The Fuel of Love

 

I have issues with gratitude. Maybe it’s because my grandmother always harped on it.

She’d tell me that I was an ungrateful child, when I didn’t want to wear a dress that she’d made for me, or eat my lima beans, or do my chores.

This aversion of mine has only been reinforced on social media, with all of the desperate lists of things that people have that they are trying so hard to remember to be thankful for; things that they once wished they had, and now they do.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It’s still the middle of a pandemic, and no-one is happy, really. People are uneasy, wondering if their lists of things to be thankful for are adequate— secretly wondering why it is that Thanksgiving is often so brutally revealing when it comes to trying to preserve family harmony and affection; questioning why it is that we feel it’s necessary to banish whatever good feelings may have remained afterward, by enacting the malign sacrament of Black Friday.

I did think of something new, though. I’m a word-nerd, and it occurred to me to take apart the word “Thanksgiving,” and it suddenly burst upon me that thanks are something intended to be given. It became evident that our little sad exercises in gratitude are misguided. We are trying to both give and receive thanks by ourselves, to ourselves. That’s just weird!

I propose that in order for thanks to be given, that the act of giving, not thanks, has to be the main thing.

Well, that changes things doesn’t it?

Could it be that it’s more about giving, than gratitude? Could it be that our lists are unsatisfactory because they are all about what we’ve gotten, and not about what we’ve given? Maybe we can learn to be attentive to that impulse within us that leads us to give. I suddenly remembered one of my favorite hymns, and I realized that the reason it’s a favorite is because it’s about giving.

The final stanza goes like this:

 

Awake, awake to love and work!

The lark is in the sky, the fields are wet with diamond dew,

the worlds awake to cry their blessings on the Lord of life, as he goes meekly by.

 

Come, let thy voice be one with theirs, shout with their shout of praise;

see how the giant sun soars up, great lord of years and days!

 

So let the love of Jesus come and set thy soul ablaze,

to give and give, and give again, what God hath given thee;

to spend thyself nor count the cost; to serve right gloriously

the God who gave all worlds that are, and all that are to be.

 

Another thing that I keep noticing, that I think we might be getting turned wrong side out, is this:

All the great prayers and liturgies tell us to bless God. They don’t beg for God’s blessing on us, they beg us to pour out our blessings on God. Could that possibly mean that our blessings are powerful and useful? 

What if our gifts of love really have the power to set souls ablaze?

 

What if gratitude is the very fuel of love?

What if it’s the very thing that moves us to give, and give, and give again—

To spend ourselves in glorious service, and never count the cost?