Maybe It Is All About You
In all my years of listening to the Christmas story, I don’t remember ever thinking to myself or asking “Of what possible use would gold, frankincense and myrrh have been to a baby?” How about clothes and blankets and educational twirly things to look at in the manger? I know it’s a quirky thought and there doubtless is an answer that I missed, even in my years of seminary, as to why the three wise men brought what they reportedly did.
All that notwithstanding, I wondered if the real point is that the gift giving was for them, for the Magi, I mean. They had to express something and didn’t know how else to do it and they gave what they had to give.
The legend has come down to us across the centuries and now has some expression, I suppose, in how we give gifts and do the tree thing during Advent. What I have been wondering is if gratitude is also mostly about the giver. This is an inquiry, not some kind of advice column, but to me that rings true.
While I’m aware of how people tell me a given entry made a difference for them, I feel certain that I have gotten far more out of writing these posts than any one has from reading them. I have wondered why that is so. I think it must be because knowing I am going to write, either in my journal or for this blog, I am hyper aware of what is out there for which I might have some gratitude or some thoughts about it. I frame the day’s events through that lens.
My friend Scott (I’m grateful for friends and family who continue to read these) once wrote this beautiful, lyrical comment after a post.
“But the ice, the branch, the winter, the morning coffee — all are unaffected by our judgments, unmoved by our pronouncements, unchanged by our gratitude. The manifold underwater shapes of storm clouds, the arc and gathering of a long touchdown pass, the brushstrokes on a Cezanne, the sound of an owl calling into the darkness — these things exist whether we are grateful for them or not, and our gratitude affects them not the slightest.
Gratitude thus becomes a tool by which we hope to lever our own awareness up to a position we’ve previously defined as ‘better.’”
It’s for us. Looking for what’s great in some situation is not a plea to settle for something unacceptable and it’s not a Marxian opiate with the aim of just putting you to sleep and being content with hunger or poverty or climate change or even hearing loss or cancer. It’s about what might lie on the other side of gratitude, options and possibilities undreamt of until one’s closed fist (refusal to look) becomes the open palm.
I’m not suggesting that gifts don’t matter to the recipient, far from it, or that acknowledging someone for their contribution to you isn’t valuable. Yet, I know for sure that the two whole times I remembered to say thanks for this lunch while I was at work last week was because I am writing these blog posts. It’s because of you and that I know you’re reading them and you weren’t even there. We really need each other in this work.
Tara Brach said that “If we knew just how powerfully your thoughts, words, and actions affected the hearts of those around us, we’d reach out and join hands again and again.”
Thanks for the way you affect my heart on a daily basis.
