King Duncan tells of reading a book about a kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Rosemary, who was someone with a talent for celebration. In fact, she believed in celebrating every day. Why wait for the calendar to offer some prescribed day for revelry?
Her students’ birthdays were celebrated at least three times per year. And as for the big annual events like Memorial Day, Labor Day, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving – why, they too were celebrated several times a year under Mrs. Rosemary’s festive oversight.
Mrs. Rosemary must have been a very popular teacher among the kindergarten set. But teaching her students to appreciate all the wonder of their lives and celebrating it regularly was surely more than a popularity ploy. Mrs. Rosemary was actually offering her young pupils a chance to adopt an outlook that would have lasting positive impact. She was instilling in them the practice of feeling gratitude for life’s blessings.
How practiced are you at discerning your blessings and giving thanks for them? Mrs. Rosemary might tell us that if we limit our reflection upon our blessings to our annual Thanksgiving celebrations, we are impoverishing ourselves. And she would have plenty of backing in that assessment.
Author Amit Amin recalls he was a little suspicious about the claims that gratitude has multiple benefits for our lives, until he began his research. He eventually wrote about no fewer than 31 demonstrable benefits to gratitude. Gratitude, it seems, impacts lives widely and deeply. Its positive influence is clear in aspects of physical health, emotional health, career advancement and social relationships. In other words, adopting the practice of gratitude and celebrating all that life has offered us can utterly change our lives – for the better.
Now undoubtedly someone might argue that all that positive thinking and endless celebrating is a little naïve. After all, are we to deny the real hardships we face and the world endures? What of the failures, disappointments and betrayals we have known? Do we simply ignore them or deny their significance by some mandate for gratitude?
We don’t think so. The practice of celebrating life’s blessings daily and engendering deeper and deeper gratitude needn’t be reality-denying. It is simply the practice of focusing and trusting. Most religious traditions acknowledge that God’s love and power are redemptive. People of faith remember being freed from slavery, being led to new land, being restored after devastation, and being given new life when the old has been taken. And so, even in the midst of our current struggles, there is always reason for trusting in a better future and for thanking God.
In fact, the oftener we thank God, the more joyful we become because, as Pastor Martha Graybeal Rowlett writes, “a thankful person tastes joy twice – once when it happens, and again when gratitude is expressed to God for the joy.”
So let’s be grateful this Thanksgiving for every good thing – but let’s be thankful far beyond that day. Why not make every day a day to offer thanks? God has been good to us, and will continue to be. Let’s celebrate!
