“We Sing of Golden Mornings”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
March 18, 2007
THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”
~Cicero
“This is the day we are given. Let us rejoice in it and be glad.”
~Psalm 118
“Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.”
~Satchel Paige as quoted in the NY Post, 10/4/59
READINGS
Albert Schweitzer
To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.
Excerpt from the NY Times: Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers In Peril; 2/27/07
Now, in a mystery worth of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold. As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call “colony collapse disorder,” growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis…”Every third bit we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food,” said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.
Every Third Bite: What Honeybees Can Teach Us About Life
“The hardest arithmetic to master,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “is that which enables us to count our blessings.”
SERMON
What is it that makes for hard arithmetic – especially since being grateful is one of those things that costs us little and yet delivers so much? Is it that we don’t know how to be grateful? No, I think we understand how to say thanks, to express appreciation. That’s the easy part. What I suspect is tougher is that we haven’t honed our powers of observation and tuned our own awareness to the gratitude channel, a wavelength available to each of us, every day, without cable hookups or wireless routers, without cell towers or family calling plans.
If it’s just a matter of tuning, what gets in the way? I think it’s a kind of static – static that comes from the cluttered demands of our lives. How prepared are we to look behind the curtain at all the miracles that comprise the daily routine of our lives? Do we take the time, do we make the time to pause and ask ourselves: who has helped me be where I am right now? And have I thanked them?
Take this very morning for example. Imagine the countless tiny graces that put you here today, safe and comfortable in our sanctuary. Maybe someone made you toast, put gas in your car, changed the clocks last week, washed the socks you’re wearing, turned on the heat in here, prepared the Order Of Service you hold in your hand, plugged in the coffee, stopped for fresh milk? Maybe someone introduced you to this church some time ago, or a teacher somewhere in your life opened your eyes to the unifying ideas that tie us together, ideas that took shape in the choice you made to become a Unitarian Universalist? Maybe your mother told you to always do the right thing and you’d never be sorry – and this feels like the right thing. Well, I could go on.
So – how can we learn to be more of a gratitude receptor – to tune in, to see beyond the curtain of the obvious?
Consider the honeybees.
Honeybees perform a valuable, indeed an essential activity. It’s in their nature to pollinate, and because of them, we are treated to an endless bounty of goodness – fruits, vegetables, and nuts - like almonds – a crop that lies in precarious balance now because something has happened to them. The honey bees have disappeared in large numbers as you heard from the reading.
Such a phenomenon – colony collapse disorder – has farmers and scientists in a quandary. Why are the honeybees dying and disappearing – are they exhausted, disoriented, or are they stressed out by breeding practices and poor bee nutrition – in short - have we given them too little and asked of them too much?
In a world in which doing more with less has become a singular art form, we find that there are less beekeepers, less bees, and yet more crops to pollinate. Yes, we have given them too little and asked of them too much. Maybe then we shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve just walked off the job, or worse yet keeled over from the stressful demands placed on their lives
I was alarmed to read about this crisis – but here’s what brought it home to me: Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food. Every third bite. That interdependent web of existence – right there on the front page of the Times!
Who knew about the importance of honeybees? I didn’t think of it when I had my crunchy Kashi in the morning, the one with plump little raisins and almonds in it. I didn’t think about it when I had my salad for lunch, my afternoon apple, my broccoli with dinner, my wine!!! If I had known, maybe I would have stopped for a moment to thank the busy critters that had provided me with a day’s food, every day for, in my case, 19, 497 days. Nearly 20,000 continuous days of service: that is one huge job with significant personal impact. Yet I had never noticed, I couldn’t see it, it was off my radar screen entirely. Perhaps you have been worshipping honeybees and you forgot to send me the memo – or maybe you too had no idea.
We missed an opportunity to be thankful, a big opportunity. And now it might be too little too late.
So, that brings me to my shortcoming, which I put on display for all here assembled. I couldn’t help but think once this realization began to crash in on me – what else have I missed? What – or who else has been pollinating and preparing me to enjoy a day or savor a moment, providing me with every third bite of my life? How many human honeybees are there in a given day – and what can I do before they too decide to buzz off, creating a colony collapse in my own take-it-for granted life.
We’ve had some of those honeybees of our church in front of you this morning – folks who lit a candle of thanksgiving for our congregation, people who are responsible for seeding the activity that grows in this community, week to week, year to year. Think for a moment of the busy activity that goes unseen here – the members who are planning a new garden for us, the treasurer slugging it out with our budget, the RE team crafting the curriculum, our canvassers reaching out this stewardship month, the dozens and dozens of members dedicated to our varied ministries, incubating action, most of it behind the scenes. And what of the ministers and the staff whose work is often not put on display, whose tireless efforts make for our extraordinary experience, week in, week out.
Who are the honeybees in your life? In what way has a loved one made today possible for you? That might be easy enough to ferret out. By all means do that, and thank away. But what about those who you may not love in the same way, but on whom you depend for some part of your daily quality of life? Is it the diner where you get the best mushroom barley soup ever, is it the colleague who listens to your ideas and helps to give them lift, is it the pedestrian who moved a shopping cart for you so that you might park? There are moments every day where blessings present themselves to us – but do we stop to notice, pause to say thanks?
