EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Thanksgiving means something different to everyone. Join me today as I celebrate this day with the words of a poet who invites us to reflect on the privilege of being fully alive.

TRANSCRIPT

I was very recently—embarrassingly recently—introduced to David Whyte's poem on Gratitude from a book entitled CONSOLATIONS that was originally published in 2015 and, I believe, was revised in 2021. 

My best friend told me about this poem and it seemed like once I read it, it was too good to pass up as my reflection; my MIND CHALK for Thanksgiving this year. 

So today I'm going to grace you with this poem, which you probably already know because I think I'm a little late to the game. 

Gratitude—by David Whyte 

“Gratitude is not a passive response to something we've been. Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event. It is the deep a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege that we are miraculously part of something rather than nothing.

Even if that something is temporary pain or despair. 

We inhabit a living world with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, and the tawny hue of a winter landscape. To see the full, miraculous reality of the color blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks.

To see fully the beauty of a daughter's face is to be fully grateful without having to seek God to thank. 

To sit among friends and strangers hearing many voices, strange opinions, to intuit inner lives beneath surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world. To be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore, to make a conversation without saying a word—is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us. That we are participants and witnesses all at once. 

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person's world while making our own world without will or effort. This is what is extraordinary and gifted. This is the essence of gratefulness, seeing the heart of privilege. 

Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. 

Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.”
—David Whyte 

I'll see you back here on Monday. I'm taking tomorrow off to be with my baby brother and my girlfriend.

Thanks for being here. Happy Thanksgiving. 

See you Monday.

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The podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jenée Arthur.
Cover art by Jenée Arthur
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