"Feelings of gratitude" vs. "actions of thanks-giving"
Thanksgiving Day is a favorite holiday for many people.
I suspect a large part of the reason is the simplicity of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day remains, for the most part, a day for the simple joy of getting together with family or friends for a meal. Even if your way of observing the day involves a bit of stress – travel, family issues, etc. -- chances are the day itself is one of simple pleasures: cooking, eating, relaxing, catching up.
This Thanksgiving, I hope you’ll stop at some point and do what the day calls us to do: give thanks.
It might help to recall that “thanksgiving” is a compound word. We “give” “thanks.”
When we “give” something, that implies a giver, and a receiver. There is a transactiongoing on: someone is giving something, and someone is receiving something.
The transaction might between you and another person (such as your friends, your family) or it might be between you and a whole group of people (such as this or other schools, other teachers, coaches, or perhaps for the men and women of the armed forces who are observing Thanksgiving far away from home) or it may be between you and God .
Thinking about thanksgiving as a transaction helps us to make an important distinction: the difference between “feeling grateful” and “giving thanks.”
The classic biblical teaching on this distinction is in the gospel of Luke, in which ten men are healed of leprosy.
Then we're told “one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”
I imagine all ten lepers felt tremendous gratitude for being healed. (Remember that leprosy was a terrible, incurable, and socially isolating disease.)
But how many of the grateful ten took the next step of giving thanks?
Only one.
Are the proportions today any different for us, on Thanksgiving Day? Are more than one in ten of us moving from “feeling grateful” (for things or people or God) to “giving thanks” for them?
If we stop and think about it, there are lots of things you and I are grateful for. But do we take the next step and give thanks for those things?
Giving thanks means moving from an ethereal, vague feeling or emotion within us to a tangible, visible, concrete action.The leper who gave thanks stopped doing what he was doing, went out of his way, made an effort.
So the elements of giving thanks that make thanksgiving different than mere gratitude are:
Stopping what you are doing.
Going out of your way/inconveniencing yourself temporarily.
Taking some concrete, tangible, visible (or at least audible) action.
Stopping what you are doing means pausing amidst the activity of Thanksgiving break. It means deliberately stopping what you are doing for the purpose of giving thanks.
Going out of your way or inconveniencing yourself might mean making a point to talk to someone one on one, either in person or with a phone call. It might mean sitting down with pen and paper.
Taking some concrete, tangible, visible (or at least audible) action means offering a few words – they do not need to be eloquent, only heart-felt – during the Thanksgiving break.
So: to practice what I preach:
When I wrote this for the school I’m currently working at, I thought of the many ways I'm grateful for it. It is a remarkable place and people, and a joy to be a part of. I’m grateful that after 28 years of serving in parish ministry, I now get to be an Upper School Chaplain and a Teacher of Religion.
A teacher.
A big part of the reason I’m grateful to be a teacher is that teachers change so many lives. Sometimes that change happens subtly and incrementally, and sometimes it happens obviously and suddenly. I’m at a place where that change is nearly aways for the better.
Not many organizations can claim that. But thanks be to God and my colleagues, the school I work at can.
And Substack: the platform…the cause…can’t the same be said of it?
Substack brings out in me (and so many other writers) this thing called…potential.
Potential. Charlie Brown says “there’s no heavier burden than a great potential.” I know that. I hate and I love that.
Substack stands there and says, “here I am, your potential. Meet me.”
For that, I’m grateful.
Happy thanks-giving.