and every person will experience joy.
This is the predicament that the author of Ecclesiastes wrestles with throughout his book. He cries out, "Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!" (1:2). He recognizes that nothing on earth will ever satisfy us, but then he recognizes that all is gift:
I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well during life.
Moreover, that all can eat and drink and enjoy the good of all their toil—this is a gift of God.
I recognized that whatever God does will endure forever; there is no adding to it, or taking from it.
Thus has God done that he may be revered.
What now is has already been; what is to be, already is: God retrieves what has gone by.
(3:12-15)
We can be tempted to despair in the recognition that nothing in this world will ever satisfy us, but we shouldn't despair, because there is something that
will satisfy us. God himself will satisfy us. He feeds us with his very self. Our celebration of this is called
eucharistia, thanksgiving. He is not of this world, and as beings made in his image and likeness with intellect, will, and the capacity to love him, neither are we.
To live this life filled with the humility of gratitude is the necessary starting point for true and lasting happiness. If we can accomplish this by grace, nothing in this world can ever shake us. Our houses will be built on the Rock and not on the changing sands of time (see Matthew 7:24-27). Only then can we can say peacefully amidst the most trying of circumstances with the psalmist,
Many say, “May we see better times!
LORD, show us the light of your face!”
But you have given my heart more joy
than they have when grain and wine abound.
In peace I will lie down and fall asleep,
for you alone, LORD, make me secure.
(Psalm 4:7-9)
