“Come Ye Thankful
People, Come”
Robert A. Rees
That is the title of a Thanksgiving hymn written in 1844 by Henry Alford
which is still sung in many churches today. The imperative, repeated “come”
give the hymn the sense of both
invitation and urgency. This is a season of coming together (as families,
groups and congregations) to express appreciation, gratitude and thanksgiving
(related but distinct human emotions).
The Institute of HeartMath in the Santa Cruz Mountains where I worked
for a dozen years has studied gratitude and its associated emotions and their
impact on our minds, bodies, and
spirits. Here is a summary of their findings: “[When expressing appreciation or
gratitude,] you feel a deep sense of peace and internal balance—you are at
harmony with yourself, with others, and with your larger environment. You
experience increased buoyancy and vitality. Your senses are enlivened—every
aspect of your perceptual experience seems richer, more textured. Surprisingly,
you feel invigorated even when you would usually have felt tired and drained.”
Another way to say this is that expressing appreciation, gratitude and
thankfulness are good for us—physically, emotionally and spiritually.
And yet, we often have to be reminded to be grateful. That
happened to me just this week. I was at Best Buy involved in a long, difficult
phone conversation with a computer repair technician somewhere in the
antipodes. I was irritated, frustrated, and tired. To a woman standing next in
line waiting to be served, I complained, “What a day!” She responded, “But it
is a day.” Immediately, her words changed my perspective. Yes, having any day
(even a difficult one) is better than having no day. Whatever difficulties I
was experiencing, I was alive. I was also immensely blessed, especially in
comparison with the vast majority of humankind, including no doubt the
technician on the other end of the line.
Thanksgiving is also a day, a day set apart for expressing
gratitude and thanks. It is a day when
we remember all of those others who have blessed our lives in some way, who
have given to us beyond the limits of obligation and expectation, who have
given time, patience, and love with grace and generosity and in doing so have
made our lives fuller, richer, safer, and more meaningful. With just a little thought a list of those
who have touched or now touch our lives in some way expands exponentially.
Thus, those for whom we should be grateful are not only those millions who have
sacrificed to make our world as rich, comfortable and safe as it is, but, in
Wordsworth’s expression, the “little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love” of
which we are daily recipients.
It is the nature of gratitude to engender gratitude—in
ourselves and others. Which is to say that gratitude is contagious. That means
that expressing gratitude on Thanksgiving is likely to elicit gratitude in
others—and more gratitude in ourselves beyond Thanksgiving, finding in each day
at least one thing for which we can be grateful. Expressing gratitude also
often leads to our manifesting gratitude beyond words. Feelings of appreciation
and thankfulness often motivate us to do something for others. As John F. Kennedy said, “As we express our
gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter
words, but to live by them.”
One of our family rituals is to ask all those sitting around
the Thanksgiving table to name one thing for which they are especially thankful
and then to have a collective prayer of thanksgiving. When I was travelling in
China years ago with a group of American writers, Barry Lopez said something I have never
forgotten: “An older meaning of ‘to remember’ means to pass something through
our hearts once more.” This Thanksgiving, perhaps as we sit around the table
with friends and relatives we can all take a moment to let some remembrance of
gratitude pass through our hearts again. As the old French proverb puts it, “Gratitude
is the heart’s memory.”
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