Dear UBC,

 

In the midst of change in the congregational context and turmoil in the global context, fear, sadness, and anger get triggered nearly constantly. Last week, I wrote about the importance of cultivating the capacity to grieve together amid all that we are losing in our life in the world – from things we’ve become accustomed to now starting to change, to institutions we’ve believed in and depended on succumbing to authoritarianism, to the collapse of ecosystems amid climate change. To love the world right now is to grieve it.

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But this week I want to introduce a second emotional experience in need of intentional cultivation in times of change and turmoil: gratitude. Dianna Butler Bass defines gratitude at its deepest and most transformative levels as “the emotional response to the surprise of our very existence, to sensing that inner light and realizing the astonishing sacred, social, and scientific events that brought each one of us into being.” Gratitude is a social emotion with immense physical and psychological benefits including stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, greater experiences of alertness and pleasure, etc.​

 

Practicing gratitude means going in search of what feels like a gift in our lives, eliciting our openness toward the world and the people around us. Whether cultivating a radical awareness of life’s gifts and graces through practices like journaling or through communal ritual like singing, gratitude developed into an orientation towards life also holds ethical import. Our ministries of justice-seeking can move away from the motivational resource of anger to take shape as radical responses of gratitude for the gifts of life and our deepest desires to preserve and protect them: the lives of our fellow humans against systems of racism, the lives of our more-than-human companions in the web of life from rampant destruction, etc.

 

I want to invite you this week to notice what feels like a gift to you and develop a practice of gratitude in relation to that gift. It might mean simply writing it down to render it significant enough to remember. It might mean giving a person a call or text or visit because they’re the gift you’re most grateful for in that moment. And think, too, about the ways UBC is a gift in your life and what it means to be part of a community of faith that is on this journey together. I’d love to hear some of those reflections if you’d like to share them in the coming weeks.

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Blessings,

Cody​

 

What I’m Listening To: Check out this episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Hidden Brain, titled, “The Enemies of Gratitude,” to delve a little deeper into the radical benefits of this social emotion.