Gratitude as a Beginning

  Gratitude as a Beginning

Most of us begin our season of Lenten practices with something other than gratitude as a motivation for acts of penitence, spiritual discipline or nearly all of the gains, personal or otherwise we hope will at least accompany our efforts.  Certainly we do not want to presume an outcome prematurely or lose track of that humility we nearly all agree to be an intent of these forty days.

Many of us try to get too quickly to the humility part — or at least think we are — by disliking or even hating ourselves, by finding faults of many kinds or at the very least places for improvement. Think “our weight.” Not all of this is bad but from where will gratitude emerge if we take to any sort of discipline or devotion with this sort of beginning? It’s almost as if we want control more than change, reward more than relationship or status more than duty.

And so I am suggesting this alternative, to begin with gratitude because I believe there is even more to be gained of exactly those lesser categories of self-discipline along with a way to proceed once we pass the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

We are such quaint creatures always looking for a restart, a return to default settings, a second chance, a do-over.  We look as if that is yet to be granted, as if it is waiting on us to earn it or deserve something that God is withholding.  But it is 2023 and we are sharing in a story that already has death and resurrection in it.  

We are quaint but fortunate inhabitants of a time and place that is after that fact.  I remember Bishop Alexander’s preaching this to us on a Trinity Sunday years ago.  He asked us why we — he meant all christians not just Advent-ers — act as if the “jury is still out on the matter?”  Why do we let our particular life’s difficulties out weigh the gift of salvation — we can call it “life” — won for us and shown to us 20+ centuries ago in the birth, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth?

Let’s remember as we turn ourselves toward Calvary’s cross that the kingdom of heaven has been made manifest already!  We just celebrated that fact, that very gift for several Sundays beginning January 6, 2023. And this was not our first trip around the liturgical calendar.  We’ve been here before, as many times as we can count back to our baptisms.  

Yes there is work to do and avoiding pride would at least suggest that we do that work first through our individual lives. And I’m thinking that gratitude — taken on as its own spiritual discipline — might be the better context than reward or self-improvement.  Let’s let gratitude be its own improvable characteristic, its own practice that we can use Lent to refine, take root, and continue throughout the rest of our lives.  

The changes we are hoping for are gifts from God.  Let’s start with gratitude and then “do Lent.” 

FrDann