Gratitude: Generosity of Presence
A Time to Give Thanks
It’s the time of year when families all over the country are getting together once again. We look to give thanks and enjoy the year’s harvest as well as each others’ company. In honor of Thanksgiving, we are exploring gratitude this week at Barn Life Recovery. With this in our minds, we turn once again to one of our favorites, David Whyte. Some of you may remember Mr. Whyte from a blog we did on disappointment back in March or so. Here are his thoughts on gratitude from his book, Consolations. We hope you enjoy them.
An A Priori State of Attention
Whyte writes: “Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. [It] 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.”
He adds that “[g]ratitude 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 privilege; that we are miraculously part of something rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.”
The Full Miraculous Essenitality
He continues: “To see the full miraculous essentiality of the color blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks”. Whyte is talking about experiencing the essence of something here without adding our own baggage or preconceptions. “To see fully, the beauty of a daughter’s face is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions,” he expands here to promote connection. Whyte goes on, “to intuit inner lives beneath surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someone’s, 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 witness all at once.”
Participation and Witness
“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 to 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.”
Barn Life Recovery would like to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving. If you or someone you love is struggling with mental health issues, please don’t hesitate to give us a call today. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, or just overwhelming feelings, Barn Life is here for you. We have been where you are now and we’re ready to help. Our staff is standing by to guide you through the admissions process and help you with any questions. It’s not too late to love life again!
