November 2, 2025: Orienting Toward Gratitude

Orienting Toward Gratitude

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
So much of our society encourages us to orient toward want – to be consumers and takers. It also fosters greed and discontent. How can gratitude help us re-orient ourselves toward generosity and contentment?

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Sermon Text

Orienting Toward Gratitude

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

November 2, 2025

READING “Messenger” by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird-

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.

SERMON Orienting Toward Gratitude

Angela Gabriel reminded me of these powerful words from the abolitionist

and suffragist, Sojourner Truth in an email signature this week. Truth wrote,

"Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the

good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life's light

to be determined by the darkness around me."

Recognizing the power of Sojourner Truth's work for freedom and call for

us to also create room for joy and song in our lives, we open this month of

November with an invitation to deepen our practices of gratitude -

recognizing how gratitude is a foundation for more joy in our lives.

At the surface, gratitude can seem pretty simple. After all, gratitude is not a

complex idea like faith or spirituality. Even concepts like justice and truth

can hold different definitions depending on the context or one's values. Gratitude is more straightforward. We know what gratitude is. We know

what it feels like. And yet, we have only begun to really understand the

power of gratitude, and the power it could have to shape our culture, and the quality of our lives, and our future.

One of my favorite prayers of gratitude is from our UU hymnal. The one I

used in our meditation by UU Minister Richard Fewkes:

“For the sun and the dawn which we did not create;

For the moon and the evening which we did not make;

For food which we plant but cannot grow;

For friends and loved ones we have not earned and cannot buy;

For all things which come to us as gifts from sources beyond ourselves;

Gifts of life and love and friendship, we lift up our hearts in thanks this day.”

It is easy to feel grateful when someone does something nice for us, gives

us a present or does something unexpectedly kind and generous. But what

about all the gifts present to us every day from this earth. All the gifts - of

water and air and sun that give us life. All the gifts of friendship that are so

consistent and present that maybe we forget the gifts they are. The Jewish

American writer Cynthia Ozick says it like this, "We often take for granted

the very things that most deserve our attention."

In her book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural

World, the botanist, author, and professor, Robin Wall Kimmerer who is

also an enrolled member of the Potawatomi (Bodwewadmik) Nation, shares

how the root of the word for berry and for gift in her native language are the

same. This root word - min - meaning gift appears in many words in the

Potawatomi language. It is there in blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, and

also apple, maize, and wild rice. There, at the most fundamental place of

language, Kimmerer says, “we recognized that these are gifts from our plant relatives, manifestations of their generosity, care, and creativity.”

In her presentation via Zoom here at the church, as part of a Faith in Place

initiative, Robin Wall Kimmerer said that in the midst of a present system

that is relentless in its need for more (more consumption, more extraction,

more technology, more money, more wants), and the resulting devastating

climate impacts - the earth is asking for us to change. To change as a

culture, to change as individuals - to change at a fundamental level. And

that change begins with gratitude. And the recognition that in the midst of a

culture that is always asking us to take more, gratitude is a radical act.

For gratitude reminds us of our abundance of all we have already received.

Gratitude is humbling. It reminds us of how interconnected and interdependent we are with all life. Gratitude draws us into relationship and

reciprocity - remembering that we are called to give in response to all we

have received - and to remember that we are not above the natural world,

but an integral part of it.

Kimmerer is naming the need for seismic, cultural shifts. And, we also have

to begin where we are. Orienting our lives and our consciousness more

toward gratitude is challenging - especially in the midst of days where there

is loss and heartbreak and reasons for anger and despair every day.

But, we need gratitude - both in seismic shifts - and in personal shifts for

the reasons that the freedom fighter Sojourner Truth names - because we

cannot let our “life's light be determined by the darkness around” us.

And a critical way to keep our light shining - to protect our joy is through

cultivating a greater sense of gratitude. There have actually been a lot of

studies done on how gratitude creates a great sense of happiness and can

even bring improvements to our relationships and even marriage.

Here is an example. One study from professors at the University of

California Davis and the University of Miami divided participants randomly

into three groups. Each group was asked to keep a weekly journal. The first

group was asked to write down five things for which they were grateful that

happened during the week. Another group was asked to write down five

things that didn't go well, or upset them during the week. The control group

was asked to note five things that had an impact on their week with no

instruction as to whether to focus on positive or negative impacts.

After ten weeks, the study showed that the gratitude group felt more

satisfied with their lives overall and felt 25 percent happier than the group

that had to journal about hassles they experienced. In a separate but

similar study, the gratitude group even reported offering more emotional

support and help to others during the duration of the study. (“The Neuroscience of Why Gratitude Makes Us Healthier” by Ocean Robbins.

http://www.dailygood.org/story/578/the-neuroscience-of-why-gratitude-

makes-us-healthier-ocean-robbins/)

This is good news. While there is a lot more to gratitude than just a self-

help tool to feel happier, this does have its merits. For we all need

strategies to connect to our light, our power, and our joy these days. And

still, we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what gratitude could

mean, the real power of living gratitude as a fundamental experience in our

lives.

