‘Tis of Gift

A Sermon by the Rev. Aaron McEmrys

Delivered to the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, Thanksgiving, 2009

Many years ago now, a friend of mine, who I have since lost track of, told me this story. So while I am sorry to have lost him, I am thankful for the gift of his story, which I have remembered for lo these many years, and will finally tell this morning.

Cory and his wife, Pam, had finally decided to separate, probably for good. They had tried everything: counseling, patience, crying, yelling and finally grieving – but nothing it seemed, not even their two year-old son, was enough to hold their broken marriage together.

On the day Cory walked out the door of their little apartment for the last time, he felt like he was walking into his own grave. He moved in, temporarily, with some friends until he could get his bearings, staying on an air mattress in their unfinished, but soothingly quiet basement. Somehow the dark, cool basement felt right – mirroring the heavy grayness that had become his life.

The days past numbly, and Cory spent a lot of time in the basement trying to understand how it had come to this. His friends were kind.

A few weeks later, Thanksgiving Day rose with the sun, and Cory felt worse than ever. No family, no warmth, nothing it seemed to be thankful for. He politely but firmly declined his friends invitation to join them for Thanksgiving dinner, and went back to the safe shadows of his underground tomb.

Later, the doorbell rang. And rang again. Cory opened the door and there, on the porch, was Pam, his soon-to-be-ex-wife, with their son, who was wearing a ridiculous turkey shaped hat on his beautiful head. In a brown shopping bag were the leftovers of a Thanksgiving feast: turkey, stuffing, sweet corn and yams. Even a slice of cherry pie.

“I can’t stay long, I have to get back, but I thought you might be hungry. I thought you might like this. God knows you can’t cook.”

Cory looked at her, and really saw her, for the first time in a long time. He hugged the turkey-headed toddler and then he hugged his wife, but now, for the first time, not as someone hugs a wife, but as someone hugs a kind, but somewhat distant relative – and it was good. Everything had changed, but not everything was lost.

They left, returning to their party, and Cory took the shopping bag into the kitchen, opening each Tupperware container in turn, breathing it all in. He ate by himself at a kitchen table that was not his – and never before in his life, and never since – has he felt so grateful. The door of his tomb was open.

Thanksgiving can be a tough holiday. In setting out to celebrate the abundance of our lives we can all-too-easily get trapped in an over-stressed, over-worked and over-cooked holiday that seems to consist primarily of putting a vast number of tension-filled hours into cooking a sprawling meal, which, while tasty, is consumed all-too quickly – leaving in its wake a towering pile of dishes and cookery as the assemblage falls slowly into the torpor of a food-induced coma with the whistles and cheers of college football squawk distractedly from an over-sized TV screen.

Most of us do remember to say thank-you, to feel grateful – but even the Thanksgiving grace can feel like something to be waited through until the Amen sounds like a starters pistol and we can finally eat.

And if that’s not enough, there is always the possibility of even more over-indulgence, all the big Thanksgiving Day sales, where we prepare for the next big festival of consumption by spending lots and lots of money at Macy’s , Toys-R-Us and Wall-Mart, often using credit cards that we can’t pay off.

It is hard to hold onto gratitude, which is, after all, a feeling that requires time, and stillness and reflection in order to really take root.

The Shakers understood this better than most. One of the utopian religions that branched off from Quakerism in the 19^th century, the Shakers believed that gratitude should be a way of life: simple, quiet, paying close attention to absolutely every gift god gave them and remembering to say thank-you for each and every one. They shunned the hustle and bustle of the world and withdrew from society, from all the distractions and temptations that interfered with the quiet and elusive relationship they were trying to build with their god.

The Shakers were great craftspeople, and literally everything they did was done as perfectly, as gratefully as they could possibly manage. Their barns, their chair-rails, their milk-jars, their felt hats, their wooden plates, and every meal they cooked – all of these things were a kind of prayer offered in gratitude for all of life’s undeserved blessings.

Of course, in addition to living grateful lives, they were also committed to living sexually abstinent lives, which might help explain why there were only four Shakers left in the whole world by July, 2008.

Whatever happens to the Shakers, they will always live on in their famous hymn, “’Tis A Gift to Be Simple.” My favorite line in the song is the part where we sing, “When true simplicity is gained/to bow and to bend, we shan’t be afraid.” This line gets right to the heart of gratitude. The feeling of gratitude is the feeling of being given a gift – a gift that we have not earned and probably don’t deserve.

A couple weeks ago one of you shared with me how, as he sat here in his pew, he suddenly realized that with every single breath he was breathing in life, thousands of times a day, he was filling his lungs with the abundance of the universe. His eyes have rods in cones in them so we can see shapes, colors and textures that his black lab can’t see, his ears have astonishingly delicate bones inside them so that he can hear his son giggling and talking quietly to his favorite teddy-bear as he falls asleep at night. Sitting in his pew it suddenly occurred to him that his life was improbable, almost impossible against the vast and impersonal sweep of the universe – and yet – here he sits, in this place, under this window, with these people – with this child.

And in that moment, just a couple Sundays ago, he could not imagine any response to life other than profound, humble, almost abject gratitude. In the face of such incredible beauty, in the face of life’s unspeakable majesty, in the face of the thousands of breathes we take each day and the miraculous sound of a child laughing in his bed just down the hall – what possible response can their be except to bow and to bend in thanksgiving?!

Some of the blessings in our lives we can honestly say we have done something to earn or to deserve – but most of them we cannot. They just are, and words can go no further.

We give thanks because we know, deep down in our bones, that it could be otherwise. Soon after poet Jane Kenyon learned that her husband had cancer, she wrote these words:

“I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise.

I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love.

At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise.

We ate dinner at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day.

But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.”[1]

Sisters and brothers, gratitude is the only response we can make in the face of so much “otherwise.”

As important as gratitude is, we cannot stop there. Gratitude is a feeling, it is a kind of love, and like every kind of love, it can only reach its fullness when it is expressed. Thus the feeling of gratitude needs the act of thanks giving just as the feeling of love can only be completed in the act of loving. Otherwise, no matter how good it feels, it is incomplete, unfinished and destined to fade away and be forgotten.

Gifts are meant be given. We are constantly given gifts that we have not earned and have done nothing to deserve – and when we stop to notice, when we feel gratitude wrap its soft arms around us like grandmother’s quilt – then we must give thanks, we must pass it on, giving of ourselves freely, and not only to the people we love, but to those we do not – to strangers, to the earth, even to nobody and nothing in particular. We must give in our gratitude, for when we do this everything and everyone is enriched by our giving, including us.

For as I’ve said before, when gratitude becomes the wellspring of your life it is like the powerful revolution of a waterwheel – you begin in gratitude and so you give in gratitude and in the act of giving you discover even more richness, even more to be grateful for - which in turn fills you up all over again, overflowing the banks of your heart and flowing through your hands into an aching and thirsty world.

This abundance is not ours, and yet it is here for us. This abundance is not ours, and yet it is ours to give.

Gratitude does not belong to the accountants, it’s not to be measured out quid pro quo and balanced on a ledger somewhere. Gratitude is an orientation, a way of living life.

So let us count our blessings, every single one. And for every blessing, as our hearts overflow and the great wheel turns – let us give thanks, let us give something of ourselves in offering, in acknowledgement, in prayer. If you notice something you are grateful for once a day, then give thanks once a day – and if, after much practice, you find yourself finding things to be grateful for all day long – then give thanks all day long!

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Amen.

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[1] Thanks to the Rev. Robin Landerman Zucker for introducing me to this poem in her sermon, “Otherwise.”