Lest you think we do such thanksgiving solely as a matter of virtue’s highest calling, be aware – gratitude is good for your health! Deb Ellis referred me to a study done by the University of Miami that shows clear evidence that those who have found a way to cultivate gratitude feel better about their lives, reporting fewer physical symptoms, and with a more optimistic outlook. The benefits go on – more progress is made on personal goals, better energy levels and an overall improved sense of vitality, and, consider this, people who are tuned in to gratitude provide more comfort to others. They are more likely to help someone in need – someone with a personal problem or needing emotional support of some kind.
Notice that the study talks about CULTIVATING gratitude – the people in the research were not necessarily inclined towards gratitude but were trained how to be thankful in the day to day. To me this means only one thing, each one of us can do it – and if we’re already pretty good at it, we can get better.
So, I ask you again – who are the honeybees in your life? Those below the radar screen? Maybe it’s the parents of your significant other who did such a good job raising someone of such fine character and good humor? Or is it a person who pollinated a project you’re working on – helping you to move it forward in some way? Maybe it’s someone like Maria, the woman who is altering a special dress I’m wearing to my stepson’s wedding next weekend. Sure, she’s getting paid for her work – but she’s not getting paid to make me feel like I will wear it well, making me feel comfortable at a life milestone that, joyous as it is, can leave a person just a bit frazzled with emotion.
To play this metaphor out, let me make a point about the bee’s sting. We need be grateful not only to those who make us comfortable, but to those honeybees who have provoked us to grow, who make us uncomfortable and – in so doing – transmit the stab of pain that changes our course for the better. So here, I can’t help but think of the bosses we’ve known who have limited us in some way. THANK YOU – they helped us to move on. How about the people who didn’t buy from you – whether it be Girl Scout cookies or ads for the U2U directory – they tell us we need to hone our presentation, sharpen our saw. THANK YOU. Or the friend who didn’t come through, who let you down. Think of what you learned about how to be a friend from that experience. THANK YOU. One writer (Ruth Ann Schabacker) says it this way: Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons.
From a practical point of view, what new habits might we consider, ways to help us incorporate gratitude thinking into our everyday life. Here are a few ideas:
Gratitude Wake Up Call - Before you get out of bed, take 30 seconds and express thanks. I started to do this on January 1st of this year, and, well, I’m feeling flush with vitality! You will find your own words. Mine often include thanks for the gift of the day, and a hope that I can be a source of peace, a positive force in the world in some small way that day.
How about a short prayer when you gather with loved ones over a meal? I love the simplicity and easy recall of Deb Ellis’ offering:
We are blessed
We are blessed to be
We are blessed to be here, now, together
There is much written of gratitude journals. These are another way to capture in writing a few thoughts about the gifts of the day. Make it modern: set a recurring daily task in your blackberry or computer program: every day at noon a reminder comes across your screen: Grateful for?
Maybe it’s the practice Charlie Ortman described earlier this year, which Sabine highlighted today, When someone says how are you, consider responding “I’m grateful” then explain why.
Why not Random Acts of Gratitude – Once a day, make a point to thank someone who isn’t readily visible, whose effort inures to your benefit in some positive way. I’m charmed by the story of the college professor who allocated 25% of a final exam to the question: What is the name of the custodian who sets up our room and cleans up after us? Extra credit if you’ve gotten to know him. Reach beyond the obvious to see the gifts that make your life possible.
I recommend to you an article in this month’s UU World by Galen Guengerich, the senior minister at All Soul’s on the UES. His thoughts are provocative, his agenda ambitious. “What should be our defining discipline?” he asks, contrasting it with other faiths for whom obedience, love, submission might be regarded as defining disciplines.
Gratitude should be our defining religious discipline, he says. “The discipline of gratitude reminds us how utterly dependent we are on the people and world around us for everything that matters. It demands that we nurture the world that nurtures us in return,” he writes.
Indeed were we to have a sacrament, I’d like to propose the sacrament of gratitude. What is a sacrament but a way of making sacred an action we take, levitating it above all others, recognizing that in gratitude we have a way of making good on our most fundamental belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person? Expressing thanks is not a transaction, nor a polite reflex; it is a transformational action that holds within it our acute awareness of the serendipity of our lives and how so much of the grace that finds us every day comes from the small actions, the untold choices from those who are both close to us and those who we may not even know. If we ready our internal blackboard, and make chalk of our waking moments, we will get better at the math that allows us to count our blessings.
From the honeybees who are threatened and may no longer be available to make possible every third bite of our diet, may we learn how to spot the actions that nurture our lives in small and big ways. May we tune in our gratitude channel, and pause long enough to hear the message, to see the truth, to recognize and affirm all that fills our heart and our lives. May we see the wealth and variety of ways in which we are nurtured in the day to day, and in turn, may we find that ordinary moment to say thanks, I am grateful. And in the spirit of gratitude, may I express my thanks for giving me a chance to be with you this morning in this way for the very first time.
Let us take on the spirit of prayer and meditation.
In that quiet place within, find the garden that grows within each of us. To it, may we offer sustenance to our own honeybees so that they might flourish, to provide countless small gifts, pollinating possibilities to those we hold close and with still enough left for the stranger on a train who needs our help with a bag. Let us hear those honeybees alive within us, and take a quiet moment to enjoy their music as we sit together in silence.
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