Even as someone who has practiced and preached the importance of

gratitude for decades, I still struggle to more fully center it in my life and

consciousness and decisions. I, too, struggle within this culture of

relentless need for more. I, too, struggle with getting lost in all that is wrong,

that is heartbreaking, that has been lost. While this is also important, if

it takes all of our attention, then we forget to pay attention to the gifts of life

that abound always. And recognizing those gifts, helps us turn from

feelings of want and need - to feelings of connection, satisfaction and give

us energy to give back - to practice reciprocity - in return.

I am reminded of Frederick the mouse who knows that in addition to food

and warmth, when things get hard we also need beauty and color to feed

our spirits. We need to pay attention to the gifts around us - all the gifts - to keep our mind and our spirit oriented to all that we have even in the most

difficult times.

There are many ways to cultivate more gratitude and more attention to

gratitude in our lives. Here are a few ways that I have learned over the years. Over twenty years ago, I read a newsletter article from a minister

who said he paid attention whenever he was crossing a threshold - like

walking out the door to leave his home, or entering the church where he

worked, or the grocery store, or returning home. Wherever he was, he tried to pay attention to the doors he walked through and to pause before he

walked through to be grateful for something - maybe something that had

happened that day, or for where he was entering, or for the gift of the day,

the sun, his breath. This is a powerful practice that helps us weave

gratitude throughout our day.

Another practice is something I learned from a student of Jack Kornfeld in

the tradition of Theravada Buddhism. This is the practice of eating

mindfully, of bringing your attention and gratitude fully to your food and

meals. The practice invites us to pay attention to each bite - to the color,

the texture, the taste, the feel of each bite. And to be mindful of the plants

and animals and land that made this gift of food possible. And from that

attention, gratitude naturally flows when we realize all the gifts that make

even a simple bite of food possible.

One practice that I have been able to be consistent with is my morning

meditation practice of quiet sitting where I end with giving thanks for the

day and for another day to live. This consistent practice has been a gift,

and yet, I know that bigger shifts in our ability to live gratitude are needed -

for our own well being and for the shift needed in our world.

So this month, as we invite our attention to both gratitude and service,

which I believe is a natural response to cultivating more attention to

gratitude in our lives, let us also approach it with what Buddhists call “a

beginner's mind.” By definition having a beginner's mind means having an

attitude of openness, eagerness, and freedom from preconceptions when

approaching something. Teachers talk about the importance of approaching

any kind of practice with a beginner's mind, with an eagerness to learn

even if you think the practice is meaningless or you think you already know

all about it.

How often do we approach gratitude with a beginner's mind? My guess is

that we generally approach it as experts, thinking we know all there is to

know. And yet, how often within a day are we attentive to the abundance of

gifts around us - the sun rising, the trees that share with us oxygen, the

gifts of life and love and friendship that sustain our spirits? How often do

you greet each day, each moment with gratitude? With an awareness that it

is a gift?

This is hard to do because it is not how we have been trained. Rather than

seeing what we have, we are trained, from an early age to see so many

things as commodities to buy and sell, rather than gifts to enjoy and share. This is so much of the root of greed and exploitation in our world. If only we could really make a turn and begin to see the abundance of gifts already given - and understand our own role as part of these gifts. And respond to this abundance with humility, with gratitude, with a reciprocity that ensures all have enough and that our species has a future on this planet.

This is one of the great truths to be found in gratitude. That our hunger for

things, our striving, our dissatisfaction with who we are not, or what we do

not have, is finally only overcome by appreciation and gratitude.

As Mary Oliver writes in her poem, “Messenger” -

“Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes.”

Gratitude is a virtue that, when we cultivate it with practice, allows us to

keep our minds on what matters. Yes, our thoughts will be drawn to our old

shoes, our graying hair, the inadequacies and doubts and desires for

perfection that can plague all of our thoughts, the things that went wrong

today, the disappointments - but gratitude turns our attention back to what

matters, to the gift of what is, this astonishing life, this beautiful earth - that is calling us to change.

So, this month of November, let us all re-introduce ourselves to a daily

gratitude practice. I invite you to create a way to call yourself to gratitude -

maybe as a way to start the day, or end the day, or to begin each meal, or through journaling, or in crossing each threshold. Choose a practice - and if you forget - or when you forget, just start again - no guilt - just begin again. That is life and the way it is for all people. We practice, we forget, we begin again.

Let us try to approach gratitude with a beginner's mind - with an openness

to learning or discovering something we didn't know before. And may

gratitude help us to keep nurturing more light, more joy, more generosity

and reciprocity and care in our lives and in these days. May it help us hear our siblings and our earth more fully.